Fruits & Veggies near Ripon, CA

“We always stop on the way to our cabin to pick up pies, fruits and veggies that are VERY fresh and wonderful. And during peak season we stop on the way home from the cabin too! Very dog friendly and a great pit stop for your fur babies. Please pick up after your dogs :-)”

“While I didn't necessarily see much of the buildings, for my vegetable crops class I was able to get a tour of several of the fields and see first hand their farming practices. We also go to interact with a handful of the workers, who explained to us all the precautions they go to to make sure that all the produce coming out of this place is safe and good to eat. After being there in person and getting to ask questions, it definitely makes me trust the quality of produce sourced from here.”

“Having moved from California to Washington, sometimes it’s hard to find good produce here in Washington. We stubbles across cantaloupes from this little store in Coupeville, WA and they were absolutely amazing! They were from your farm Groningen & Sons. I haven’t had a decent cantaloupe in years and I was pleasantly surprised! My father(Jack Busby) was a farmer in Arvin, CA for 20+ years, and they raised cantaloupes in that area that we’re good, but these cantaloupes were delicious!Thank you very much for growing an awesome and unforgettable crop.Judy (Busby) Thorpe”

“Friendly Family Environment! Cashiers and Mangers are always friendly. I bought some oranges while I was here and they were the sweetest best tasting oranges ever! They also have Garcias Carneceria inside which is connected to Valley Produce. There is also a check cash area where you can send money to Mexico etc. I will definitely shop here again.This makes it a great one stop shop for all your shopping needs! I also love that they have an ATM machine so I can stock up for my cash needs for the week! Go and give them a try!”

“Upon seeing the company logo ( I'll admit I was a quite skeptical. Throughout my life I've had lots of fresh apricots, and depending on the source these have ranged from bland to tart to sweet, but to make the claim that theirs was the sweetest on earth ... I knew I had to try these to believe it! Thanks to CUESA, the educational organization that runs the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, a group of us got to visit with farmer John Driver on his 10 acre apricot orchard recently. The farm doesn't offer public tours and these CandyCots are fairly exclusive so this might have been an opportunity of a lifetime to actually visit the farm. CandyCot apricots are bred varieties, grown under the hot Central Valley heat. The fruits which are smaller in size than the standard supermarket apricot are known for their pronounced flavor described by some as "spicy" and their high sugar content. Using a Brix rating system which measures dissolved sugars CandyCot ratings measure in the 20's and 30's while standard apricots are usually in the teens. Because it was a scorching 97 degrees outside John picked out a nice covered area to do a presentation for our group ( and give us the lowdown on his CandyCot fruits. John has traveled the world in search of truly sweet and flavorful apricots and in his introduction he brought up places like Kazahstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Central Asia. He gathers seeds, grows plant samples and grafts them together ( in an attempt to recreate some of earth's sweetest fruit. These plants take many years of love and nurturing in order to bear fruit and John's patience and dedication to his craft has resulted in the sweetest apricots almost every member of our group would later agree that they had ever sampled. To prove this point John also has non-grafted California Blenheim apricots ( on his orchard for skeptics like myself to sample and compare. Blenheims are the standard California apricots found in most supermarket produce sections. After a short talk and Q&A on soil conditioning, pruning and pest management John took us out onto the orchard and allowed our group to pick and sample fruit directly from the trees ( For the record John prunes his trees using the letter V shape ( because it creates better airflow for his trees and the fruits seem to grow best this way. These were the Anya variety and we were instructed to pick anything that didn't have green spots. Many of the fruit had brown spots not caused by bruising as John explained but are actually natural indicators of the fruit's sugar content. The more browning on the fruit the sweeter the fruit. I picked one of those and bit into it without a second thought. The juice actually popped from the fruit and ran down my chin and all over my hands. Apricot heaven is what immediately came to mind. These apricots were beyond sweet and amazingly enough one could truly differentiate between the apricot flavor and the sugar content. As unbearable as the outside heat was I didn't want to leave that orchard. Thankfully, John allowed us to pick extras so I had fruit to take home to enjoy ( CandyCots are currently sold either at the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmers Market (only through July 7, 2012), select markets such as Save Mart and Whole Foods or through mail order. Check out their website for more details. Because of the high sugar content the fruits don't spoil as quickly and keep very well in the refrigerator.”