A Chat with Mike from See Canyon

After a long day at the Santa Monica Farmer’s market, manning the table for See Canyon and then heading back up to SLO, Mike Cirone jumped on the phone while relaxing to an episode of Jeapordy, to chat with Jess about his favorite fruit of yesteryear:

Jess: I was trying to think, what's my first memory of you?

Mike: Well it's definitely a farmer's market memory. It's probably you, approaching me, looking to make some apricot jam, just buying a case or two. Sqirl was small, but you were an enthusiast. You're the same person now that you were 15 years ago, you're still in it.

J: Every year I'm still excited by the seasons. Particularly your season. Because, you know, we wait from after citrus season to basically when your fruit arrives.

M: It's super seasonal and it comes at you like, boom, you know. When you ask me, “Hey, Mike, can I wait one more week?” And I'm telling you, no, you gotta take them right now because it's so temperamental.

J: Right and because we're not mechanized, you know, and everything is made by hand, we can only make so much jam in a day. All that fruit coming at us at the same time, it's such a hard balance.

M: I personally kind of think your job is harder. Mine is bad, but yours is even more chaotic. You're very dependent on outside influence that you don't have any control over. We both have these influences that can change the tempo. For me, it's weather, but you have so many other influences that can affect you. And we both have to deal with these extremely finite windows of time to do what we do.

J: At least no one's gonna yelp your Blenheim.

M: They might! Today was our last day with Blenheim's and I had 40 boxes left, some were sort of beat up and I knew it. People were kinda pawing through them, whittling them down and we were pulling out the bad ones and no complaints. This one guy goes, “Can I try one?” And I go, “Yeah, go ahead”. And he goes, “You know, these just weren't as good as three weeks ago. I think I'm gonna decline”, which was totally fair, Blenheims have a short cycle! They go from greenish the first week to, ok now they're tasting good. Third week, Oh my God. Fourth week, God, this is so great. And then in the fifth week they peak, but they're ephemeral. They're hard to pick, they bruise, they have a moment and then the moment's gone.

J: You’re so passionate about this fruit, how did you choose blenheims?

M: When I was in high school, we knew where the Blenheim trees were around town and we would collect them, dry them, and take them on backpacking trips. Then I went to Cal Poly and studied fruit science. My buddy was on the apricot project and they had a bunch of blenheim. In my second year of farming outside of school, I came across a rumor about an abandoned apricot orchard up in the coastal hills. And I found the owner and he was this cool old guy, who won his property in a card game.

J: That's amazing.

M: He had this orchard up on the hill of these old Blenheims. They were at that time 75 years old. He brought a 12 pack of blue ribbon beer and I told him that I wanted to take over his orchard. We pruned it the first year. We cut it back so hard that there were four massive mountains of prunings and no fruit the first year. Then the second year, 1986, we had a crop and we started taking it to farmers markets. We would hand out samples and people would make a  U turn and come back saying “Oh my God, this is like my grandma's” because these were the fruit trees of yesteryear.

J: Were you dry farming that property?

M: It was totally dry farmed. These trees were so bitching. They have these huge trunks on them. They were pure magic. I now have more Blenheim than ever, and in multiple locations, but they're all within five miles of each other. I'm trying to plant them to extend the season, but our seasons have become more complex with global warming. This is a very delicate fruit and it's hand picked. It's very precise.

J: There's so many places that use machine picking now, but you couldn't do that for Blenheims?

M: No and I don't envision a future where you ever could. A lot of fruit from our childhood and our parents' childhood and grandparents’ childhood is different from what the modern fruit breeders have brought to our tables. The fruits of yesteryear were designed for flavor, primarily & honestly. The stuff we see now is a very colorful fruit that looks right, but is internally hard and it's been developed specifically for shipping, flavor is secondary. Blenheims, they used to be the backyard tree. So they're adaptable, and they are a California icon that should be reinstituted in everybody's backyard.

J: I had Blenheims at my old place and I recently moved…

M: Plant another.

J: Gotta plant another... Do you grow any other varieties of apricots?

M: Um, no.