The changing leaf color signals an end to the New Jersey Peach season but not Farmhouse Fruit. With temperatures slowly dropping we call an end to our season and it’s now time to reflect back and look ahead.
With the inaugural season under our belt, I would like to first send a big THANK YOU to everyone that supported Farmhouse Fruit and the farmers of the Jersey Fruit Cooperative, who made this all possible. Our farmers worked hard throughout the year pruning trees and bushes for larger fruit, installing drip irrigation to better conserve water, worked with Rutgers Integrated Pest Management (IPM) teams to minimize the use of unnecessary pesticides, and also battled the unpredictable summer growing conditions to bring to you the best fruit NJ has to offer.
It’s no surprise our customers loved the freshness of the fruit; we successfully picked, packed, and shipped our fruit within 48 hours. We also received positive responses from customers that received our Peaches and Blueberries, which makes me even more excited to get started next year.
A customer ordered 12 hand-selected New Jersey peaches to be delivered to his sister in Washington state and they had this to say:
They were beautifully packaged, delicious fruits that were perfectly ripe.
Her one complaint was that I should have sent more, as they were gone before she knew it!
Returning customers are a good indication of how well our fruit was received. We had multiple customers returning to Farmhouse Fruit to send a taste of the Garden State to other friends and family members. Customers who originally shipped our fruit to relatives as gifts even came back to order fruit for themselves once they were told how delicious it was.
Farmhouse Fruit hit the streets this summer, handing out free samples of our delicious peaches to the wonderful people of Philadelphia.
We found out this summer the best way to sell a product is to place it in someone’s hand and let them try it (or taste it, in our case). The street team of Farmhouse Fruit went on an 11 day campaign to canvas Philadelphia (Rittenhouse Square, Walnut Street, Dillworth Plaza, Penn’s Landing) and NJ Farmer’s Markets, handing out the best looking and tasting peaches most people have ever had. It was a pleasure to see the joy on peoples’ faces when they were handed a free peach, grown only a few miles from them. On top of getting a free peach, many Philadelphians stopped to have a chat about locally grown produce and what it means to be “organic.”
Big Plans for 2016 Season
To be a successful company you have to change with the times. That is the reason Farmhouse Fruit will be rolling out some new ideas and products for the 2016 season.
Farmhouse Fruit is always looking to take better care of the environment, just like our sustainable farmers, we try to keep our local environment in as good or better shape than how we found it. Look for our updates over the fall and winter months via Twitter and Facebook.
Once again, thank you to all who were involved and remember… Be part of the solution and not the problem.
Chad R. Puschel
