Pixie tangerine tree11/12/2023 “When the fruits are about the size of a frozen pea, a lot of them fall off in June and that’s when the tree decides which ones it’s going to keep,” says Thacher. But very few actually make it through summer: only one out of every 400 blossoms turns into fruit. Pixies, like any other citrus, start out as tiny green specks inside of blossoms that emerge in the spring (the same time fully grown fruits are picked). That marked difference in temperature is what develops the ideal balance of sweetness and acidity. Even in the winter in Ojai, it’s not unusual for daytime temperatures to get up to the mid-80s, then plunge at night. Pixies develop the best flavor when long, hot days are punctuated by cool nights. The quality of the fruit depends heavily on having the ideal climate. Pick up a bag of pixies, and you’ll discover that just about every single one of them tastes equally good. Which leads to the truly remarkable aspect of pixies: consistency. If it doesn’t taste good, they don’t pick it. Thacher recalls that people would approach her family’s stand at farmers’ markets in Los Angeles, shake their heads emphatically and say, “No, no, no… tangerine season is done!” And in turn, she would respond, “No, no, no… taste these!” Slowly but surely, Friend’s built a loyal following, which is why, today, Thacher believes that folks who still think of citrus as a wintertime fruit need to start expanding their horizons.įriend’s philosophy of growing for flavor is most apparent during harvest, when Thacher and her family taste and re-taste the fruit from every tree as the season progresses (and the fruit gets sweeter and sweeter). But pixies are harvested from March through May (sometimes June). Outside of Ojai, there was also a fair amount of skepticism to overcome among potential customers, who thought that spring meant the end of citrus season-even in sunny California. “Next year, the same trees will maybe have 10 pounds.” And like all varieties of citrus, the fruit takes an entire year to grow. “This year a lot of our trees have three or four hundred pounds of fruit on them,” says Thacher. Even more challenging: pixie trees are “alternate bearing,” which means that once they do start to bear fruit, they only bear a significant amount every other year. The trees must grow for seven to eight years before any fruit begins to appear at all, longer than other varieties of citrus. As he knew, the researchers who had developed the pixie had their doubts about its commercial viability. When the first tree went in the ground, Friend couldn’t have imagined this level of success. Today, there are about 240 acres of them in Ojai, and pixies are marketed nationwide. Thacher recalls (or seems to recall), “We literally would eat all of them and nobody ever got any-because they’re so good!” In 1970, Friend became the first farmer in Ojai to start selling pixies from his fruit stand, and they proved so popular that he planted 10 more trees. Growing up on the farm, Thacher and her brother George definitely had their fill. Unsurprisingly, they’re popular with kids. One of those varieties was the pixie-seedless, easy to peel and remarkably sweet, with less acid than other varieties, but just enough tang to keep you coming back for more. He first learned about them through a family friend who had started growing experimental citrus varieties developed by the University of California, Riverside, one of the nation’s top institutions for citrus research. In the 1960s, Thacher’s grandfather, Elmer Friend, planted pixies on a whim. “Maybe we’re half-crazy, I don’t know,” says Emily Thacher, fifth-generation grower at Friend’s, a family farm located in California’s Ojai Valley, about 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles. But where many farmers would have only seen risk, Friend’s Ranch saw opportunity. And unlike most citrus, they reach peak flavor in spring, when shoppers are thinking about asparagus, artichokes and peas. While pixies possess unforgettable flavor, they’re also really hard to grow-much harder than many other citrus varieties. From the very beginning, the success of the pixie mandarin was improbable.
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