Three generations manage B
&
amp;R Farms
The colors of the orchard are what first catches one’s
attention. Dark, yet shiny, green leaves; soft, silky orange fruit
tinged with a touch of rosy pink.
Three generations manage B&R Farms
The colors of the orchard are what first catches one’s attention. Dark, yet shiny, green leaves; soft, silky orange fruit tinged with a touch of rosy pink.
But the smell is what really grabs passersby – it is a heady perfume. The scent of ready-to-be-picked fruit creates a sweet, sugary aromatic sensation that attracts bees, birds and humans alike. It means just one thing. At B&R farms, apricot picking season has arrived.
B&R Farms, a third-generation family-run farm on Fairview Road in Hollister, produces lettuce, both head and romaine, red and green bell peppers and Anaheim chiles.
Its apricot orchard, however, is how B&R got its start, and what sustains the farm today. It is one of the few local orchards still producing the Blenheim apricot, a sweet yet tart fruit that smells similar to honeysuckle.
“San Benito County can grow the best Blenheims, but [it] is very costly,” said Mari Rossi, who operates the farm with her husband, Jim. “Blenheims are a fragile fruit, but are very flavorful. The imports have no flavor whatsoever.”
B&R Farms was started by Frank and Mary Bozzo, Italian immigrants who first settled in San Jose before relocating to San Benito County in 1929. The Bozzos worked their 100 acres of apricot orchards “until they couldn’t anymore,” Rossi said; they then put the farm in the hands of their daughter, Elsie, and her husband, Emil. Today, the farm is run by Jim and Mari, with help from Elsie as well as the Rossi’s three children – Philip, 28, Scott, 25 and Brian, 20 – Philip’s wife, Julie, and several employees.
“When you put your heart and soul into the land, you want to work that land and soil to your best abilities,” Rossi said.
Today, B&R Farms is basically a drying facility; although the farm produces other crops throughout the year, it is the apricot harvests that keep it going. Jim and Mari have diversified, creating and selling products such as apricot chutney, chocolate-covered dried apricots, dried apricot topping and dried apricot preserves. The items are available for sale in the farm’s office, at the Hollister Farmer’s Market during summer months and online.
“We’ve become kind of a niche market,” Rossi said. “We needed to find a creative use for some of our apricots. That’s when the chocolate-covered fruit and preserves and toppings came into effect.”
Harvest time
Operating a farm is a 24 hour a day, seven days a week occupation, Rossi said, but apricot harvesting happens just once a year at B&R. Because Blenheims mature later than other cot varieties, picking season usually begins near the end of June. B&R began picking Monday, and cutting Wednesday.
“Apricot harvest is a very intense time that lasts about two to three weeks,” Rossi said.
Days during harvesting typically begin around 5 a.m., when Jim Rossi and B&R employees make their way to the orchards to begin picking. Employees pick the fruit by hand, and then place it into bins. The bins are next taken to the farm’s warehouse, where the fruit is weighed, sorted, cut and treated with a small amount of sulfur dioxide to preserve the fruit’s color. The fruit is then put into 50-lb. trays that are stacked for drying. By the end of the week, hundreds of trays are lined end-to-end in the fields, as the fruit dries in the warm summer sun.
The drying process takes several weeks; fruit picked in this harvest will be in bags and ready for sale around Sept. 1.
“It is a lot of long days and hard work,” Rossi said. “But looking at where we were, and how far we’ve come, the goals we’ve accomplished to keep our family farm, is overwhelming. All the support we’ve had from family and our employees means so much.”
While it only lasts a few months, the season can be so intense, Rossi said, that it becomes hard for her to even think about apricots.
“I’m enjoying them completely right now, but once we get going, I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick one up,” she said. “But believe it or not, apricots have always been my favorite fruit.”
The family that works together
Elsie Rossi has lived on what is now known as B&R Farms for nearly 78 years. She has always been a farm girl, spending time on her grandfather’s ranch as a toddler, and then cutting her first apricots there when she was just 4 years old. Her parents moved the family to Hollister a year later, and she has worked the farm ever since.
“I’ve done everything – I drove trucks, I drove tractors, I used to put out the smudge pots,” Elsie said. “Things have changed a little since then.”
And what was good enough for Elsie was good enough for her children. Growing up, her son, Jim, toiled in the San Benito sunshine along side his parents. Elsie was hopeful that her son would keep the farm alive, but says she did not force the issue.
“I told him, ‘I gave you breath, what you do with it is your business,'” she said. “I also told him he’d better not ever pull an apricot tree out of this orchard while I’m alive, because if he does, I’ll come back and haunt him.”
Today, Jim and Mari run the farm together – Jim working in the fields while Mari handles the business end of things. Elsie keeps her hand in by creating recipes for the farm’s Web site and showing up at the Farmer’s Market each Wednesday to sell the company’s products.
“She is our amazing apricot lady; we call her our energizer bunny,” Rossi said of her 83-year old mother-in-law. “I have so much respect for her. She still gets out there and represents us and the community so well. She inspires me daily.”
For families such as the Rossis, farming is more than a job; it is a way of life. Jim and Mari’s three boys learned about that life by working – out in the fields, driving tractors, stacking crates in the warehouse – and the experience is something for which Mari Rossi is extremely grateful.
“Jim and I would not have raised our boys any other way,” she said. “It’s a healthy living, one that creates deep roots, and we believe in deep, family roots. Raising three boys on a farm is the best way to raise boys.”
Even today, the family sticks together. Philip’s wife, Julie, helps with various B&R promotions, and their children love to come to Papa’s and Mime’s farm, helping themselves to the well-stocked “cookie” jar – filled with dried Blenheim apricots, of course.
This summer, the youngest Rossi son, Brian, spending much of his vacation working with his father out in the orchard. When asked if B&R will see a fourth generation, Mari Rossi smiled and said, “Possibly. We’ll see what the future brings.”
Elsie says she is hopeful that at least one of her grandsons will choose to keep B&R in the family.
“I have one who is interested in farming; he works at T&A Farms over in Salinas,” she said. “I don’t think it would be a bad thing if they got together and kept it going.”
Should her grandsons decide to keep the farm going, they will have inherited what today is a flourishing business. Several national publications, such as “Sunset,” “Food and Wine,” “Country Woman” and “Taste of Home,” have featured B&R Farms and its apricot products.
“Word of mouth,” Rossi said, when asked how her family’s business has become so well-known. “The taste of a Blenheim apricot is like no other.”
The Rossis are receiving local accolades as well – B&R Farms was recently named San Benito County’s 2007 Agricultural Business of the Year.
“This year has been very humbling,” Rossi said. “It’s been very exciting, but honestly, Jim and I could not have done any of this without our family, our children, our employees and everyone who supports us.”
Part of their success, Rossi said, has been the family’s ability to add new products and increase their marketability, something not all farmers are able to do.
“We are trying to meet all avenues,” she said. “For us, we want to still give our customers that family farm service. We want to remain personal. I don’t want our customers to have to go through all of the automated stuff we find elsewhere.”
“Without agriculture, we wouldn’t survive”
It isn’t hard to find B&R Farms’ products. A stop by the office on Fairview Road will net visitors everything from bags of chopped dried Blenheim apricots to a picture postcard of the orchards. The farm’s Web site, designed to be user-friendly and featuring photos of all the products, allows customers around the globe to purchase items without leaving their homes, and enjoy the taste of B&R Farms year-round.
One of the best ways to purchase the Rossis’ wares, however, is at Hollister’s Farmer’s Market, because then customers can meet Elsie Rossi.
Every Wednesday, May through September, visitors to the market will find Elsie sitting behind a table laden with various B&R Farm products. Suggestions – try the apricot topping on a bowl of vanilla ice cream – and smiles are given freely.
“I really enjoy this,” Elsie said. “I’ve always been the one to go to the markets. I’ve been doing it for 25 years. I’d even go as far as Santa Barbara, and I’d go alone. I tell you, the first time I spent the night in a motel room all by myself, it felt like every door was creaking and opening.”
Wednesdays are a good day for the Rossis, as the market holds a place very dear in their hearts.
“The farmer’s market is important to any agricultural business that’s out there,” Rossi said. “For most of them, it is their bread and butter.”
With the number of shoppers visiting Hollister’s Farmer’s Market on the decline in past years, talk has begun about changing, or even discontinuing the market. One position is that Wednesday is not a good day to hold the market, since Hollister now has a large number of residents who commute to jobs out-of-town, making it difficult for them to get home before the market closes.
Rossi, however, points out that many of vendors who regularly set up shop at Hollister’s market attend bigger farmer’s markets in other central coast locations on the weekends. Instead, Rossi suggests that Hollister residents find a way to get to the Wednesday market.
“Agriculture is what feeds the world,” she said. “Our market is changing all the time – one week you might have asparagus, the next week, another vendor will feature something else. And there is no comparison in taste between what you would pick up in a store and a freshly picked head of lettuce or tomato. Really, everyone should stop and take a look. We need to keep our ag land thriving. Without it, we wouldn’t survive.”
