Fairfield Groves

Arizona's economy is based on what are known as the five C's: 

Cotton, Cattle, Copper, Climate and Citrus.

That last one is particularly relevant to our backyard because we have a few citrus trees that might literally put out a ton of fruit every year. There are normal orange trees, a couple small trees that put out what are like clementines, a big tangelo tree, a grapefruit tree and a lemon tree in the front yard.

Fig. 1. Orange and tangelo trees in our backyard.

Most of it is wasted rusting on the vines before we ever do anything with it, because really, how many oranges can two people eat within the window of a few weeks when it all starts to ripen? 

So I got us a basic citrus juicer last year as a way to try and get more out of all our citrus. As it turns out, it's not that hard to whip out a couple liters of really good fresh juice. I can make as much as I want because we are not limited in our supply of fruit.

Fig. 2. Picked, washed, and ready to juice.

Since you can store fresh juice in the freezer, I decided to make up a big batch of it to share with our families. I got some 500 mL bottles on Amazon, and just for fun, I made labels for the bottles with an satirical company name on them: Fairfield Groves. Named after the street we live on.

Fig. 3. Bottles with clear labels including a 15-minute logo. A little presentation goes a long ways in marketing, right?

I can guarantee that it is all-natural, organic, preservative-free, pesticide-free, Monsanto-free, gluten-free, certified-vegan, cage-free and dolphin-safe 100% juice with no sugar added. I can't guarantee that the bottles are BPA-free, however, because those are kind of expensive. But you'll be fine as long as you don't microwave the juice.

Anyway, since my parents and Becky's mom are planning to come visit this month, I figured I'd send some bottles home to give to our brothers and sisters as sort of a late Christmas gift.

Fig. 4. Alex helping me with production.

We made up four different kinds of juice: 

4 bottles of tangelo juice, 
5 bottles of grapefruit
5 bottles of orange
4 bottles of Citrus Blend (a unique mix of everything, trust me it's really good). 

The grapefruit juice is sweetened a bit with some tangelo juice. One of the bottles of orange juice was made with special oranges that grow on our lemon tree in the front yard. I'm not kidding, for some reason that lemon tree grows a few oranges too, and they are the best oranges I have ever tasted. I labeled that bottle 'Orange No. 2", so whoever gets it is lucky.

It would be great if someday I could figure out how to really scale up production of juice from our citrus and sell it at Farmer's Markets or something.

Until then, I hope you enjoy your bottle of Fairfield Groves Artisan Citrus Extracts if you get your hands on a bottle!