Sitting on 2000 acres of peach orchards and 1000 acres of range land, J.R. Woods Orchards are a peach stone's throw from their own processing plant. Being vertically integrated, it is highly unusual for farmers to process their own crops. "However, when you are a farm, and your crop is ripe, you've got to sell it right now. If the fresh market isn't good, you suffer - when you process it, now you have some choices. You can put in pack styles, and market it all year round."

Those are the words of Ron Wood, vice president of J.R. Woods, and brother to founder Jim Woods. You could say these brothers are at the tip of the familial iceberg, and each have produced other family members to help carry on the family farming tradition, all with their own area of expertise. He is speaking about, of course, the 50 acre (350,000 square ft.) processing plant that freezes 400,000 - 500,000 diced or sliced IQF frozen peaches every eight hours.

Above, Left to right, grower Walt Weimer, one of JR Wood's oldest outside growers - his father sold to Daryl's grandfather, Elmer Wood, Ann Wood-Wiese, Yvonne Brewer, Bentley & Bentley and Daryl Wood

"When it comes to freestone peaches, our own land represents about 2/3 of the tonnage (28,000 tons) of freestone peaches, and then another third comes from about 30 outside growers", said Ron's son Daryl Woods. "and on the cling peach side, we did 5,035 tons, and another 5,000 tons comes from outside producers." Daryl is a young man in his twenties, that oversees all the family orchards, in addition to the 30 outside growers that supply the rest of the peaches they utilize. Daryl demonstrates command of his turf, as we drive through the orchards, tasting sweet, juicy peaches at the height of their brix level, he points out the different projects that are going on. "Here is Randy Fiorini's orchard. He is president of the Cling Peach Advisory Board, and has about 170 acres of freestone and cling peaches. Notice how short these trees are? He has them planted on a trellis system, similar to wine grapes, which keeps the level of the tree low, so that the pickers are not required to have a ladder. This increases the pickers feed for the day, and no ladder is needed, so there are less accidents, which means insurance is needed."

We drive past the bins of peaches waiting to be brought to the plant. Driving from the orchard to the processing plant, we hop on a golf cart, and watch the peaches go through their process.

Our next stop was back to the plant, to see what the next, natural occurring step was in this process, but not before meeting other family member Roger Wood, father of Daryl Wood. Roger was comfortably nestled in his office, surrounded by paperwork up to his shoulders. He waved a friendly hello. We then picked up plant supervisor Jerry Widick, and hitched a ride on a golf cart, and visited every inch of the 50 acre plant.