1. Products to sell May 2023-December 2023
Whole citrus
Valencia oranges, grapefruit, lemons. These can stay on the trees throughout the summer & fall as long as homeowners let us.
Homemade preserves under the Cottage Food program
If this is of interest to you, we are building a partner network of registered home canners to produce high quality preserves like orange marmalade, to make the most of the abundance of citrus we have access to here in the valley!
2. Food safety plan
Picker sanitation & health
We train our pickers to sanitize tools between jobs, or anytime they come into contact with potentially diseased fruit. They are trained to observe personal cleanliness and hygienic practices like clipping their fingernails, washing their hands, covering up wounds, and calling out sick if exhibiting symptoms of a transmissible illness.
On-site quality control
During the pick, we separate out any fruit that has been opened or is generally questionable, and compost those with our partner Green Thumbs Recycling.
Commissary washing & quality control
We transport the fruit to an approved commissary closest to the final delivery location, or work directly with the food bank, etc. to use their facilities and wash the fruit directly on-site!
At this time, we do a second quality check to catch any open fruit that may have slipped past us in the first control.
Food Handlers Cards & Cottage Food Registration
Anyone preparing foods such as preserves is required to possess a food handlers card & Cottage Food registration number from the Arizona Department of Health Services. We also conduct our own independent inspection of each home kitchen.
Maricopa County Mobile Foods Permit
We are in the process of obtaining our county permit to operate at farmers markets, and will have this available by May 9th at the latest.
If there is anything else you need from us, please let me know!
3. Agreements and/or pre-payment
We invoice at time of delivery and don’t require any kind of up-front agreements or pre-payment. With that said, I would love to develop a set of consistent expectations for what & how much you will be looking to order from us. For example: 2 bins of oranges per week, 6 bins of grapefruit per week. The more consistency we have from you, the better we can deliver!
4. Are you able to deliver your items anywhere or do you prefer to deliver to a nearby food bank/agency?
Our picking operations are primarily in North Mesa, and we can deliver for free anywhere in central Mesa, or anywhere else in the valley for a small additional fee.
Our goal is to minimize the distance between tree and table. If we can deliver directly to the final location where it will be distributed to people, that’s ideal!
5. Do you need transportation support?
No transportation support is needed, however we are actively soliciting vehicle donations for a work truck so we can stop relying on U-Haul. 😋
Thanks for considering Homegrown for Friends of the Farm! Please reach out with any questions: [email protected]
