California Apricots: The Lost Orchards of Silicon Valley (American Palate)

Having been born and raised in Los Altos, California I found this book to be full of rich memories of my childhood and life forward. Our new home there was across the street from a large orchard where I played and had great adventures as a child. My mother spent her whole career working at Libby's cannery in Sunnyvale where most of the fruit from these orchards went. And I spent my entire career in Silicon Valley where the orchards of Santa Clara county once were. But there is more to this book. Ms.Chapman did an excellent job of researching the history of this important part of the world from it's start as a Native American paradise to the "settling" of it by the Spanish and Mexican influences then to it's bustling food production industry to it's present day place as the High-Tech capital of the world. And with all this we even get recipes! The world is always evolving and Santa Clara and the surrounds are no exception. This is a story of the building of culture and history, something of which the United States has little of compared to places like Europe. I recommend this book to everyone who might be interested in knowing about one of the most vibrant places in the world with a history some may be surprised to learn.

This book was very informative about the area that I was also raised in. Their was such sentimental thoughts and activated my memory to those beautiful apricot orchards that are now gone. I was raised in Sunnyvale next to my grandfathers 35 acre orchard. As a kid, if we were hungry or just wanted a snack, we would just go to the fruit trees and pick our fruit. My mom used to make apricot jam and can apricots. When it was not the season for apricots, we had cherries and walnuts to eat. I can remember that we would go to the drying yard and exchange fresh apricots for dried ones. We would get an entire fruit box of dried apricots when we wanted to with no monies being exchanged. Such wonderful memories. Thank you Robin for your informative book and bringing back so many of these memories.

For those who want to know what the Santa Clara valley was like before it became Silicon Valley, this is the book to read.This book brought back so many memories of the orchards in the Santa Clara valley.I grew up in San Jose and I walked or rode my bike through the orchards to school. The orchards are all gone now.I have memories from my grandmother telling me how she working at the Del Monte cannery during WWII.I also recall the smell of the fruit being canned on Auzerais Av and watched the cans go over the bridge from one building to the other. Great memories.

This was a wonderful book that flashed me back to 1955, the year my mom and dad moved our family to Los Altos from Burlingame, CA. The author describes so well the orchards and their beauty. I remember throwing dirt clods in plowed orchards and fights with the green apricots with other boys in orchards. All of us hired out to haul apricots or work cutting apricots with the wonderful Mexican women who could work so quickly.Something about those days was memorable for me because I now have an orchard in Monte Sereno, CA with more than 30 trees of plums, cherries, apricots, peaches and apples.Not only is this book readable because of the setting but also describes the history of the growth of the industry in the area. We often yearn for those simple carefree days.

As a 76 year old San Franciscan I read this book to learn what happened to the California apricots and apricot orchards I remembered from my youth. It appears to be an accurate if somewhat dry recounting of their fate, written in a reportorial style consistent with the authors background as a news reporter. There was little discussion of the human element, the sadness many of the apricot growing families must have felt as the experienced the passing of their way of life. Also missing was an adequate discussion of how the rare micro-climate of the Santa Clara Valley allowed apricots, particularly the king of apricots the Blenheim variety, to flourish as perhaps nowhere else on earth. (The last apricot tree the author's parents planted on their property was a Blenheim). The California's Central Valley, is too hot for Blenheim's. As someone raised on Blenheim's I find the currently available varieties almost inedible. Arguably the highest and best use of the Santa Clara Valley, but not the most profitable, was orchards.

How can someone who loves the place of her childhood be so balanced in her treatment of its transformation to something radically different? With a journalist's love for a good story, Ms. Chapman takes a concise journey thru the history of California. From Franciscan missionaries to early commercial orchards after the gold rush, to larger producers in the 20th century, the story of Silicon Valley ends with small remnants of the great orchards scattered among the Googles and Apples and Hewlett-Packards of today. It is a poignant reminder that change is inevitable (and not always bad), but that the good things of the past must be appreciated and remembered.

I live in the Santa Clara Valley where apricot orchards used to reign. I is a pleasure to read how and when apricots came to be here including even the names of the streets and towns where ranches were located, how the premium cultivars were introduced, and how they were eventually shipped across the United States, and, in dried form, around the world. Unfortunately, although the wonderful soil and climate is still with us, the valley is now covered mostly with buildings, and apricots have been moved to the central valley where a different, and much inferior cultivar is the only one to grow in the heat. Anyone who relishes apricots should enjoy this book.

Delightful read especially for those of us who recall the vast and varied fruit orchards in the California Bay Area, now mostly long gone. The author includes some tasty/sounding apricot recipes, as well.