Coming this week, we’ve got organic apriums from Sweet Tree Farms!
What the heck is an aprium? It’s an mesmerizingly delicious fruit with a fascinating story – and it was bred right here in California.
What is an aprium?
Did you know that the peaches and nectarines you see in your Daily Harvest Express Farm Boxes right now are the result of thousands of years of traditional plant breeding painstakingly carried out by cultures around the world (originally starting in Asia)?
Apriums are a continuation of this age-old tradition. They’re considered a “complex hybrid” resulting from multiple crosses between apricots and plums. The same is true for pluots. However, as their names suggest, apriums are more similar to apricots than plums whereas pluots are more similar to plums than apricots.
We suggest a name change from aprium to apri-yum.
Who is the mad genius who originally bred the aprium? Floyd Zaiger from Modesto California (just east of San Francisco).
Zaiger is a world-renown plant breeder who specializes in “stone fruit” breeding (cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, etc), holding over 100 patents for his many decades of work. As with his other creations, Zaiger used classical breeding methods, in this case hand pollination rather than genetic modification, to create the aprium.
If you’re a plant geek, Zaiger might sound similar to another famous Californian, Luther Burbank (1849-1926), who invented over 800 cultivated plant varieties in his lifetime.
Luther Burbank – you can still visit Luther Burbank Home & Gardens in Santa Rosa today.
For those of you who believe in reincarnation, note that Zaiger was born in 1926, the year Burbank died. Although, we think it’s more likely that Burbank was reincarnated as a plumcot tree, one of his inventions.
It can take 15-30 years to fully develop complex hybrids like the aprium, but there are now multiple varieties available. All of them are extraordinarily delicious, featuring the best characteristics of apricots combined with the delicious, juicy notes of sweet plums.
How do you eat an aprium?
Please follow these exact instructions, step by step:
- Find a dark room, away from other people.
- Play Vivaldi’s Winter, The Four Seasons (Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 8, RV 297) – use the video player above if needed.
- As the music initiates, begin smelling the raw, ripe aprium fruit in your hand, appreciating each sweet note, but refrain from eating.
- Once you get to the 40 second mark on the concerto, you may begin taking small bites of your aprium.
- By the completion of the song (about 9 minutes), you should be finished with your aprium.
Repeat this process as many times as necessary until you’ve achieved enlightenment.
If you want to enjoy organic apriums and other seasonal, farm-fresh produce from local farms, we strongly advise you to order now…
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Get your Daily Harvest Express order placed right now (or no later than Sunday evening at 5 pm) so you can enjoy another week of fresh, healthy food from local farmers!
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