Sweet as sugar... or a pluot

I like sweets. A lot. If there is a reasonable amount of sugar in it, odds are, I will enjoy it. One type of food I really love is fruit. On a visit to Kingsburg Orchards in Kingsburg, Calif., I discovered a new favorite: the pluot.

No, I am not making this up. Kingsburg Orchards grows nearly 3,000 varieties of fruits. These include apricots, kiwis, peaches, pears, nectarines, plums and pluots. The pluot is a hybrid of a plum and apricot. There are different variations of this fruit, depending on the parent varieties used. The ones I tasted were incredible! Very sweet and juicy. One thing that intrigued the group was the way they were grown.

Nuts...about agriculture

I've been told I have a quirky personality. And, I might be a little nuts. But, as I continue my internship and exploring the world around me, I'm not just nuts. I'm nuts about agriculture.

While in California, the whole "being nuts" got to my head when we learning more about nut production in the industry. Almonds and pistachios were the two kinds we focused on -- and California is the only state in the U.S. that grows them! In the past 10 years, almonds and pistachios increased in production from 500,000 tons to 2 billion tons. That is quite a jump in the market!