“Our tree fruit program has been modeled to have it strong on the front end,” said Justin Bedwell, managing partner at Bari Produce LLC in Madera, CA. The focus is on apricots and on early-season plums, nectarines and peaches. “A lot of our volume is in apricots.”

Generally speaking, May is “a very good month for us on tree fruit,” he continued. “June is a good month,” and during the month of July, Bari’s tree fruit volume tapers off. By the end of July, the company is going strong with table grapes, “so we move our work force” and some other resources from tree fruit to grapes,” Bedwell said. For that reason, “we don’t have a lot of late tree fruit.”

There are exceptions, however. The company does have some late white flesh peaches and nectarines, grown specifically for the export market, “that fits in well with all of our exporting on grapes,” he said.

The 2014 season is starting earlier than usual. “We’ve got early nectarines we are actually going to start picking tomorrow,” Bedwell said April 11. That is “quite a bit ahead of last year for us. That will be the Honey May variety. From there we go into Red Roy and Zee Fire nectarines. Then some of the Spring Flame peaches will start up” as well as “some of the earlier plums” such as Early Queen and Flavorosa.

In all, Bedwell expected about the same tree fruit volume as last year for the company.

With regard to new plantings, “our focus the last couple of years” has been on table grapes and apricots and “not so much on the peaches, plums and nectarines,” he said. In those, “we have just enough to be relevant, and then we move on.”

A new apricot variety in commercial production for the first time this year at Bari Produce is the Kaylece variety. “My cousin, who handles all of the growing on our farming entities saw it at one of the private breeders and liked the size and the taste and the timing of it, so we did a test block” a while back. That went well, so the company planted some commercial acreage that will be coming into production this year. By next year, all of the new plantings should be producing, and volume will increase over the next several years as those plantings mature.

Bari also has Poppycots and Giant Lorna apricots, with new plantings of those yet to come into production as well. In all, “I think we are still about 60 acres away, this year,” from having everything in production, he said.

Bari hand-packs all of its apricots. “Over the last couple of years, we have been doing some upgrades” to the packing facility, which is located “right on our ranch,” he said. “We built structure that has a very long belt” where the workers can do the hand-packing. “We have tried to make it a little bit more efficient.”

That efficiency is critical to Bari since its fruit ranches are located west of Fresno, CA, some distance from population centers and getting workers out to the ranch is always a challenge, he explained.

“Labor is a big issue for us. So if we can make that where the ladies are packing more fruit and we are using less people,” that is a benefit. “We do quite a bit of apricots in one day.”

All of the storage and shipping is done out of the Peters packing facility in Reedley, CA.

With regard to packaging, last year “we dabbled with some of those high-graphics pouch bags for smaller stone fruit,” specifically with plums, Bedwell said. Even as bad as the plum market was last year, “we had success in that. So I think we are going to continue to do that again this year for some of the smaller fruit. We did work up some artwork and some materials for peaches and nectarines” and may try some of those in the pouch bags this year.

Whether the pouch bag is right for everything remains to be seen, but “I know it works well for grapes,” he said, and it worked well for the plums last year.” It is a pricier bag, but if you can get the returns” and consumers buy it in the supermarket, “I’m all for it,” he added.

On sales at Bari Produce, along with Bedwell, are Gayle Smirnov and Rick Sakamoto.