The Fruit Basket

The Fruit Basket The Velarde Family Fruit Basket offers a variety of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables, including chile ristras, and much more. See you soon!

We are Temporarily Close for the season. Family Orchards Owned and Operated since 1598

We have started to pick our red chile and are making our ristras. We have both pequin and large chile ristras. It is tak...
09/09/2026

We have started to pick our red chile and are making our ristras. We have both pequin and large chile ristras. It is taking a little more time to pick chile since our fields are a little w**dy this year. The heat and heavy rains have limited our w**d program this year. This has taught us some valuable lessons on w**d control. Many customers photograph our fruit stand and send us pictures. We appreciate all the beautiful photographs. We were interviewed by a social media person Saturday and she has 25 million followers. Once she uploads her video we will pass that information on to all our loyal customers. We have had so much interest this year about our family history, our farming practices and many seeking out assistance on their own farms. We are always willing to help anyone that farms. We also learn from many of you and your advice and knowledge is always welcomed.

We started to pick prunes yesterday. These plums are great for cooking and baking. Our family has been growing prunes fo...
08/25/2026

We started to pick prunes yesterday. These plums are great for cooking and baking. Our family has been growing prunes for many generations. We have many Native Americans who purchase large quantities for their cooking and Feast day. Many of our customers have a family tradition that requires prunes for their meals. We have many customers who come from Denver and Oklahoma to purchase our prunes. You can bake, stew, dry, and eat prunes. When drying prunes, either with the pit or you can remove the pit. Simply place the prunes on a screen sheet and allow them to dry at room temperature, or place them by a sunny window, and the prunes do everything themselves. We dry our prunes yearly, and you lose about 75% of their weight. We have drying racks, and we clean, wash, and pit our prunes. Our drying room takes about 7 days to dry completely. Seal them in an airtight container, and they will last several years. The prunes will start off a brilliant blue and change color to black. Next week will start to pick many more varieties of plumcots and pulots. Our large peaches will be ready now, after Tuesday and into the weeks ahead.

Our watermelons, cantaloupe, corn, potatoes, carrots, and chile are progressing very well. We hope to have watermelon an...
08/11/2026

Our watermelons, cantaloupe, corn, potatoes, carrots, and chile are progressing very well. We hope to have watermelon and cantaloupe very soon. We have had a problem this year with w**d control. We do not use any type of herbicide. The heat has grown the w**ds faster than we can control, and in many cases our vines have spread out into the w**ds and control is not possible. All the other large row crop farmers are experiencing the same problem. Lack of labor has intensified this problem. We did cultivate early in the year, but the w**ds love heat. The vegetables will remain just as sweet and large, just a little w**dy. It seems with early observation, the w**ds are helping with moisture control. Seems we learn a little more every season about row crops, heat, and w**ds. One year we will get it right.

We know and have many friends in the Pacific Northwest who have orchards; some are small, and others are very large. Th...
08/08/2026

We know and have many friends in the Pacific Northwest who have orchards; some are small, and others are very large. They have been battling some of the worst wildfires in modern history. They have sent us a few photographs of the devastation they have experienced in the last few days. Some orchards, their farm buildings, and homes are a complete loss. They have asked our family for assistance, and we are going to help in any way we can. We have offered our tractors, implements, packing and grading machines to help process any fruit that was not damaged. We will travel this winter to help them rebuild and replant. I know that they would do the same for our family if we had the same disaster. The loss of orchards and vineyards in that area totals over 500,000 trees, and counting. Many will not be able to rebuild or are too old to start over. We had one friend who lost 5 blocks of trees in 2 hours, a total of 75,000 trees that were 2 years old. This could happen to us at any time. We are grateful for the friends, customers, and the public that support one of the last orchards in New Mexico. Please be mindful of what is happening; it may seem far away, out of sight and out of mind, but it is closer than you think.

We have begun picking Bartlett pears. The extreme heat we are having has reduced the size this year. They are still very...
08/07/2026

We have begun picking Bartlett pears. The extreme heat we are having has reduced the size this year. They are still very sweet and juicy, just a little smaller than normal. A pear must meet a certain threshold of fruit pressure before we can harvest. For pears, we have to have an 18-pound pressure. We sampled about 20 pears from different trees, and the average has met this threshold. The brix, or sugar content, must be a minimum of 13%. It can be higher but not lower. Pears must be picked green and stored at 32-36 degrees. To ripen a pear, you place pears in a brown paper bag in a cool area of your home, not the refrigerator. In a few days, they will start to turn yellow. It depends on how you like your pears as to the ripening process. Some customers prefer a green hard pear and others like a yellow soft pear. We hope you enjoy these limited-time pears. We will start picking Asian pears in a month. We harvested our first crop a few weeks ago, and we will have 4 different pickings this year, with 4 different varieties. Some types of Asian pears can be stored for 8 months.

We have started picking Black Beauty plumcots. These are a black plum with white flesh. This is a freestone plum. Excell...
07/29/2026

We have started picking Black Beauty plumcots. These are a black plum with white flesh. This is a freestone plum. Excellent for eating or preserving. This plum was developed by our family and grafted from a Santa Rosa plum and a Jubilee plum. We have about 75 trees that will be picked. We are also picking a small, bite-sized white peach and Glo Haven peaches. Glo Haven is a small to medium peach, free-stone, and has a deep red center. The heat is pushing the harvest dates sooner than anticipated. We will begin picking Gala apples on Friday. These are an early variety; we usually pick these about the 20th of August. The sugar and pressure tests have been met, and we will begin a full harvest of all our Gala apples late next week.

We started to pick another variety of peaches. This week we are picking Red Haven, a small to medium red peach. This pea...
07/28/2026

We started to pick another variety of peaches. This week we are picking Red Haven, a small to medium red peach. This peach is a freestone peach. Great for eating or canning. We picked 291 boxes yesterday and have a few more trees to pick. We harvest 39 different peach varieties throughout the season. At times we can harvest 3 -4 different varieties in one week. We have to harvest a single tree several times, since not all peaches are ready at the same time. Unlike apples or pears, we must pick only the peach that is ready and leave the others for a few days until they ripen more. Peaches are a little more difficult to pick, and we have to train our farm team members to choose correctly when picking. We have other farm team members who sort the peaches for damage, size, color, and ripeness. Sometimes mistakes are made as to the ripeness, and we have another process to select the best, and that is the Ladies at the farm stand, again pick only the best. We hope you support locally grown and the best New Mexico can offer.

We have started picking Burbank plums today. These are the first plums that were planted in California in the late 40s. ...
07/20/2026

We have started picking Burbank plums today. These are the first plums that were planted in California in the late 40s. These plums are no longer available commercially, and we are one of the last growers to still have trees. These trees were planted by the thousand in California and are no longer planted. This is our third wave of picking plums. We will have about 15 different varieties of plums to pick this season. We will start on our 3rd picking of peaches starting tomorrow. We will get you more information on our Acequia de los Garcias ditch repairs.

We have been told that we should feel blessed for the rain and not whine about it. This is one of our fields that was co...
07/20/2026

We have been told that we should feel blessed for the rain and not whine about it. This is one of our fields that was completely lost to flooding. We do feel blessed for the rain and much-needed water. We are farmers, and we need the water, but not flooding. We will have to replant 52 acres of row crops. This will be expensive and will result in lost profits; this is not whining; these are facts. We will be assessing our ditch that broke completely in several of our fields. This will be posted by tomorrow. 41 Acequia members are affected by this flooding, but it is whining. It will cost them about $10,000.00 to make repairs and try to get the Acequia running with water gain. 41 Acequia members are whining.

After our heavy rains on Friday, we started picking Yellow nectarines, white nectarines, yellow peaches, Asian pears, wh...
07/19/2026

After our heavy rains on Friday, we started picking Yellow nectarines, white nectarines, yellow peaches, Asian pears, white peaches, and red crimson plumcots. They are very large and will increase in size as the season progresses. We had some major flooding in Velarde, and our fields were no exception. Now that the State of New Mexico paved all the medians, all the water is diverted to small arroyos that cannot handle the volume of water. The State did poor planning of where their run off water goes. It has broken ditch banks, flooded fields, and homes. I believe the state of New Mexico is responsible for the flooding that occurred. This is not an "Act of God" as they like to imply. This is their design, without studying how their runoff water is diverted to the river or holding ponds. This will happen again, and the state should take responsibility for a poor engineering job. Now the ditch members must clean and repair their respective acequias, and the burden falls on its members. The state builds roads and never studies the impact of water. Their design ends at the state property line, and the water is someone else's problem. If we were to act that irresponsibly, we would be held accountable.

Address

1413 Highway 68
Velarde, NM
87582

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 6pm
Tuesday 8am - 6pm
Wednesday 8am - 6pm
Thursday 8am - 6pm
Friday 8am - 6pm
Saturday 8am - 6pm
Sunday 8am - 6pm

Telephone

(505) 852-2310

Website

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