Life's a Peach
Summer is ripe at Andy’s Orchard in Morgan Hill
Orchard man Andy Mariani stands among his flowering Red Baron peach trees.
Photograph by Allison Shea Malone
As the days grow longer and the sun gets warmer, taste buds start to crave the sweet and succulent flavor of a velvety summer peach, or maybe a handful of fresh-picked cherries or a perfectly plump plum. Growing more than 250 varieties of stone fruits—fruits with large pits instead of small seeds—Andy’s Orchard in Morgan Hill can easily satisfy those summer cravings.
“We have it all here,” says Andy Mariani, owner. “We have 10 different varieties of peaches at any given time during the summertime. Some people are overwhelmed by all of it, but some people go crazy… They’ll come in and buy one of each, sample them, and have a little fruit tasting.”
Mariani’s 40-acre orchard produces peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, and the crop he is most famous for, cherries. In 2009 Mariani was crowned Cherry Man of the Year by the Cherry Producers of California.
“It is an honor,” says Mariani. “It is not like rock star status, but for the industry it is like an Oscar.”
In the Santa Clara Valley, the Mariani name is synonymous with farming. In 1931, Andy Mariani’s father emigrated from Croatia to Cupertino and started an apricot and prune ranch near what is now Apple Computer headquarters. He sold that farm and moved his operations to the Morgan Hill location in 1958. Mariani Avenue off De Anza Boulevard still honors the family name.
“We had this small family farm, and there were three brothers,” Mariani says. “Because the two older ones were interested in farming, my parents encouraged me to go and get my education. There wasn’t enough room and there wasn’t enough income from this acreage to support three families…. So I ended up being an Assistant City Manager in the city of Saratoga.”
But in the early 1970s, Mariani returned to the orchard to recuperate after a serious illness. After that, he says, “I just kind of stayed.” More than 30 years later, Mariani’s older brothers have taken over smaller portions of the original orchard. Meanwhile, Andy Mariani has built a career around stone fruits, from classic heirlooms to newly invented cultivars—many which are so difficult to grow and ship that the larger commercial growers don’t bother with them. Always in search of better flavor and texture, Mariani works with a local hobbyist group to develop new fruits.
“The whole idea is to plant unusual things, because people really like them…. They don’t just want an Alberta Peach or a Bing Cherry or Blenheim Apricot. They want something exotic.”
A strong supporter of the locavore movement, Mariani prefers to sell his fruit directly to customers from his own store at his orchard. “We cut out all the middlemen,” he says. “If I sell directly, I can charge less to [the customers] and still make more of a profit than if I put the fruit on the truck and shipped it out somewhere.”
In addition to farming, Mariani has a passion for cooking. One of his favorite fruit recipes is a simple peach shortcake. The trick, he says, is that you have to have the right peach. “You have to have my peach, and it is called a Baby Crawford…. It is a little peach, it is not very pretty, but it has excellent flavor. People just go gaga over it.”
Visit Andy’s Orchard Farm Stand from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and until 5 p.m. on Saturdays at 1615 Half Road, Morgan Hill, , andysorchard.com.
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