Made in the Valley: Wawona Frozen Foods
We're talking peaches with the nation's largest freestone peach freezers in the country. -- It's the peachiest place in the Valley -- Wawona Frozen Foods. At the plant in Clovis, fresh peaches are frozen and sent all over the country, so people can enjoy the fruits of the Central Valley's labor all year long.
The fruit they process at the plant is the same as you buy form the grocery store or fruit stand, just 2 to 3 days more mature. It is harvested, pre-cooled -- to take the heat out of the fruit -- and then run through the plant.
In the plant, the fruit is washed, sized and pitted before it is cut in half at the rate of 92 peaches per minute and then hand inspected. It gets another quick bath, washed and goes onto the next set of graders.
The graders decide which customer each peach half goes to. The small hard fruit will go to yogurt trade and the soft flavorful will go to ice cream industry. The perfect halves will be dessert halves and dessert sliced peaches, where they take the extra ripe fruit and puree them, add just a little sugar and ascorbic acid to the puree, and add that on top of the sliced or halves, and then blast frozen at 35 below zero to preserve them for a perfect sliced peach any time of year!!
The balance of the fruit goes to diced or individually quick frozen (IQF) which is most commonly found in the grocery stores in the freezer section. The fruit is sliced, dipped in a Vitamin C bath and quick frozen in about 14 minutes. In the end, they come frozen and ready to go to the customer.
Wawona is the largest freestone peach freezer in the country. They have 200 employees year-round grow to 1,400 during the 100 day peak season. Bill Smittcap's father started farming peaches right after World War II when he got out of the Marines. He started as a fresh grower and packer of peaches. Then in 1963 the family started Wawona Frozen Foods and they are now the oldest, and largest, frozen peach producer in the country. Wawona is now freezes close to 70 million pounds of peaches per year.
Those peaches are sent all over America. If you think peach pies, peach yogurt, peach ice cream -- of most major brands more than likely came from the facility Clovis. Those brands include Mrs. Smiths, Sara Lee, Yoplait, and Bryers Ice Cream! Wawona Frozen Foods also makes over 50 million cups per year for the USDA school lunch program.
You can catch Wawona and several of the other growers next Thursday at the Fresno Food Expo. Also, Friday night, July 18th, Old Town Clovis is having a peach party!
