oranges
Doña Ana
You're right on time! Adopt an orange tree while they last.
The project
Adopt an orange tree from the farm "Doña Ana" in Lorca (Spain) and receive your harvest in the form of oranges at home. The Farmer María Luisa will take care of your adoption and take its picture. Also, you will be able to download the adoption certificate and, if you wish, plan your visit to the farm. You do not enter into any long-term commitment: once you receive your harvest and you enjoyed the experience, you may decide to renew and extend the adoption.
What do you adopt?
You adopt an orange tree cultivated under the European Union's Organic Farming regulations. We are in the process of converting and hope to get certified in 2021.
During the process of adoption you can choose a name which we will use to identify your orange.
Our orange trees were planted in 2001 and have been organically cultivated since 2017. The orange trees should be with us for at least 30 years, so they are currently at their best. An orange tree of this age, approximately 20 years, grown in organic farming produces an average of 50 - 60 kg of fruit per year.
The trees up for adoption are of the Lane Late and Powell varieties. Both are late and traditional varieties of Mediterranean citrus fruits. They are well adapted to our area and are oranges of high organoleptic quality: good flavour and good juice content. We trust in a traditional variety to be able to offer you "the oranges of a lifetime".
They are trees a little taller than a person with glossy green foliage that they keep all year round. The best time to enjoy an orange tree is in the months of February and March since you can observe, on the same tree, ripe fruit and blossoms that prepare the next harvest. During the blossoming period, it is a delight to walk around the farm when the sea breeze makes the orange blossom flood the surroundings with that characteristic sweet smell.
On the tree, we have oranges of all sizes. The largest and smallest, along with those that are not suitable for shipping, are destined for juicing.
The productive life of an orange tree is around 30-35 years. For as long as you want to keep it and we can continue taking care of it, you can renew your adoption year after year. If your orange dies, we will replace it with no additional cost and assuring the delivery of your harvest from others.
A orange from our farm produces an average of 50 kg each season. You do not have to commit to the consumption of the whole harvest. Each season you may decide what quantity to reserve and pay the maintenance in accordance with the amount you reserve. This way you will only pay for what you consume and we can plan and sell the remaining harvest amount from you tree to others.
What will you receive?
During harvest season you can progressively receive the quantity of harvest that you reserve on the moment of adoption.
Shipping format: __Box of 10 kg of oranges__
* You will receive oranges from the navel group: navelina, navel, navel lane late and navel powell
* They are the most suitable for peeling and eating directly due to their good sweet/sour ratio and their pleasant texture on the palate
* Are they good for juice too? Of course. Since we pick them when they're ripe, they have a lot of juice
* Our oranges are in conversion to organic since 2017 so you can make full use of them: pulp and peel
* On a tree there can be oranges of various shapes and sizes, so you will receive aheterogeneous mix of oranges
* In approximately one kilo you will have between 4 and 6 oranges
* Keep them in a cool and dry place to enjoy them at least 10 - 15 days
* At the beginning of the season, oranges have a certain degree of sourness which decreases over time.
When will you receive it?
Please, check the deadline for participating in this project (deadline for adoption) below. As of this date shipments begin.
You can plan all the deliveries once you completed the adoption process.
The Farmer will collect your harvest on demand and just before shipment so you will receive it fresh, not treated with wax or other preservatives.
You will receive your oranges from mid-November to the middle or end of March. Defining the beginning and end of each season is complicated. Every year the season will be different due to the weather conditions. Hence, one year's harvest might start a little earlier or there is so much of it that we can send you oranges also in April. But maybe next year the production will be small and the oranges will run out earlier. Please consider these dates to be estimates.
At the beginning you will receive Navelinas, we will continue with Navels from January on. From the end of February, approximately, we will continue with Lanes and Powell. The degree of sourness will be reduced from the Navelinas to the Powells, but each variety will also have a higher degree of sourness at the beginning of the harvest than at the end.
Why should you adopt?
* Learn who produces your food, how and where. Receive your food in a conscious manner.
* Buy directly from the farmer. Help to generate wealth and better jobs in the rural areas.
* Plan ahead and enable the Farmer to produce on demand. This way we can avoid overproduction and fight food waste.
* Reward Farmers who make an effort to use environmentally-friendly packaging and cultivation techniques.
Conversion to organic farming
Fresh and in season
How does it work?
Meet the Farmers
Adopt and plan your harvest
Let the Farmer and nature work
Receive your harvest at home
Adoptions available until the 12/11/2020
Delivery starting on the 13/11/2020
Adopt an orange tree
Name
Select the number of boxes you would like to reserve. Minimum is 30kg and maximum is 50kg.
3
(30.00 kg)
3
30.00 kg
Delivery country Spain
Adoption
28.84€ / Season
(logistics cost not included)
Environmentalist
Conversion to organic farming
Family Farm
Visitors welcome
María Luisa Henríquez Santana
My childhood in the Canary Islands was spent in full connection with agriculture. At home, I have always grown papayas, strawberries, avocados, mangos, citrus fruits, and, of course, bananas from the Canary Islands. Farming was a fundamental income for the family and we all participated in it, either in the fields or preparing the boxes to take to the market. From a very young age, we learned quickly that we all had to work together for the common good. I remember that when it was time to harvest potatoes, we even missed school on some days.
My family worked very hard so that my five sisters and I could have the education we wanted. I studied business in Madrid and extended my training with a specialized course in finance. I worked in several companies and finally got back into agriculture in 2009. At present, I am in charge of the financial part and I rely on my partner Paco Sánchez and his son (also Paco Sánchez) for the technical aspects of the cultivation. We form a good team as we have completely trust in each other.
Paco has been working in the citrus fields all his life; as we say around here he was practically born under a lemon tree. The most beautiful thing is that he has managed to transmit his passion for agriculture to his son - the future is secured!
María Luisa Henríquez Santana
"The connection and respect for the land on which we live are vital. We must take care of it and nurture it so that it gives us the best without harming it. That's why it's essential to develop organic farming - the fact that we can share our project through CrowdFarming is exciting and challenging!"
Doña Ana
Doña Ana
Doña Ana is a citrus project with the main farm of 174 hectares cultivated in the municipality of Pozo la Higuera on the border between Murcia and Almeria. We have other smaller plots but this is the flagship where the trees we offer for adoption will be. We are in a quite warm area but irrigated by the fresh sea breeze, as less than 20 km away we have the beaches of Águilas. This combination of high temperature and freshness allows us to make some progress in the ripening of the fruit without the tree suffering too much stress from excessive heat.
The upper part of the farm, where the orange and tangerine trees are located, is a gently sloping hill. The main material of the substrate is slate and thanks to this there is not much growth of unwanted herbs. The trees are located in large ridges that allow the roots to have an optimal root development without being affected by excessive humidity. The lower part of the farm is a much sandier terrain where a lot of lettuce and vegetables used to be grown. Now we have different lemon trees planted with the aim of harvesting lemons in Doña Ana all year round, even in summer. We also have a small part dedicated to grapefruit which will soon start producing.
The farm has been our property since 2017 and already in that year, we started the conversion to organic farming of the adult trees as well as the newly planted lemon trees. We always knew that we wanted to grow citrus fruit organically because we believe that technological development today makes it possible to greatly reduce the loss of yield that traditionally occurred when a crop was converted to organic. We had already been using biological control in other fields so the conversion to organic has been easier.
We rely on a team of highly specialized agronomists and field personnel who are the key to making the project work. We work with the latest technology so that our trees do not lack anything and we use all the tools available to optimize the use of resources. We have irrigation sensors in all the farms that allow us to make optimal decisions about the irrigation of our plots.
The water on our farm comes from three main sources: the Negratín reservoir, the Tajo-Segura water channel, and the Águilas desalination plant, a nearby site. We use mainly manure from nearby goat farms to fertilize the farm and we also allow the remains of pruning and residues from the cutting of the ground cover to be incorporated into the soil as organic matter.
Technical information
Address
Doña Ana, Lorca, ES
Altitude
260m
Team
1 woman and 6 men
Size
273 hectares
Cultivation technique
Agriculture in conversion to organic
Irrigation
Drip irrigation
Location