“The Dish” on our Fruit of the Month Club with Donate Fruit™ and Naumes Fruit Gifts.Yes, the time of year is upon us to address the mounding questions about Fruit of the Month clubs. We know at the click of your mouse hundreds of fruit gifting clubs appear, options a-plenty and colorful pictures of perfect fruit. Here’s the skinny on what to look for and why the Pacific Pear Harvest Club will only impress you and its monthly recipients.

Experience

 Since 1908 we have been the heart of growing and providing orchard fresh pears, handpicking and packing them, fresh from our farm to your family. As one of the largest family-owned and operated pear growers in the world, we take great pride in the quality pears we produce. Major wholesalers and retailers have relied on our fresh fruit for decades. When you buy a gift from our family, you can be assured that you are getting the very best that nature has to offer. We live, breathe, walk and work throughout the rolling acres of produce… daily maintaining quality, and loving every minute of it!

Delivery

When talking fruit, fine tuning the delivery process is the key.  Fresh fruit must be seasonally picked at its peak and sent out with great consideration of safe handling and freshness.  Therefore, “We cannot guarantee specific day of delivery,” is what you want to hear!  Our fruit gifts will never be sent out just to sit for a weekend in a mail truck. Nothing beats a fresh fruit gift that arrives at its height of flavor!

Variety

Fruit of the month clubs should offer variety, but be forewarned!  While you desire variation, Naumes commits to offer only the best quality fruit that is in season, which is then sorted, handled and stored accordingly.  Choosing the Pacific Pear Harvest Club provides endless culinary uses, with up to six pear varieties.  Options continue as you may choose from a six month membership, or for the holiday season, gift the “Festive Feature.” Monthly pear deliveries are shipped in our signature boxes, with 5 lbs of the season’s best fruit.

Customer Service

Isn’t it difficult to find it anymore, especially with the overwhelming, online, clickable options?  We offer quick modes for ordering; shopping cart on our website, fax and effective phone ordering procedures. But, for those who desire a little catering to, we offer the most happy and helpful customer service… YES, a real person who knows our product!

Pacific Pear Harvest Club is your solution to giving to others (or bless yourself) this year. It is our commitment through our Donate Fruit™ cause, to donate fresh fruit to food bank networks. Every pound you purchase means a pound donated… making the giver and receiver a part of our cause to Feed The Need™.

*be our friend on Facebook and watch how we grow in our Donate Fruit™ cause

*find out more about our family and products at www.naumesfruitgifts.com

*follow us on Twitter!

*Contact our customer service line to place an order:

                                                               Naumes Corporation
                                           Phone TOLL FREE at 1-877-740-PEAR (7327) 

Rogue Gourmet Grill & BBQ

Are you one of those shoppers that fills your cart to overflowing, so much that you call it a “workout” to heave it to checkout? The line stacks up behind you, as you privately boast with pride in landing yet another “no waiting” spot in the front.  Then, once your items are systematically traveling forward to the scanner, the flavor of mayonnaise stings your taste buds… your cheeks blush with heat. You know its time for a mad dash to the condiment isle, and hurriedly but wisely consider buying the lesser quantity but droppable, plastic bottled mayonnaise.  Because, onward you must dash in attempt to hand over said necessary sandwich companion to the checker outer. The race is on. Its your mad retrieving skills vs the standstill checkout girl, who we all know scans faster the instant we have to disappear into the recesses of the isles. If you win, the masses of fans behind you will probably join in applause, or at least offer an approving nod. If you lose, snorts, grimaces, under the breath badgering, and the feared grape throwing, will most definitely ensue.

   Shopping with Donate Fruit™ is not that stressful. In fact, you need only the muscle to maneuver your clicking mouse from a featured Cranberry Infusion set, to a Bath & Beauty At Home Spa package. After the previous, heart throbbing and returning shopping phobic scenario, purchasing on-line with Donate Fruit™ is bliss.  

Cranberry Pear Infusion

Forget the checkout lines and headaches!  Donate Fruit™ says, “Its all about YOU!” Our orchard fresh product line is expanding to make your shopping pleasures more frequent. We do the running around for you, and make everyday gift giving a breeze. Check out the impressive, NEW product packages from all-organic fresh fruit, BBQ Rub Bundle, Brewed Awakening Coffee set, and the classy Cranberry Infusion package. These are only the beginning of a wide variety of everyday items to treat yourself, surprise a friend, reward a co-worker, or tease the neighbor over the fence!     

   More EVERYDAY , stress-free shopping items for you, means more fresh fruit DONATED to Feed The Need™. Every single purchase is matched for pound-for-pound donations! Over 3 million pounds of fresh fruit donated last year!  You can shop any day, every day, and YOU help Feed The Need™! 

   Any shopping horror stories welcome here. What’s yours?

     We have been hard at work watering our trees and tending to the orchards to bring all of our customers the very best fruit in the world. We are fortunate to have dedicated members of our Naumes team that put their heart and soul into growing the very best quality fruit from California, Oregon and Washington. In the upcoming months we labor in love, working our way through harvest and packing of the many different fruits that we grow here at Naumes. Please join us in celebrating the harvest of our work.

Laura Naumes

            Fathers and father figures have been celebrated with this marked day in their honor for 100 years now, first established in 1910 in the Pacific Northwest’s own Spokane, WA. One day a year set aside to applaud them, but every day an opportunity to be a fabulous dad, aspire to be one, pick carefully for one, or to give of yourself to others who are without one.

            Our little hands and hearts are in their rock solid protection when we are young.  As we grow, we then begin to see and understand glimpses of their unselfish acts of loving-kindness.  When they are gone they leave behind their legacy, one to propel us forward and bestow upon others.

            We recognize the countless father figures, who may not open a single card on this day, but they are teachers, government leaders, preachers, neighbors and big brothers… and they make a world of difference.

            So many ways to say “thank you”… for everything they do. So many times we fail to do so… still they heroically kill the spider in the bathroom when we scream in demanding their rescue.

The history of an official Mother’s Day holiday is an interesting one and its U.S. roots go back to 1870. Julia Ward Howe (notable for penning “The Battle Hymn of the Republic) was a poet and social activist who believed that women had a responsibility in shaping our society.  She wrote a “Mother’s Day Proclamation” to promote peace in response to the carnage of the Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. Various “Mother’s Day for Peace” gatherings began to take place. It took years of campaigning by another woman, Anna Jarvis, before the official holiday was established in the U.S., celebrated on the second Sunday of May.

So, no wonder that “Play nice!” and “Tell your brother you’re sorry” are some of the things Moms say. They’ve always been peacemakers!

Moms also teach that it’s better to give than receive. The Naumes family lives by this motto with our “Donate Fruit” program. We match any fruit gifts purchased, pound for pound, with donations to food banks. It’s our way of helping to improve our society, by reaching out to those in need. This Mother’s Day, join us in honoring our Moms—and all women who are peacemakers—with a pledge to do something positive in our world. Every little bit helps, and Mom will be proud.

The art and science of family farming hinge on a long-term perspective. There’s a responsibility to avoid “get rich quick” schemes in favor of proven principles and a basic respect for the land. It’s an honor to have your children and grandchildren continue your work and it’s imperative to use good practices , otherwise there’s no land left for them to work on.

Another big part of farming is appreciating all the gifts that get us to harvest. Air. Sun. Rain. And those stories you’ve always heard about people pulling together to help each other in tough times? We know they’re true in our lives. That’s why we believe in giving back. We know what it feels like to be the recipient of generosity and caring. Real gifts.

With our “Donate Fruit” program, you can join us in giving. Every time you purchase a fruit gift for friends and family, we’ll match it, pound-for-pound, with a donation of fresh fruit to a nationwide network of food banks. You can help us share our harvest with those in need. It’s amazing how a gift of sun-kissed fruit can provide a ray of hope. Talk about sustainability…

 Another calculation tells me that translates to over 5 million pears. Now imagine each of those pears in the hands of a hungry man, woman or child. Wow. We are humbled by the idea that something that is literally the fruit of our labor can help battle hunger in our country. Thanks to our partnership with Feeding America, that’s exactly what is happening. And our customers play a big part in that.

 In addition to our corporate giving program, our new “Donate Fruit” retail gift commitment was launched during the 2009 holiday season. For each 5-pound gift box ordered direct from naumesfruitgifts.com, we made a matching donation, pound-for-pound, of fresh fruit to the food banks. So, if you ordered, you helped, too.

 On behalf of hungry folks who now have access to our fresh fruit via a nationwide network of food banks, thank you for helping feed the need. And as our family has for over 100 years, we’ll keep taking care of the land, growing and harvesting healthy fruit, for you, your family and all our “neighbors.” Even the ones we haven’t met.

We’re excited about what’s to come for Naumes Fruit Gifts in 2010 and would like to share with you the positive feedback we received from our loyal customers. We value what you think of us and we want your shopping experience to be the best!

“Pears arrived in very good condition and packaging was appealing”

“Quick ‘n easy and quite pleasant to do”

“The recipients spoke of the large size of the pears, the lovely red (Christmas) color and the wonderful flavor. I was happy to know about your donations to food banks- a wonderful, unselfish, idea!”

“Excellent phone customer service experience”

We do two things great and that’s Pears and giving back! If you haven’t purchased our succulent pears, you can do so by visiting the shop page.

But we digress …

Actually, there’s one song we never tire of hearing … “The 12 Days of Christmas.” We confess it probably has something to do with the fact that the song’s length makes it an unlikely candidate to be repeated endlessly on the radio (although it might also have something to do with the central role played by the pear tree in the song’s lyrics …).

Anyway, we used a bit of down time to do some research on the origins of the song, and hoped you might find some of the details a little interesting.

The song was first published in England in 1780, but it probably dates back even further to France. And over time – particularly in recent years – the true meaning of the song’s lyrics have evolved. For example, the “five gold rings” were originally a reference to ring-necked pheasants and the “four calling birds” were “four colly birds” (or blackbirds) for hundreds of years before we Americans got our hands on the lyric sheet. (It actually makes sense when you think about it … the gifts on the first five of the 12 days of Christmas all refer to game birds that would have appeared on holiday tables in those long-ago days.)

Interestingly enough (at least to us!) … here in the U.S. we sing that “my true love GAVE to me” while our friends in the U.K. sing “my true love SENT to me.”

Either way, of course, we’re still talking about giving and receiving. And that’s what the holidays are all about.

So, if you want to give a gift to someone you care about (it’s still not too late!), remember our Donate Fruit^SM Program. We’ll donate five pounds of fresh fruit to a local food bank for every order you place. Click here to shop and give!

Can you handle one last piece of trivia? CNN has reported that someone who keeps tabs on what it would cost to actually fulfill the 12-days wishlist (yes, really …) has calculated the cost in 2009 at $87,402.81 (up 0.9% from last year). Apparently it would cost a bit more to buy online because of the shipping costs of the birds …

Just in case you were wondering.

P.S. Our thanks to Dan Fowler who posted an interesting story on our blog … He had contacted us a while back to order some pears to give away at a trade show booth in Las Vegas. He needed to ship his equipment in advance, so we boxed up the pears for him to include in his shipment. When he picked them up, he was surprised that the pears were “green as gourds, aka hard as an unripe pear.” We told him not to worry, that they’d be ripe by the time they were unpacked in Vegas. He wrote afterward to tell us the pears had indeed been perfectly ripe and were quite a hit at the trade show. Thanks for filling us in on the happy ending, Dan! And let us know when the next trade show is coming up!