The O.J. flowing in campus dining halls these days doesn’t come from frozen concentrate, nor was it born thousands of miles away in Florida.
Instead, three times a week for much of the school year, John Adams ’66 sends to campus a load of 1,500 lbs. of Valencia oranges grown in his century-old family grove, the last of its kind in the city of Rialto, 25 miles east of Claremont.
For the College, the deal offers a chance to serve local produce and provide healthier food—previous juice concoctions contained corn syrup and food coloring. For Adams, it provides a stream of income to plant new trees.
So Adams is leaving some of the Valencias—typically picked in summer—on the trees longer and longer, which only adds to their sugar content. Then, it’s into the dining-hall juicers.
While the oranges Adams provides from his grove aren’t the prettiest-looking, they sure are sweet. “They’re so much better than the large, perfect oranges in the stores,” says Adams, who this spring is also growing veggies for the College.