You want to eat fresh fruit all day. You don’t want to spend $5 per pound on peaches at the Davis Food Co-op. You also want to go on a leisurely bike ride, where you pass all the nothingness you too often forget you are surrounded by here in Davis.
Well, maybe not that last bit.
Enter the brilliant concept of U-Pick farms: you go to the farm and pick the produce yourself, thereby eliminating labor and transportation costs and paying a fraction of what you might expect.
And what luck! There’s a U-Pick farm just west of Davis — a 20 to 30 minute bike ride from campus to what is practically the backyard of Arlington-dwellers.
Impossible Acres is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. When you arrive, you can ask for a cardboard tray to load up on goodies as well as a map that highlights what’s ready for harvest. Last week, we were drawn to sweet white peaches and plump marionberries, but there were also rows of ripe pluots, raspberries and nectarines. As a price reference, peaches were 99 cents per pound.
You can check the calendar to see what fruit Impossible Acres expects to be ready each week, though the harvest varies depending on weather and other factors. Pro tip: if you’re biking, bring a backpack and a mason jar to safely pack your precious berries. Bring a plastic bag or two for larger fruit too, as the farm doesn’t have any. If you forget like we did, consider asking for two cardboard trays and duct tape to engineer a box, and bike carefully home.
