Fruits – Koinobio / Κοινόβιο

Apricots

Varieties: Bebekou, Diamantopoulou

Bergamotes

Variety: Citrus bergamia

A fragrant citrus fruit the size of an orange, with a yellow or green color similar to a lime, depending on ripeness. Genetic research into the ancestral origins of extant citrus cultivars found bergamot orange to be a probable hybrid of lemon and bitter orange. Extracts have been used as an aromatic ingredient in food, tea, snus, perfumes, and cosmetics. Use on the skin can increase photosensitivity.

Clementines

Variety: Citrus clementina

Clementine is a citrus fruit hybrid between a willowleaf mandarin orange (C. × deliciosa) and a sweet orange (C. × sinensis), named in honor of Clément Rodier, a French missionary who first discovered and propagated the cultivar in Algeria. The exterior is a deep orange colour with a smooth, glossy appearance. Clementines can be separated into 7 to 14 segments. Similar to tangerines, they tend to be easy to peel. Their oils, like other citrus fruits, contain mostly limonene as well as myrcene, linalool, α-pinene and many complex aromatics. Super sweet, fresh, juicy and (almost) seedless 🙂

Figs

Variety: Mission

Mission figs are purple black, elongated and pink inside. Particularly sweet and syrup, excellent with fresh cheese or yogurt. To eat fresh or dried up.

Grapefruits Sanguine

Variety: Citrus x. paradisi

Grapefruits Yellow

Variety: Citrus maxima

Big fleshy fruits, yellow and juicy

Grapes

Variety: Cardinal

Grapes

Variety: Gold

Grapes

Variety: Red Flame

Grapes

Variety: Strawberry

Lemons

Variety: Maglino

Thick skinned, fleshy and very juicy !

Mandarins

Varieties: Citrus reticulata var. Encore, Nova, Chiotika

Nova mandarines are seedless fruits containing more fibers than Clementine. Perfect for juices! Encore mandarines are coming late in the season. Super juicy and sweet, they can be kept longer in the fridge than any other. Chiotika is a old variety from Eos Island with a very particular and strong flavor.

Bitter Oranges

Variety: Bigarade

Pomegranates

Varieties : Ermioni

Local variety. Red inside, very sweet.

Sanguine Oranges

Varieties : Moro, Tarroco

These oranges are sweet, juicy and very savoury. The red color varies depending on the season and variety (Moro are redddish outside and blood-red inside, while Tarroco are orange outside and light-red inside). It comes from the anthocyanin pigment. They have a high ratio of vitamin C.

Summer Oranges

Variety : Valencia

Smaller Oranges with thin skin, very juicy, less sweet than Winter Oranges.

Winter Oranges

Varieties : Merlin, Navel, Navelin, New Hall, Lane Late

Thick skinned, no seeds. Very sweet and juicy, perfect to eat, juice or in your cooking, jam, marmelade, jelly etc.

From Picking to Packing to Shipping : the journey from the tree to your mouth

Oranges for the Brussels January delivery were picked on Wednesday 12, January 2022, packed and loaded in the truck the following Friday. Nico from the Brussels group was here this week and documented the successive steps :

Step One - The Picking

Picking the fruits involves a deal of pleasant things, like tasting a couple of fruits on each tree where oranges look nice, walking around amongst the amazing colors and smell, then letting your hands feel for the size and softness of these god-given spheres and slowly let your spirits wander around in the wind and trees while your hands do the job.

It also involve less pleasant parts, mostly pushing the 6-crate cart from the far end of the farm to the path. Each crate is 20 kilos, and if Antonis hadn’t had his 9-crate stolen from him… Good breathing exercise can’t be bad, can it ?

Step Two - The Stacking

Antonis and Nico picked 48 creates this morning, that were added to 11 grapefruit crate and 6 crates of bergamotes. Altogether 65 crates that had to fit on Dimitris pickup truck, which requried experience, some fixing when the top boxes got tipped over by some lower branches and a bit of blood pressure control 🙂

Now en route for the packing house

The Packing house

Step Three - Loading the crates on pallets to move them inside

The crates are carefully unloaded from the pickup truck on pallets next to the packing house gate, gathered by fruit type, and tightly tied together to secure transport by forklift to the the fridge inside.

Step For - Making sure everything is there

Oranges, lemons, mandarins, yellow grapefruits, bergamotes, checked !

Step Five - Coping with the inevitable paperwork

Each transport has to be written down on papers, signed and stamped by the producer. Notebooks, stamps and ink supply is as precious to him as his car keys…

Step Six - Sending the oranges through the processing line

Here crates of oranges are glently unloaded on the conveyor that will lift them to the cleaning cabinet.

Oranges slowly climb up to the cleaning cabinet…

Inside the cabinet the oranges will be water sprayed and brushed to remove all dust and organic treatment residue.

Next the oranges travel to the drying cabinet where a ventilator blows warm air to ensure the fruits will be stored dry in boxes once loaded on the pallet for shipping.

Moisture at this point would spoil the fruits.

Once dried up, the fruits fall onto a conveyor where the rolling rods are covered with coconut fibers, giving the fruits a good final brushing to remove any particle left and make them shiny.

Final touch: up they go into the warm air tunnel. Almost ready for boxing!

The end of the line: oranges are sorted by size (calibration) and come out into different compartments (the wide metal clusters seen to the right of the oranges, ready for boxing now!

Let the boxing begin!

Here Katarina’s experience is the key: all fruits are placed by hand into the box, fitting them closely and neatly in without of course pressing them to much to avoid spoiling them.

A last selection is done here as well, to get rid of damaged fruits, too small ones, or fruits that do not look so good for some reason.

End of the line, time to weigh each box. Each should be around 15 kilos or up, which implies switching some fruits for bigger or smaller ones, reshuffling positions etc., without damaging the fruits.

Quite a precision job actually, as Nico experienced 🙂

Step Seven - Palletting

Building up the pallet, boxes need to be assembled tightly inside the pallet perimter to avoid problems during forklift moving to the truck cargo.

As you can see, boxes can pile up quite high, so the pallet needs to be tied together around carton corners to avoid having the strings sawing into the boxes.