Entering Lodi heading east on Highway 12, turn left onto Lower Sacramento Road at Lowes. After several stop lights, there is a farmstand on the left side of the road specializing in berries. Varieties change from their opening in April until they close in the fall. Superb strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, pollenizer and bing cherries, apricots and peaches. Also veggies, eat-like-apples Stockton red onions, chard and kale, cukes, zucchini, carrots, eggplant, more.
Turn right off Lower Sacramento Road onto Lodi Avenue. (Several excellent taco trucks on the right hand side, also fine mariscos on the right after the shocking pink building. Mural of sealife on parking lot wall.)
Turn left off Lodi Ave onto Cherokee, then after several blocks turn right onto Victor Road. Watch for huge Daniel Archer (corn syrup!) plant on your left, and a hand written sign for TOMATOES. Turn left.alongside the plant. Find a large tented stand selling beefsteak tomatoes, baby red onions, newly dug potatoes, several varieties of melons, peaches. We buy flats of supposed “overripes” but not, for $10, roughly 18 pounds. 3-4" across, all meat.
Potatoes are also extraordinary.
Continue on Victor road, through the village of Victor and watch for a tiny stand, actually a table under a shade tree. Sometimes manned, sometimes just a money jar. If there is product on the table, take a look. On Monday, there was a sign that touted “Peaches from 30 year old trees.” $.50 each. They looked and smell wonderful. Bought 6.
They are be far the best peach we’ve had in 20 years!
I will try to find the variety and will stop again on our way home. This tiny informal stand has also provided us with phenomenal Bing cherries in their season.
If it weren’t so hot in summer and if it were on the ocean, I could live here in heartbeat! But I have my crazy needs.
