Weekend Escape: Fresno County : Early Bloomers : First sightings of spring on orchard back roads

How long will the blossoms last? Lee Hansen, an owner and apparent greeter at the Sherwood Inn restaurant, smiled through his beard and gave the serene reply of rural authority to city folk: “God only knows.”

The blossoms at issue are the returning blooms of orchard-upon-orchard of almonds, plums, apples, apricots, peaches, nectarines, walnuts and persimmons along the Blossom Trail, a 62-mile self-guided auto tour through the agricultural back roads east of Fresno, an area that accurately promotes itself as the world’s largest shipper of fruit. The weird weather this year has prompted early flowering, and while different fruits and different fruit varieties bloom at different times, no one, least of all Hansen, wants to predict that the show will last into the second week of March as it has in the past. Every year, the spectacle is a day-by-day affair.

“A woman came up from Van Nuys one year and asked where all the blossoms were--and blamed me personally,” Hansen said, mildly amazed. Hansen serves admirable prime rib and chicken cordon bleu, thank you very much, out of the attractively renovated Frankwood School north of Reedley, a fine old brick building finished in 1921, where a lot of the locals spent their childhoods. Hansen will keep the antiques-packed restaurant open for lunch on the weekends--as well as the regular dinner hour that begins at 3:30 p.m.--as long as the flowers last.

Fruit-tree blossoms can be admired closer to Los Angeles, but hardly in such profusion. And the Blossom Trail, albeit a public-relations stratagem of the Fresno County Convention & Visitors Bureau, is nevertheless a good excuse to drive through the spring-green fields and scrupulously manicured vineyards and orchards of the San Joaquin Valley. Along the mostly two-lane roads there are also antiques, good eating and other diversions. The excuse in April would be wildflowers in the nearby foothills, visible from the nearby Foothill Route.

So it was that early on a recent Saturday morning, my wife and I drove up one of our favorite roads, California 99, known along one stretch as the Pearl Harbor Survivors Memorial Highway. The passing view, along the somewhat shell-shocked road, is an appropriate prelude to an agricultural tour. Besides small farm towns and tractor sales yards, 99 takes you past the big tents of the California Farm Equipment Show and International Exposition, near Tulare, held three weeks ago before. Now that the venerable Paris farm equipment show has become an every-other-year event, the Tulare show is officially the world’s largest annual agriculatural-implement fandango.

In Fresno, we parked across from the downtown train station, at the Santa Fe Basque Restaurant & Bar (“Gentlemen, shirts with sleeves are required”), for the Saturday roast leg of lamb and a glass of sangria. Then we regrouped for the tour.

The trail officially begins, and brochures and a map can be had, at Simonian Farms, at the corner of Fowler and Jensen streets, near the town of Sanger. It’s decorated as a country store, but what really catches your eye about the place is a back lot stacked high with thousands of used railroad ties--its most interesting item for sale to many Fresnoans--as well as a well-kept outdoor collection of antique farm machinery, a steam shovel and early dump truck. We bought a bag of pistachios to carry us through the trip. The railroad ties were likely fresher than those nuts, not that we threw them out.

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It was a warm, sun-heavy afternoon after days of rain and storm. The hills and wooded glens were blanketed with a velvet of new grass. Animals grazed. But most of the flat acreage between Fresno and the Sierra foothills is a patchwork of carefully wired-up, painted, trimmed and highly productive fruit trees and grape vines. At first the impression is deceptive, because everything seems like a small farm. But these farms go on mile after mile. Where there aren’t rows of deciduous fruit trees, there are rows of oranges, currently heavy with fruit. Grape vines, still leafless, are spread-eagled on elaborate wooden supports, prepared for another season producing 95% of the raisins grown in the United States.

As it happened, while we motor tourists stopped to snap photos of the flowers, many of the farmers were engaged in earnest combat to keep the blooms in place long enough to produce fruit.

“They’re out spraying fungicide because it’s been so wet,” explained Robert Watson of Watson’s Nursery, nodding at a long, barrel-shaped sprayer being pulled through an orchard behind a neighbor’s tractor. We had also seen a handful of crop-dusters flying low over the trees. The farmers were applying fungicides to stop a bloom-destroying rot encouraged by rain.

It turned out that Watson’s Nursery, north of Reedley on Frankwood Avenue, was an especially pleasant discovery. Watson grows seedling fruit trees for local growers. But he and his wife, Rhonda, also grow and sell landscape plants around their own museum of antique farm machinery. Due largely to local demand, they have recently expanded their antique business and have added a small, neat shop behind an old windmill.

Another treasure is the Minkler Cash Store, in Minkler, population 30, not quite halfway along the route. An old general store with adobe brick walls and a new local crafts shop across the road, it is a scenic place to stop for a cold drink. The store also has its own resident authority on blossom timing, owner Sylvia Ashcraft. And Ashcraft offers a remarkable and generous service. Being in the heart of the farms, rather than over there in Fresno, she hears regularly from savvy visitors.

“I have a lot of people who call me to find out right when to come up,” Ashcraft says. “They know we live close to the trees.” She entertains such calls at (209) 787-2456, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day.

Reedley, where we spent the night, is a mix of period buildings and newer businesses, a burg that has always been a farm town. We stayed at the Edgewater Inn, a clean, AAA-rated newer motel about 500 feet from the Kings River. We were happy enough there, but on another trip would probably try the Hotel Burgess, a refurbished, 1911 Victorian. A word to those who expect hot nights on the town in Reedley: Bring a good book, or be prepared to drive into Fresno to catch a movie.

And don’t miss Uncle Harry’s, the locally renowned project of Harry Horasanian, a former building contractor with a lifelong interest in food. The relatively new Armenian-American restaurant is on the ground floor of another old Reedley hotel, the Grand. Nothing fancy in the dining area, but the food is terrific--and inexpensive. The dinner special is only $5.95, the New York steak dinner $3 more.

We had a great steak, grilled blood rare as ordered, and a flavorful lamb shish kabab, one of the house specialties. As appetizers, we had the delectable keyma (pronounced, approximately, HRAY-mah), a subtle traditional ground beef tartare--that’s raw, son--mixed with salt, pepper, garlic powder and comino, or cumin, and covered with chopped green onions and parsley.

We deserted the Blossom Trail on Sunday afternoon, cutting 35 miles or so from the return trip by driving south from Reedley on Alta Road, which becomes the Dinuba Highway, to its intersection with Highway 99. This took us past more miles of blossoms--these unblessed by the visitor’s bureau--just as a new storm blew in.

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Budget for Two

Edgewater Inn motel, Reedley: $63.72

Gas: $38.49

Santa Fe Basque Restaurant & Bar: $24.98

Uncle Harry’s restaurant: $31.29

Sherwood Inn restaurant: $41.86

Pistachios, Simonian Farms: $4.50

FINAL TAB: $204.84

Fresno County Convention & Visitors Bureau, tel. (800) 788-0836.