Family Tree Farms

When the Jackson family founded Family Tree Farms in 2001, it was the culmination of something that had been building for generations. Herschel Jackson arrived in California from Tennessee in the 1930s, started as a laborer in Orosi's vineyards, and slowly — season by season — worked his way into ownership. By the time his son David stood up Family Tree Farms with his sons Rick and Daniel, three generations of accumulated knowledge had already gone into the soil.

Today the farm spans roughly 5,000 acres across California's Central Valley, with ranches extending into Mexico and Peru to keep supply consistent through the year. Peaches, nectarines, pluots, cherries, apricots, blueberries, figs, satsumas — the variety list is long. But what ties all of it together isn't the acreage or the catalog. It's an obsession with how the fruit actually tastes.

The Jacksons built a research facility right on the farm — not to chase yield numbers, but to taste, test, and refine until every variety earns its place in the lineup. Blueberry varieties developed in-house. Stone fruit bred for sweetness that holds at scale. It's the kind of methodical, unglamorous innovation that doesn't make magazines — but shows up on the table every time.

"At Family Tree Farms, we pride ourselves on growing the finest fruit, and partnering with Nathel & Nathel ensures that our commitment to quality reaches customers who value nothing but the best. Their dedication to excellence and service mirrors our own."

Brenton Helmes  ·  Family Tree Farms

When their fruit leaves Reedley, the Jacksons trust it'll be handled with the same care they put into growing it. That's the standard Nathel & Nathel has held since the partnership began — keeping the cold chain tight, the relationships honest, and the produce worth the season it took to grow.

A breeding program built around one question: does it taste better?

Most growers select varieties for yield, shelf life, or appearance. Family Tree Farms added a different filter first — flavor. Their on-farm breeding program exists to develop stone fruit that genuinely tastes better than what's already in the market, not just fruit that looks good in a bin. Pluots are where that philosophy shows up most clearly.

The pluot — a plum-apricot hybrid — demands patience. It takes years of cross-breeding to arrive at a variety worth growing at scale, and longer still to know how it holds during harvest and transport. The Jacksons have put in that time. Their specialty pluot program has produced varieties with a depth of sweetness and color that stands apart from commodity stone fruit, and they bring that same standard to everything they put in a box.

Jumboz: blueberries bred to be noticed.

Family Tree Farms' Jumboz label is their signature blueberry program — oversized, intensely flavored berries grown across their California, Mexico, and Peru operations to deliver year-round. The name isn't marketing. These are genuinely large berries, bred for a berry-forward sweetness that holds even after cold-chain transit.

Jumboz has become one of the more recognizable labels in the premium blueberry category — the kind of product that earns a dedicated following at retail. Having multi-hemisphere production means the program runs nearly 52 weeks a year, without the quality gaps that typically come with seasonal hand-offs between growing regions.