Dooley Groves, Ruskin
It was a bright and brisk January morning, one month after our insanity fueled, mid-holiday, relocation to Florida. We managed to survive both the move and our first Christmas away from home. Now that we could relax we wanted to do something wholly Floridian and headed to Ruskin and Dooley Groves.
We were going to pick some orange jewels from their bountiful trees.
We had unboxed the bulk of our belongings, arranged them into some semblance of a home and had been spending several days loafing about, enjoying some vital downtime.
Our trip out of the frying pan and through the fire had us still only on the countertop, soothing our blisters and wiping away the soot. There was much left to do. I still had bookshelves to build and a painting area to set up. We were out of steam, but all this lying about was growing stale and we were growing antsy to get out. I was reclined on the couch mulling over plans for stacking 2×12’s on cinder blocks when my brain finally melted. We needed to escape our escape.
A day trip was in order. And a fantastic way to turn a simple drive in the country into a day trip you won’t soon forget is by returning home with some tasty treats. As new Florida residents, what could be more fitting than a road trip in search of the very fruit that graced our shiny new $225 license plate?
Two…hundred…twenty…five…dollars…American. Per plate.
Christa had been planning this for a while and with some research plucked Dooley Groves from several options she found in central Florida. Founded by Mrs. Edith “Grandma Dooley” Houghtaling and her husband Julius F. “Dooley” Houghtaling, Dooley Groves is a family citrus farm. The market was founded in the 1960s.
Dooley Groves
1651 Stephens Rd
Ruskin, Florida 33570
Phone: 800-522-6411
Retail Store Hours:
November through April
Monday–Saturday 9 am–5 pm
Sunday 10 am–5 pm
U-Pick Hours:
November through April
Sunday-Saturday 10 am-4 pm
http://www.dooleygroves.com/
Dooley Groves offers ready-picked fruit by the pound and assorted citrus packs and baskets for mail order or in-store purchase. And they offer U-Pick, from mid-November through April. This was our plan, to venture into the groves and pick our own oranges right off the tree.
Honeybell oranges were in season and what we were after. Also known as Minneolas, the Honebell is a tangelo hybrid of a Dancy tangerine and a Duncan grapefruit. If you want to delve deeper into the torrid affairs of citrus, Dancys themselves are a cross of two other mandarin hybrids and the grapefruit is a cross between a pomelo and an orange.
Scintillating.
Honeybells are known to be very flavorful, very sweet and very juicy. ‘Nuff said–I’m sold. We rose with the sun, ate a hearty breakfast to fuel the huntin’ and a pickin’ and sped off in the sporty little runabout.
We traveled to Dooley Groves via historic Highway 41, which runs across six states from Miami to the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan. We’ll only need 25 of those 2,000 miles.
Around these parts, Rt. 41 is known as the Tamiami Trail–a scenic old motorway that skirts Tampa Bay beach towns, hugs the Gulf of Mexico, then penetrates the Everglades before coming to rest just shy of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s even got a muffler man.
Visions of oranges circled my head as we tooled down the four-lane macadam. After a few turns, we found ourselves onto a narrow road with tract housing, scrub fields, and a golf course. Stevens Road cut a hard left and soon the scent of orange blossoms filled the air as citrus groves appeared on our right, then on our left.
There is something unearthly about driving between groves on a country road when the air is perfumed with citrus blossoms. I heartily recommend it.
We pulled into our destination: a mint tin roof capped a low white stall with orange window boxes. Crates, baskets, and bags brimming with oranges and grapefruits sat in the shadow of the eaves behind a faded John Deere tractor.
The U-Pick runs leave every half hour and we had some time before the first one. After signing in, we roamed the farm store. Inside, more crates and baskets held fresh picked citrus. The shelves were stocked with the store’s private label jellies and marmalades.
A door was opened on an adjacent gift shop. Inside were more preserves, candies, ornaments, gift cards, honey, and the usual Florida souvenirs.
I made a note to buy some Honeybell marmalade and a Ponderosa lemon that at first, I mistook for a yellow Nerf ball.
In a short time, we and another waiting couple were invited to be briefed for picking. We were led to the packinghouse behind the store and greeted by our gregarious guide who gave us a quick run-through of the rules and safety requirements.
He then let us choose an appropriate sized bag or basket for what we planned to pick and gave us a pair of clippers to snip the fruit from the trees. Honeybells can be damaged by pulling them from the tree; the divot left can cause them to spoil faster.
We had to take care not to let our citrus fever get the better of us. You can lose your head when you’re surrounded by all those bright orange orbs glinting in the sun–before you know it, your basket is full and you’ve got fifty dollars in oranges cradled in your shirt tails.
After the briefing, our guide led us out to the groves with a quick tour of the packinghouse. On the way he explained the steam equipment used for Thermotherapy in the prevention of citrus greening. Greening is a bacterial infection that damages the trees and effects the quality of the fruit.
We were led to the rows of Honeybells where our beaming guide informed us that he scouted the grove this morning and that this row was ripe for the picking with sweet and juicy fruit.
I was bouncing on my toes. My hands reflexively squeezed the clipper closed, open, closed, open. I tried to focus on his words. He was saying to snip the stem as close to the fruit as possible and do not include any leaves with the orange. Got it.
Everything was turning pumpkin, persimmon, and carrot. Why are all suitable words for the color orange simply the names of other fruits? You can’t rhyme it, you can’t…synonym it. My brain was juice. I was giving out orange vibrations. Was the guide picking up on it? He’ll know, man. He’ll know.
Betraying no judgment, he smiled and wished us good picking and we eagerly jumped to it.
You can’t eat oranges in the grove. They need to be washed, first. And how do you pay for what’s in your belly? I hadn’t thought of this. I stifled my urges and committed to enjoying the adventure.
I don’t know about you, but I rarely begin where told in any endeavor. Though he pointed to some beautiful oranges on the first two trees, I realized that we could have our basket full inside of a minute. So, to prolong our experience, we began to walk down the row, taking in the smells, the colors, the sun–it was orange heaven.
Warm sunshine was filtered through the dark leaves. We stepped from the dirt path into the unruly weeds and wild grasses that hedged the trunks. The air was suddenly cooler.
I reached for a gem of a fruit. The orange was still damp with morning dew. Gingerly pulling it near, I snipped the stem, brought it to my nose and inhaled. That, scent–that spice bouquet that pricks your nostrils and blooms to that spot behind the bridge of your nose, the floral incense engulfing your temples. I sniffed at a cluster of blossoms–also intoxicating, like jasmine.
I passed the clippers to Christa (we could have taken two, but opted to share one–I tend to lose things) who snipped off a few oranges of her own selection. They were juice laden softballs, firm, but yielding to a gentle press. We took turns hunting and snipping, creeping slowly, and scrutinizing every orange to stretch our time.
Once our basket was full, we moseyed back to the packinghouse to have our harvest weighed, bagged, and tagged. I grabbed some of that Honeybell marmalade and a Ponderosa lemon. I still couldn’t get over the size of them and $1.99 a pound seemed reasonable for a novelty that might be more a spectacle than a good eat.
We also bought a pint of house-squeezed orange juice. We paid up, exchanged pleasantries with the thankful staff and went on our way. Everyone at Dooley Groves was so cheerful and accommodating.
We cracked the orange juice in the car and took turns sipping. It is freshly squeezed–“from the fruit straight to the container”–but, it had a taste reminiscent of pasteurized juice. It wasn’t bad and was certainly better than from-concentrate carton stuff, but we thought this was just…meh. No worries, though–this is an orange grove. Buy a bag of valencias and juice your own at home.
We held off peeling an orange until we got home and could wash them off, but it was torture. The urges returned; I needed that Honeybell fix. Nothing could shake it, but…maybe tacos, or a tasty sub sandwich.
Back on the road, we passed a shack with a giant taco declaring S+S Tacos & Stuff on the right half and a rectangle sign with Marians Submarines on the left half. The return trip just became interesting.
I say “shack” in adoration. Some of the greatest food comes from shacks, but then so does mediocre food. Though neither place turned out to be extraordinary, I wouldn’t call either establishment mediocre. In fact, the more I reflect on those subs and tacos… I’ll say a few words about them in a post to follow. Stay tuned
At home, I washed our perfect oranges and arranged them in a big old pewter bowl that sat empty on our counter since unpacking. It was predestined for them. Stunning. If I were a painter… Well, I am a painter–but also a lazy painter.
In my anxious state, I forgot to take a picture. I’ll get better at this.
Immediately, we each yanked an orange from the tidy pyramid and a with paper towels in our laps, commenced peeling. These aren’t mandarins; they take a bit of effort to un-jacket. It was a painless job, but far from dry.
Those Honeybell oranges ran like spigots, saturating the towels and soaking into my pants. I peeled a segment from the sphere–more juice escaped. Popped the wedge into my mouth and pressed it against the roof. Sweet nectar of the gods, this was better than any candy I’ve ever had (not chocolate—chocolate isn’t candy; it is in a class of its own).
I chewed, bursting every juicy jewel and savored every drop before swallowed. I repeated with each segment. Chewing in deliberate slow motion to prolong the experience, the final piece was consumed with some sadness. It took great effort to not eat another, but I vowed to keep to one orange per day to make them last.
We grinned at each other, not needing to say it, but we did anyway: These were the best oranges we’ve ever had. Maybe it was the experience that made them special, but it was of little difference. The best orange you’ve ever had is one of few things that can never be topped.
The Honeybell marmalade was also some of the best I’ve had. Christa (who detests marmalade) thought it was delicious. I made some toast and spread it on thinly to make it last. It was sweet like honey and not at all bitter. I’ll be returning for more when the knife is rattling in the jar.
A two-quart pitcher of fine lemonade was made with the juice and zest of that one Ponderosa lemon. The rind was thick and pithy, like a pomelo. Its scent was fragrant and flowery–lighter than a typical lemon, I thought. And there was a whisper of something familiar that I still can’t put my finger on. In retrospect, the price was a true bargain and the colossal lemon less of a novelty. Don’t forget to grate in some nutmeg.
What started as a simple drive for oranges grew into a ripe adventure bursting with sunshine, perfumed breezes, zesty sandwiches and mom tacos (I said stay tuned), and a lemonade bonus. What more could one want? It was cheap as chips and chock full of fun on what would have been an otherwise uneventful day laying about the house and binge-watching murder mysteries.
Most importantly, we both felt a little reinvigorated as well.
I wholeheartedly recommend you make a stop at Dooley Groves when in Ruskin. We will return again when the next orange varieties (Ortaniques and Murcotts) are at their peaks. It’s an hour or two well spent and a memory that can last a lifetime, even if the oranges last only the afternoon.
I just might get those thirty bankers boxes of books from the garage and start sorting them onto the… Holy crap, I need to build bookshelves. Okay, then–to the lumber yard. Though, there is another season of Shetland on Netflix…
Thank you for reading.