Hanford Fellowship Meeting

As you can see I have a new app on my phone that makes a collage. I'm practicing on you. These are pictures of the Hanford meeting.

This week we have attended four out of the five services of the Hanford Fellowship meeting. It was good to see the folks from Victory Holiness in Hanford and from the fellowshipping churches as well. Bro. Rocky Kirk from Ohio preached the nights, Bro. Doug Cornett from Ohio preached the days and I preached a morning myself. I would say they have had enough Ohio preaching to do them for a while.

On our first trip out here in 1992 I preached one night of the Hanford meeting and a revival too. Bro. Garmen was the Pastor then and he and his family have sure been our friends in the years since. It was great to be a part of the meeting again.

We are working on getting a newsletter out tomorrow so I will try to post it here as well. God bless.

Davy

More About Raisins!

A little more about Raisins if you please. Yesterday we stopped at the Sun-Maid factory store. It is a fascinating place. We learned a bunch about their history and the making of Raisins. The pictures are of the boxes of Sun-Maid raisins through the years and the worlds largest raisin box which is displayed outside. It is twelve foot tall and held 16,500 pounds of raisins when it was built.

We read in a brochure that the grapes lay in the sun two to three weeks before they are rolled into bundles. They remain in the bundles several more days before they are taken out of the field to the processing plant. They said that four pounds of fresh grapes yield about one pound of raisins.

We also read that 95% of the raisins produced in California are made from Thompson seedless grapes grown in the San Joaquin Valley. All I have to do is look around at all the fields of grapes and I believe it.

We also bought some different varieties of dried fruit that they produce in the plant. My favorite is the Dark Chocolate Yogurt Raisins. Wow! Those are good! Well, so much for raisins. I think I'll have another handful.

Davy

Raisins & More Raisins!

It was September the very first time we came to California in 1992. The raisins caught our attention on that first trip. As I mentioned in a previous post our first revival here was in Raisin City. It is called Raisin City for a very good reason. There are fields of grapes for miles and miles and miles around. It is absolutely amazing. It is beautiful to see the fields go on for miles. At this time of year they begin harvesting the grapes to be made into raisins. Have you every wondered why the world's favorite brand of raisins is called Sun-Maid?

Well, here is the reason....

They pick the grapes and then lay them on brown paper right out in the field to dry for several days...

Oodles and oodles of grapes laying out in the sun to dry as far as the eye can see in every direction. They are literally made by the Sun. Then they wrap the brown paper around the raisins and make bundles and leave them in the field for a certain period of days before taking them to the plant for processing. There are fields right now that have the bundles but we weren't able to get a good picture.

Isn't that amazing? I don't know how they keep the birds and bugs from eating all the profits or how they sell them so cheap when it is so labor intensive. I do know one thing, every time we drive by a field it flings a craving for Sun-Maid Raisins all over me! Good thing they are cheap.

We fed Odie too many raisins one day when she was two years old and she won't touch them. That's ok...it leaves more for me and Kelly Jo!

Davy