By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Some of the tastiest oranges in the world never end up in your supermarket.  They're the oranges grown in the few groves that remain in Redlands, California and the immediate area.  At one time citrus was a huge business here.  There were something like 84 packing plants here with a special railroad line that went from one to the other.  Now there are just a handful of small groves left, hanging on for sentiment or pure love of agriculture more than profit. (Some years it costs them more to grow their fruit than they are paid for it.)  Bob Knight formed the Inland Orange Conservancy to help these passionate grovers stick around. 

The idea behind the IOC is to get fruit distributed to local markets rather than funneled into the global market and to pay them more than market price for it.  Subscribers pay $65 and in return get two 5-lb. bags of oranges and other citrus every week for one season (usually 14 weeks).  You can subscribe for up to 3 seasons.  Besides Redlands, the IOC distributes to Mentone, Claremont, Riverside, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Yucaipa, and San Bernardiono.

Don't live in any of these places?  Subscribe anyway and donate your citrus to a food bank.  As you know food banks have more customers than ever right now and less funds to feed them.  So your donation will help two causes at the same time and you'll get a tax deduction for it for 2008 at the same time.

For more about the IOC and the man who founded it, see Sunset's story from February, 2007.