Harvest Time in Brentwood u-pick loop

The trail map tells drivers to look for the Harvest Time signs as they go around Brentwood. On the map each grower carries a number in a circle: 1 for Pomeroy Farm on Eureka Avenue, 7 for The Urban Edge Farm on Walnut Boulevard, 31 for Serendipity Cellars, 72 for Deshi Gardens. Beside each name runs a row of letters, P for pre-picked and U for u-pick, keyed to a crop calendar that runs from asparagus in March to pomegranates as late as January. The nonprofit that prints the map counts more than 65 growers who sell direct to the public. They include cherry orchards, strawberry patches, peach ranches, farm stands, country stores, an olive grove, and wineries.

The farms lie on the alluvial plain of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, with Mount Diablo in plain sight. The town sits in the mountain’s rain shadow, and summer heat is often broken in the late afternoon by the Delta breeze. Harvest Time credits its members’ fruit to “Class 1 soils, warm summer days, and cool nights.” Many of the old orchards have given way to subdivisions since 1990. Brentwood had 23,302 people in 2000 and 66,854 in 2022. The city is still bordered on three sides by the Contra Costa County Agricultural Core, 11,000 acres of preserved, working farmland.

Cherries at Memorial Day, pumpkins in October

Cherries draw the crowds. Harvest Time says the start of the season varies from year to year, generally around April. Its own figures put most of its visitors in the orchards over Memorial Day weekend. The map lists Coral Champagne, Bing, Brooks, Lapin, Black Pearl, Hazel, Tioga, and White Rainier among the varieties. In 2026, G&S Farms posted u-pick cherries at $4.50 a pound. Each farm runs its picking its own way:

• At Kelsey Cherry Pickin’ Farm on the Byron Highway, the map promises “Low trees, no ladders needed.”
• At Rancho Zaragoza on Walnut Boulevard, the family hands over a bucket and boxes the fruit afterward.
• Bacchini’s Farm sells an entry ticket that is credited toward the purchase.
• Three Nunns Farm adds tractor rides and real fruit ice cream pops.
• At J&E Family Farm, children feed a donkey and bottle-feed Nigerian Dwarf baby goats.
• Pomeroy Farm describes its orchard as groomed “to give it a Park like feel.”

Peaches follow the cherries. Moffatt Ranch has grown them since 1955 and lists Flavorcrest, Suncrest, Fay Elberta, Elegant Lady, and O’Henry. Harvest Time says of the Suncrest that it is “too fragrant, too delicate, and too good to spend days on a truck.” The Farmer’s Daughter tells visitors to look for the big red barn at Marsh Creek Road and Walnut Boulevard. In summer 2026 it opened daily for u-pick and held a Sunday morning series with live music. Brentwood Diamonds, a sweet corn variety Harvest Time says has its roots in Brentwood, is sold at the stands through late summer. G&S Farms sells it by the box only, 48 ears to the box.

The calendar has stranger entries as well. Harvest Time calls Very Mulberry on Hoffman Lane the nation’s largest mulberry farm. Its picking runs April through June. In September 2026 its note read “Last week of Jujube Season.” The Urban Edge Farm offered u-pick flowers daily and, in August, Kadota figs “if they get picked out.”

Harvest Time names Tomato Day at Smith Family Farm the official start of the fall season. The 2026 edition offered unlimited food samples and one pumpkin from the patch. Chefs Heidi Krahling of Insalata’s and Todd Kniess of Bohemian Bistro and Acme Burger cooked, and The Rumba Madre played Latin music and folk punk. By September 20, Oasis Family Ranch in Knightsen had declared pumpkin season. G&S Farms opens its pumpkins for u-pick in October, and the map runs persimmons into November.

By late summer the farm status page reads as a string of closing notices. Bloomfield Cherries posted “See you May 2027!” Seko Ranch wrote that “due to the weather, our season is over.” Pease Ranch announced it was “permanently closed for u-pick.” Pomeroy Farm signed off looking to 2027, when it will mark 100 years of farming in Brentwood.

The rules printed on every map stay the same:

• No climbing trees.
• No children on ladders.
• Buy what you pick.
• Do not throw fruit.

Come in the morning, the map adds, and bring a box. It also warns of oncoming traffic that may be over the speed limit: “This does happen, unfortunately.”

A fiftieth year in 2026

On August 25, 2026, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors honored Harvest Time’s 50th anniversary. Supervisor Diane Burgis gave the presentation. Three members attended: Bryan Lucay of Serendipity Cellars, Patrick Johnston, co-owner of Dwelley Family Farms, and Hailey Nunn of The Farmer’s Daughter. “Often you go to places, and there’s the same stores everywhere,” Burgis said. “You, Harvest Time, help make this a unique and wonderful place to live.”

Johnston described the group as “a board of volunteers, volunteer farmers, that help promote each other.” Nunn wrote that small family farms need the help: “During harvest season, we are primarily out in our fields and orchards and don’t always have the time to respond to emails, return phone calls, or focus on marketing.”

The counts vary by source. Supervisor Ken Carlson said Brentwood’s u-pick season draws 600,000 visitors a year. Harvest Time’s own history page gives more than 180,000, and says the organization hands out 70,000 maps.

On September 13, 2026, the Downtown Brentwood Coalition set its second annual Harvest Table Dinner in City Park in honor of the anniversary. The five courses were these:

1. Greek watermelon salad 2. Brentwood corn vichyssoise with tarragon and chive oil 3. Pesto and Parmesan salmon over butternut squash orzotto 4. Moussaka 5. Panna cotta

Liberty High School Cheer served the tables, and the Brentwood Vocal Collective sang. Members also gather at their own yearly dinner. Cynthia Hoover joined after the pandemic ended her event-planning business and she bought Oasis Family Ranch with no farming experience. She remembered “sit[ting] in a room with all these generational farmers and new farmers.”

Ten members and the Farm Bureau

The organization’s history begins in the early 1970s. East Contra Costa County farmers had been through a year or two of unusually low prices and wanted to do more than sell to packers. “Not to jeopardize their individuality and independence,” the account reads, they met with the Contra Costa Farm Bureau. One telling of the founding gives the idea behind it: a u-pick visitor should visit more than one farm. To that end, the original members drew a trail map from farm to farm.

In 1976 they filed articles of incorporation as Harvest Time Inc., to educate the public about farming in the “Brentwood Region.” Any farm or ranch in Contra Costa County could join. The first directors were Jack Bloomfield, Tino Bacchini, Lee Laird, Gene Stonebarger Sr., and John Slatten, and there were ten members. The names Bloomfield and Bacchini still stand on the map. Hailey Nunn’s grandfather was among the farmers who helped form the group, and her family has farmed in Brentwood for almost 150 years.

Membership reached 29 in the 1980s. From 1984 to 1988 the members held barbecues to pay for advertising and the annual map, and to hire a public relations professional. New signs with a new color scheme went up in 1986. Later the group dropped its monthly director meetings. Meredith Nunn of the Farmer’s Daughter became president. Roy Gursky took on the jobs of secretary and treasurer, ran day-to-day operations, and produced the map until 2004.

The organization’s history page gives one measure of the growth. At the start, seven members offered u-pick cherries on less than 90 acres. By the time of writing there were more than 20 cherry members on 350 acres, with about 1,500 tons a year. Membership counts differ with the source, from “more than 45” in a 2026 news account to more than 65 on the current map. Jessica Enos, who married into a third-generation farming family, now presides over the board.

Peaches for the canning jar

Picking your own fruit in Brentwood is older than the organization, and the stories of its start do not agree.

• The 1930s. A 2026 Harvest Time post places it in that decade, when families from cities such as Richmond drove out and filled their trunks with hundreds of pounds of peaches for home canning.
• The ration cards. Longtime farmer Ron Nunn traces it to World War II ration cards and a want for fruit. His wife, Shirley, recalls canning peaches.
• The cherries of the 1970s. In Nunn’s account, cherry growers came to it later, in the 1970s. They had surplus cherries and too few hands to harvest them, so they opened their orchards to the public as the peach growers had before them.

Enos tells the version that was told to her. In the 1940s, during the war, women given sugar rations wanted fruit to put up. They came from Fremont to Brentwood to buy apricots and peaches, and they showed the farmers they would rather come out and pick.