Visit to Florida's Natural Co-Op

Every time we traveled from Wauchula to Clermont and back we passed Florida's Natural Citrus processing plant on Highway 27. We were interested in how they process the oranges into juice so yesterday we took a trip to the plant & visitor center in Lake Wales. We would have liked to tour the plant but that was not an option so we drove around the plant checking it out from outside the gate.

This is a view of the plant from the visitor center.

Some views from behind the plant on a side road.

Trucks are waiting to dump the oranges.

Here is a truck dumping the oranges.

Next we hit the visitor center which has a museum, exhibits, and gift/retail store. They also showed a very informative 14 minute film on the process of growing citrus and making orange juice.

 It was very interesting to see how they develop the orange trees for planting in the grove. A citrus tree begins with a seed planted in a seedbed to grow for 9 to 12 months. This special "root stock" tree is then transferred to a nursery where a bud is grafted to it from an existing tree with a traceable ancestry. "Parent trees" are registered and certified by the State of Florida so the young tree becomes a single citrus tree with known parentage. One year later it will be ready to be transplanted into a grove where it will start to produce oranges in 3 years. If they grew the trees from seeds planted in the grove it would take 14 years for a tree to produce fruit.

They use vertical mowing machines to go down the rows of trees in the grove to trim the trees back. This allows the sun in and keeps the rows open for picking etc. Oranges do not ripen off the trees so they can not be picked until they are completely ripe. Most of the oranges are picked by hand and dumped into small trucks which are then transfer to large trucks for the ride to the plant. As long as we have been in Florida there has been a steady flow of trucks filled with oranges heading to the processing plant.

Everything is automated in the plant. The oranges are washed, sorted then run through machines which extract the juice. The juice is strained and then packaged into the various containers depending where it will be sold. 

Florida's Natural is a Co-Op owned by it's grower-members. They own the land, own the trees, and own the company. Florida's Natural, produce orange and grapefruit juice which is fresh juice not from concentrate. The oranges and grapefruits are grown fresh in Florida only and never imported. The juice is sold through the United States and exported around the world.

While we were in the area of course we had to stop to eat. We stopped at Beef 'O' Brady's Pub in Lake Wales, FL. The food was great and unlike Mc Donald's I was able to have a beer with my Reuben.

This was a much easier day of touring, not like the miles of walking we did at Epcot.

Today was a relaxing day just hanging out and riding my bike. Of course you know Bev was up and out early for her line dancing.

Later in the day we took a trip to Super Walmart for groceries. We also had to get some goodies for Eric's care package. We have to keep our Marine supplied with goodies.