About Us

Satsuma tangerines are the sweetest variety of orange. The heirloom satsuma is its own unique citrus, with the highest sugar content, virtually seedless and amazingly easy to peel. Technically it’s not an orange but its own species; technically it’s almost a tangerine, but not quite.  “Satsuma Mandarins Are The Best Citrus…’ Hybrids be quiet, a species is talking.’”, The Awl, Silvia Killingsworth, 2016.

   Tangerine Dreams Grove is a small grower-owned, heritage satsuma grove planted in 2013.  The season for satsumas corresponds with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. The fruit ripens on the tree, sweetening day by day until just the right sweetness, then we pick and pack orders the same day.  Getting the satsumas wrapped and boxed and shipped the same day gets us ahead of the transit time to conserve freshness. 

   We welcome you to the small-farm experience that comes with planting trees ourselves, watching them grow, with hands-on care along the way up to handing the satsumas over at harvest time for you to enjoy.  We can customize your order message for your giftee(s) and print the holiday cards for you.  You can send us your Christmas list and do our best to make sure every one of them feels special.     

   You may never have heard of satsumas if you live up North – there were very few commercial growers left after nearly all the growers were wiped out back in the 1930’s when a few years of hard freezes decimated the commercial groves during the Great Depression.  But during the 1940’s and 1950’s in stops and starts they found their way back to local markets in the Deep South.   

   There are few of us who grew up in the Deep South who don’t remember satsumas.  They showed up at the bottom of Christmas stockings or bowls on the dining table, or if you were lucky, maybe a cardboard box full of them by the fireplace. The sweetness stays in your holiday memories.

   “I planted a small grove of heirloom satsuma mandarin tangerines on a piece of heritage land in North Florida in 2013, land that my great-great grandfather homesteaded in 1876. Growing satsuma trees lends itself well to sustainable farming practices, although very labor intensive.  But it’s been a labor of love. It takes over 5 years under optimal conditions to produce a real crop, but “optimal conditions” don’t include droughts, freezes, pest attacks or hurricanes. Somewhere in that process, you get to call yourself a farmer.”  --Patty Stubkjaer, Grove Owner

  

“Satsumaland” was the name often given to the western portion of Florida stretching from the Perdido River to Apalachicola (Rucker, 1996). There were reportedly 528,823 satsuma trees in Florida, presumably west Florida, in 1928... A severe freeze in 1935 resulted in the loss of most of the groves, and the brutally cold month of Jan. 1940 ended the satsuma industry in west Florida (Rucker, 1996; Winberg, 1948).”  The satsuma was called the “kid-glove orange” because it was said that a woman wearing kid gloves could peel and eat one without getting her gloves wet (Rucker, 1996 

 

 

Satsumas are sugar sweet.  They are the highest sugar content of all Florida citrus fruits.  As a matter of fact, back in the ‘20’s, the satsuma marketing co-op dubbed the commercial top grade “Sugar Sweets”. The second and third grades were called “Gulf Breeze” and “Sunny South”.  They are also known for their sweetness, seedlessness and the “zipper peel”.