When the weather is just too rainy or too windy to tolerate being outdoors gardening, I indulge my gardening hobby with another related hobby – Pinterest.  I collect vintage fruit crate labels. 

Quite a few years ago, while at the California State Railroad Museum, I noticed the colorful labels on crates on the train museum's refrigeration car display.  Large blocks of ice would be placed in the refrigeration car to keep California citrus and other produce fresh during shipping to the East coast.  Each farm/orchard had their own uniquely designed label for their fruit crates.  Labels were used on the crates from the 1880's even before Sunkist and the California Fruit Exchange each started closer to 1900.

The railroad museum is very close to the Sacramento History Museum in Old Town and while visiting there the very same day, I noticed a beautiful display of over 100 fruit and vegetable labels from California.  That was it – I was sold!  I bought a book on the subject, The Label Made Me Buy It by Ralph Kovel and Terry Kovel.  The book helped me to identify the approximate age of the different labels by the colors/shades used and the subjects selected to market the fruit/vegetable.  For example, labels with Native Americans were often used during the Western movies heyday. 

I started my collection with citrus labels from Southern California from the San Bernardino-Highland-Redlands-Riverside area.  I don't remember the citrus groves from my very early childhood there, but my parents tell me that much of the area was covered with oranges and grapefruit groves that separated the communities.  It must have smelled heavenly in springtime, when the citrus trees bloomed.  I can even imagine the hum of thousands of bees at work pollinating all the beautiful white blossoms. 

I own only a few real paper labels and some reproductions that were made into metal signs that I hung in my kitchen.  Most of my collection is on Pinterest.  I love the cheeriness of the labels, the bright colors, and the imaginative subjects used to showcase pictures of the perfect fruit.  I have now “pinned” a few labels to my Pinterest collection from the California Fruit Exchange (Blue Anchor) that were placed on fruit crates from Vacaville, Solano County and the Suisun Valley.  

If I can't garden, I can enjoy learning about California's agricultural history and discovering and appreciating the creativity of others in marketing our state's abundant produce.