Fruit stand business keeps growing

If you ever drive down Highway 99 between Red Bluff and Chico during the summertime, you'll notice that signs for Julia's Fruit Stand are ubiquitous. Julia is actually an eighth-grader and her parents, who are prune and walnut farmers, started the stand for a college fund when she was a baby. Now it feeds the college funds of all three of James and Kathy Brandt's children, and the business just keeps growing.

In the photos, from the top: Kathy Brandt points out how she's able to store heirloom tomatoes in the shade of the dense trees on their farm; Brandt looks at freshly picked cantaloupes being unloaded for sale at the fruit stand; and workers load cantaloupes onto a truck to be taken to a farmers market.

Watch for my story on the fruit stand at CapitalPress.com soon.