Santa Clara Valley … Once Known of as the “Prune Capital of the World”
Where Have All the Prunes Gone
Written By Kimberly Ewertz
The men quoted in this article were at one time involved in prune farming — Ernie Belleza who, with his two brothers, farmed prunes from early
40s through the mid 50s; Angelo Benassi’s family farmed for decades; and Joe Filice’s grandfather learned prune farming as a young man in
Italy. His father and uncle farmed prunes from 1945 to the late 60s; and Terry Kickham Wolfe had 25 acres, known as the Kickham Ranch.
A
lthough prune farming is a rare
commodity in Gilroy today, the
history of the sweet stone fruit
grown almost exclusively in Santa Clara
Valley dates back to the 1800’s.
French vineyardis Louis Pellier, who
hailed from a country famous for its
Pruneaux d’Ente, moved to California in
the mid 1850s and purchased a tract of
land near Mission San José. He named it
Pellier’s Gardens.
It was on this land that Pellier, with
the help of his brother Pierre, grafted
cuttings of the Le petit prune d’Agen root-
stock, which grew in the Agen area of his
French homeland, with local wild plum
trees. This cultivation experiment resulted
in the birth of the California dried plum.
60
Gilroy resident Richard Perino grew
up working his family’s prune farm along
with his brothe