What do you get when you cross a U-pick and a CSA (community supported agriculture) membership? The Masumoto Family Farm adopt-a-tree program. For the last nine years, peach and nectarine lovers in California have filled out “adoption forms,” paid $600, and made the trip to this Fresno-based organic farm for two consecutive summer weekends to harvest between 350 to 450 pounds of fruit from their adopted tree.

The adopt-a-tree concept arose because the family had several acres of old-growth Elberta peaches, which were just too fragile to sell into the wholesale market. Rather than start selling the fruit at farmers’ markets, they decided to invite eaters out to the farm.

In doing so, the farm saves on labor costs and gets the money up-front, as it might with a traditional CSA. But more important is the fact that they’re “helping close the gap between farm realities and the eater,” says Nikiko Masumoto, who recently returned home to her family’s farm to run the adoption program (pictured to the right).

Or, as the young farmer’s father, David “Mas” Masumoto, told the San Francisco NPR affiliate KQED last year: “We didn’t want people just to buy produce. We wanted them to take ownership of it.”

Inviting eaters to contribute their labor to the farm has long been a way for small farmers to build a core audience and help transform consumers into active participants in the local food movement. But the adopt-a-tree model offers a slight twist on a familiar model.

“There’s so much that happens in the process of farming that even the people who’ve been coming for upwards of six, seven, or eight years, still learn something new when they come,” says Nikiko Masumoto.

For one, the farm doesn’t often know which weekends will be best for harvesting until a few weeks before the fruit is ripe, so the Masumotos ask each group of adoptive tree parents to set aside a four-week period. Visitors also have to decide how to use and preserve their peaches and nectarines, which they must harvest at various stages of ripeness. Sometimes the weather is off and sometimes a branch breaks if a tree gets overloaded, meaning less fruit to harvest. This year, an especially warm spring resulted in an early harvest and smaller fruit than normal.

“When people adopt the whole tree, they get the whole package,” says Masumoto. “There’s misshapen fruit, underripe fruit, overripe fruit.” The process puts eaters in touch with the realities–good and bad–of growing stone fruit.