My father, Ashley Chapman, standing in the apricot lot where he built our first house.
It has turned out to be a big challenge to write a book about the apricot business in the Santa Clara Valley, while at the same time trying to maintain another writing project, i.e. my regular Robin Chapman News blog. The good news: I'm on the home stretch of the book.
An interesting thing has happened during the course of the work: I started the book as an exercise in nostalgia. I have come to realize I am writing about a business. People didn't have apricot orchards because they thought fruit trees were fun for kids like me! What a revelation.
