Peaches or Raisins Anyone? Making Dried Peaches  |  Making Raisins |  Redwood Trays |  Paper Trays Learn More I was shopping in the grocery store a couple of days ago here in Lincoln, Nebraska. I approached the dried fruits shelf's and I asked the lady standing next to me if she knew where those raisins came from. She said  "no I don't." I said, "would you like to know something about it as I grew up working with them?" I was just being friendly to the young lady whom seemed very interested in what  she was reading the information on the back-side of the Sun-Maid Raisins Container.                              I said, "Young Lady I can tell you a lot about them as I was born and raised just 7 miles north of Kingsburg, California, the main office and processing plant of Sun-Maid. The fruit used to be Sun Dried, but now it is dried by dehydration machines. Here is pictures of a drying yard with Peaches cut in half on Redwood trays. This was very hard back breaking work as it took two people, one on each end to spread them out like this.Then turn them over at the right time buy putting a tray on top and the team of two would flip the two trays without moving the fruit out of place on the opposing try.                 Making Raisins There are many varieties of grapes, but the one seen the most are like in the raisins in the container pictured up above. They come from the grapes and the vines you see here are Thomson grapes. the yellow grapes.                              Making raisins was similar to making dried peaches except they started to use treated paper as this was cheaper. They were not fumigated, but spread well over the tray without bunching up so all berries would receive the Sun rays. When dried enough they where turned as the peaches were turned except the 2 man team had to wood trays in which they pulled the paper tray up on the wood tray and topped with the second tray and then flipped just right so the grapes still layer as a single layer for proper drying. I have been working and researching how to copy a picture which was made by my mother's aunt about 1925 of my grandmother, mother, uncle and their fruit stand along high-way 99 in Selma, California, but to no avail. Her aunt was a professional and may have done something to stop copies. I had wanted you to know this article is real, not copied out of the website of Sun-Maid.com. I hope you enjoy and if you have never tried them, they are stimulating in the mouth and very healthy. Sincerely, Harley Petersen We care, I care at Petersen Ministries.