The Brief

This story was originally published by The LA Local on Feb. 12, 2026.

A lot of people don’t think downtown Los Angeles is worth visiting.

For some unfamiliar with the area, DTLA can feel overwhelming, expensive or just not worth the effort.

But if you’re a little cheap (like me), enjoy walking around the city and love art paired with a solid drink, downtown actually has a lot to offer — especially for a low-stress date night or a spontaneous adventure.

Held on the first Thursday of each month, DTLA ArtNight — traditionally referred to as the Art Walk — reimagines downtown LA’s Historic Core as a premier, pedestrian-oriented destination for art enthusiasts.

So the next time someone says Los Angeles isn’t walkable, here’s The LA Local Guide to an art-filled stroll through DTLA.

A woman holds a map to all the galleries at “DTLA Artnight.”

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Erick Galindo

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The LA Local

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First Stop

The Hive Gallery & Studios

The Hive Gallery & Studios instantly breaks the stereotype of what an art gallery is “supposed” to be. Located on Spring Street, it’s perfect for bringing along that one person in your life who says they’re “not really into museums.”

The art is quirky, creepy, colorful and fun — very Tim Burton-esque at times. It feels expressive and personal rather than polished and institutional. Another big plus is affordability. The gallery genuinely feels like a community of artists who want their work to be seen and sold without breaking the bank.

Second Stop

Beelman’s Pub

Just down the street is Beelman’s Pub, a true neighborhood bar. It’s not the kind of spot influencers travel across town to photograph — and that’s exactly why it works.

Drinks and food are reasonably priced, happy hour is solid and there’s a large outdoor patio along with plenty of indoor seating.

The staff is friendly, the vibe is relaxed and it feels like a place where you can actually have a conversation without shouting.

Sports fans will feel right at home. During the Dodgers’ 2024 World Series victory, the energy poured into the streets of downtown. With TVs throughout the bar and a crowd that genuinely cares about the game, it feels like watching from home.

An art piece on display at Art Walk LA in downtown Los Angeles.

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Louie Martinez

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The LA Local

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Third Stop

The Vault Art Gallery & Event Space

Continuing the walk, head toward Seventh Street and Spring Street to find The Vault Art Gallery & Event Space.

The gallery works especially well for people who may not consider themselves “art people” but appreciate street art and cultural commentary.

The Vault showcases work that feels distinctly Los Angeles — graffiti-inspired pieces, political undertones — and art that blends history, culture and rebellion.

Much of it carries a Banksy-like edge.

I’ve personally picked up Aztec Mega Man pieces and Blood-in Blood-out Dragon Ball–inspired art from The Vault, which reflects the range of work on display.

Arrive early during the DTLA Art Walk, and you may even find complimentary snacks and bubbly.

An art piece on display at Art Walk LA in downtown Los Angeles.

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Louie Martinez

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The LA Local

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Fourth Stop

Emerging Art Gallery

The Emerging Art Gallery may feel more traditional at first glance, but it’s far more dynamic than it appears. The gallery serves as a central hub for the DTLA Art Craw, making it a key stop on any art-focused night downtown.

Inside, visitors can find a rotating mix of photography, paintings and sculptures from both established artists and emerging creatives.

The DTLA Art Crawl takes place on the first Thursday of every month and offers a true choose-your-own-adventure experience.

More than 25 galleries are within walking distance of one another, but the energy extends well beyond the gallery walls.

Local artists line the streets with booths selling everything from original artwork and handmade prints to plants, clothing, vases and small knickknacks.

Many galleries also bring in DJs spinning music, creating a vibe that feels more like a block party than a traditional art show—putting Los Angeles artists front and center.

Night Cap

Rhythm Room

To end the evening, Rhythm Room is a go-to stop.

The cozy bar offers cheap eats, live music, pool tables and games.

You can grab a $6 cheeseburger, sip a drink under dim lighting and settle into candle-lit tables.

Play pool, ping pong, or even break out a board game with friends.

After a full night of walking and art, it’s the perfect place to wind down.

Bonus Stop

The Last Bookstore

The art gallery on the second floor of The Last Bookstore is always worth a stop.

The Trump administration formally rescinded the legal foundation of federal climate policy Thursday — setting up a new front in California’s long-running battle with Washington over emissions rules.

“Today, the Trump EPA has finalized the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at a White House press conference. “Referred to by some as the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach, the 2009 Obama EPA endangerment finding is now eliminated.”

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the federal government may regulate greenhouse gases if they were found to endanger public health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a scientific determination that greenhouse gases indeed were a threat. By withdrawing its own so-called “endangerment finding,” the EPA is abandoning its justification for federal tailpipe standards, power plant rules and fuel economy regulations.

California opposed the withdrawal of the endangerment finding when it was proposed last year, and is expected to sue over the decision.

California Air Resources Board executive director Steven Cliff testified at the time that the move ignored settled science.

“Thousands of scientists from around the world are not wrong,” Cliff said in his testimony. “In this proposal, EPA is denying reality and telling every victim of climate-driven fires and floods not to believe what’s right before their eyes.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Thursday that California would take the Trump administration to court over the decision.

“Donald Trump may put corporate greed ahead of communities and families, but California will not stand by,” Newsom said. “We will continue to lead because the lives and livelihoods of our people depend on it.”

Other states and environmental groups have also indicated they could sue. They include Massachusetts, which was part of the coalition of states that sued to force the federal government to curb greenhouse gases nearly two decades ago.

Eliminating the federal basis for regulating planet-warming gases will not halt California’s climate policies, most of which – from California’s market-based approach to cutting carbon pollution to clean energy mandates for utilities — rest on state law.

In fact, the decision may open the door for California to set its own greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, a possibility that lawmakers and regulators are actively weighing.

The reversal in federal policy could also undercut arguments that federal law blocks state lawsuits against oil companies and boosts interest in expanding California’s authority over planet-warming pollution within its borders.

California prepares for a fight 

Ann Carlson, a UCLA law professor and former federal transportation official, has argued that aggressive federal action against climate policy “could, ironically, provide states with authority they’ve never had before.”

Writing in the law journal Environmental Forum, Carlson theorized that California could attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks directly under state law.

Campbell Power Plant in Sacramento on Aug. 31, 2022.

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Rahul Lal

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Federal law has preempted most states from setting local vehicle emission standards; California has, through a series of waivers granted under federal clean air law, obtained permission to set stricter standards than the federal government does.

This could help California’s efforts “in the long run,” Carlson wrote in an email Wednesday, “but of course withdrawing the United States from all efforts to tackle climate change is a terrible move. We should be leading the global effort, not retreating.”

In California, where cars and trucks account for more than a third of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, California regulators at the air board and lawmakers are weighing in. When asked last year by CalMatters whether the air board would consider writing its own rules, Chair Lauren Sanchez said, “All options are currently on the table.”

“This is definitely a conversation,” Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Irvine, said during a Wednesday press conference held by the California Environmental Voters. “So stay tuned.”

Ripple effects in court and Sacramento

If Washington formally exits the field of carbon regulation, states may argue they have broader room to pursue liability claims tied to wildfire costs and other climate impacts, experts said.

California has sued major oil companies as recently as 2023, in an attempt to hold them responsible for climate impacts. Oil companies have frequently cited federal oversight as a reason to dismiss climate-damage lawsuits against them.

“California is struggling with wildfire costs, for example, which are linked strongly to a warming climate,” said Ethan Elkind, a climate law expert at UC Berkeley. “I think that opens up a lot of legal avenues for states like California.”

The federal pullback has prompted lawmakers to consider expanding the Air Resources Board’s powers.

Assemblymember Robert Garcia, a Democrat from Rancho Cucamonga, this week introduced a bill aimed at affirming the state’s power to curb pollution from large facilities that generate heavy truck traffic, such as warehouses and ports, which concentrate diesel exhaust in nearby communities.

“It's no secret that the federal government and California are not seeing eye to eye — we're not on the same page,” Garcia said at Wednesday’s news conference. “This is an opportunity for our state, for California to step in.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The Trump administration is sending all pregnant unaccompanied minors apprehended by immigration enforcement to a single group shelter in South Texas. The decision was made over urgent objections from the government’s own health and child welfare officials, who say both the facility and the region lack the specialized care the girls need.

That’s according to seven sources who work at the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which handles the custody and care of children who cross the border without a parent or legal guardian, or are separated from family by immigration authorities. All of the sources declined to be named for fear of retaliation.

Since late July, more than a dozen pregnant minors have been placed at the Texas facility, which is located in the small border city of San Benito. Some were as young as 13, and at least half of those taken in so far became pregnant as a result of rape, sources said. Their pregnancies are considered high risk by definition, particularly for the youngest girls.

“This group of kids is clearly recognized as our most vulnerable,” one of the sources said. Rank-and-file staff, the source said, are “losing sleep over it, wondering if kids are going to be placed in programs where they’re not going to have access to the care they need.”

The move marks a sharp departure from longstanding federal practice, which placed pregnant, unaccompanied migrant children in ORR shelters or foster homes around the country that are equipped to handle high-risk pregnancies. ORR sources, along with more than a dozen former government officials, health care professionals, migrant advocates and civil rights attorneys, said they worry the Trump administration is putting children in danger at the San Benito shelter to advance an ideological goal: denying them access to abortion by placing them in a state where it’s virtually banned.

A Global X plane sits on a runway near Valley International Airport in Harlington, Texas, on Nov. 4, 2025. The Charter airline operates most deportation flights for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, transporting migrants across the country and abroad.

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“This is 100% and exclusively about abortion,” said Jonathan White, a longtime federal health official who ran ORR’s unaccompanied children program for part of President Donald Trump’s first term. White, who recently retired from the government, said the administration tried and failed to restrict abortion access for unaccompanied minors in 2017. “Now they casually roll out what they brutally fought to accomplish last time and didn’t.”

Asked via email why the administration is sending pregnant children to San Benito, an HHS spokesperson who asked not to be named wrote that “ORR’s placement decisions are guided by child welfare best practices and are designed to ensure each child is housed in the safest, most developmentally appropriate setting, including for children who are pregnant or parenting.”

But several of the ORR officials took issue with the agency’s statement. “ORR is supposed to be a child welfare organization,” one of them said. “Putting pregnant kids in San Benito is not a decision you make when you care about children’s safety.”

ORR’s acting director, Angie Salazar, instructed agency staff to send “any pregnant children” to San Benito beginning July 22, 2025, according to an internal email obtained as part of a six-month investigation by The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom, public media collaboratives that worked together to produce this story.

A screenshot of a July 22, 2025, email notifying ORR supervisors of a directive to send pregnant unaccompanied minors to a single shelter in San Benito, Texas, despite objections from the government’s own health and child welfare officials.

Several sources said a handful of pregnant girls have mistakenly been placed in other shelters because immigration authorities didn’t know they were pregnant when they were transferred to ORR custody.

Since the July order, none of the pregnant girls at the San Benito facility have experienced major medical problems, according to ORR sources and Aimee Korolev, deputy director of ProBAR, an organization that provides legal services to children there. They said several of the girls have given birth and are detained with their infants.

But officials interviewed for this story said they worry the shelter is only one high-risk pregnancy away from catastrophe.

“I feel like we’re just waiting for something terrible to happen,” one of the ORR sources said.

‘Blown away by the level of risk’

There are dozens of ORR shelters or foster homes across the country that are designated to care for pregnant unaccompanied children, according to ORR officials, with 14 in California alone. None of the officials could recall a time when all of the pregnant minors in the agency’s custody were concentrated in one shelter.

Detaining them in San Benito, Texas, doctors and public health experts said, is a dangerous gambit.

Parked white vans inside a gated building at Urban Strategies, a facility that holds unaccompanied minor immigrants under contract with the US Office of Refugee Resettlement, in San Benito, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2025. Refugio San Benito is a facility operated by the group Urban Strategies.

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“It’s not good to be a pregnant person in Texas, no matter who you are,” said Annie Leone, a nurse midwife who recently spent five years caring for pregnant and postpartum migrant women and girls at a large family shelter not far from San Benito. “So, to put pregnant migrant kids in Texas, and then in one of the worst health care regions of Texas, is not good at all.”

The specialized obstetric care that exists in Texas is mostly available in its larger cities, hours from San Benito. And several factors, including the high number of uninsured patients, have eroded the availability of health care across the state.

Furthermore, Texas’ near-ban on abortion has been especially devastating to obstetric care. The law allows an exception in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or one of her bodily functions is at risk, but doctors have been confused as to what that means.

Many doctors have left to practice elsewhere, and those who’ve stayed are often scared to perform procedures they worry could come with criminal charges. While Texas passed a law clarifying the exceptions last year, experts have said it may not be enough to assuage doctors’ fears.

Several maternal health experts described a sobering list of dangers for the girls at the San Benito shelter: If one of them develops an ectopic pregnancy (where the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus), if she miscarries or if her water breaks too early and she gets an infection, the emergency care she needs could be delayed or denied by doctors wary of the abortion ban.

Getting the care that is available could take too long to save her life or the baby’s, they added.

Adolescents are also more likely to give birth early, which can be life-threatening for both mother and baby. The youngest face complications during labor and delivery because their pelvises aren’t fully developed, said Dr. Anne-Marie Amies Oelschlager, an obstetrician in Washington state who specializes in adolescent pregnancy.

“These are young adolescents who are still going through puberty,” she said. “Their bodies are still changing.”

Pregnant girls who recently endured the often harrowing journey to the U.S. face even more risk, obstetrics experts said. Many have been raped along the way and have sexually transmitted infections that can be dangerous during pregnancy. Add to that little to no access to prenatal care or proper nourishment, and then the trauma of being detained.

“You couldn’t set up a worse scenario,” said Dr. Blair Cushing, who runs a women’s health clinic in McAllen, about 45 minutes from San Benito. “I’m kind of blown away by the level of risk that they’re concentrating in this facility.”

A history of problems

The San Benito shelter is owned and operated by Urban Strategies, a for-profit company that has contracted with the federal government to care for unaccompanied children for more than a decade, according to USAspending.gov.

The main building, an old tan brick Baptist Church, occupies a city block in downtown San Benito, a quiet town of about 25,000. The church was converted to a migrant shelter in 2015 and was managed by two other contractors before Urban Strategies took it over in 2021.

On a fall day last year, there were no signs of activity at the facility, though children’s lawn toys and playground equipment were visible behind a wooden fence. A guard was stationed at one of the entrances.

Meliza Fonseca lives across the street from the San Benito shelter. She said she occasionally sees children in the yard on weekends, “but for the most part, you don’t see them.”

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“It’s pretty quiet, just like it is today,” said Meliza Fonseca, who lives nearby. “That’s the way it is every day.”

She said she occasionally sees kids playing in the yard on weekends, “but for the most part, you don’t see them.”

Reached by email, the founder and president of Urban Strategies, Lisa Cummins, wrote that the company is “deeply committed to the care and well-being of the children we serve,” but directed any questions about ORR-contracted shelters to the federal agency.

When asked about the San Benito facility, the ORR spokesperson wrote that “Urban Strategies has a long-standing record of delivering high-quality care to pregnant unaccompanied minors, with a consistently low staff turnover.”

A gated building at Urban Strategies, a facility that holds unaccompanied minor immigrants under contract with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, in San Benito, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2025.

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But agency sources who spoke with the newsrooms said that as recently as 2024, staff members at the shelter failed to arrange timely medical appointments for pregnant girls or immediately share critical health information with the federal agency and discharged them without arrangements to continue their medical care.

ORR temporarily barred the shelter from receiving pregnant girls while Urban Strategies implemented a remediation plan, but the plan did not add staff or enhance their qualifications, the sources said.

Several sources inside the agency said its leadership was provided with a list of shelters that are better prepared to handle children with high-risk pregnancies. All of those shelters are located outside of Texas, in regions where the full range of necessary medical care is available. Yet the directive to place them at San Benito remains.

“It’s cruel, it’s just cruel,” one of the officials said. “They don’t care about any of these kids. They’re playing politics with children’s health.”

‘A dress rehearsal’

Jonathan White, who ran ORR’s unaccompanied children program from January 2017 to March 2018, said he wasn’t surprised to learn the new administration is moving pregnant unaccompanied children to Texas.

“I’ve been expecting this since Trump returned to office,” White said in an interview.

He said he views the San Benito order as a continuation of an anti-abortion policy shift that began in 2017, which “ultimately proved to be a dress rehearsal for the current administration.”

The Rio Grande is seen near the Old Hidalgo Pumphouse Museum in Hidalgo, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2025. Migrants often cross the river en route to the United States.

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Scott Lloyd, the agency’s director at the time, denied girls in ORR custody permission to end their pregnancies, court records show. Lloyd also required the girls to get counseling about the benefits of motherhood and the harms of abortion and personally pleaded with some of them to reconsider.

“I worked to treat all of the children in ORR care with dignity, including the unborn children,” Lloyd told the newsrooms in an email.

In the fall of 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action lawsuit against Lloyd and the Trump administration on behalf of pregnant girls in ORR custody. The ACLU argued that denying the girls abortions violated their constitutional rights, established by the Supreme Court in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Not long after the lawsuit was filed, White said he received a late-night phone call from Lloyd, who had a request. He wanted White to transfer an unaccompanied pregnant girl who was seeking an abortion to a migrant shelter in Texas, where, under state law, it would have been too late for her to terminate her pregnancy.

White believed following the order would have been unlawful because it might have denied the girl access to legal relief under the lawsuit, so he refused. The girl was not transferred.

Lloyd, who has since left the government, told the newsrooms he didn’t believe his request was illegal.

The class action lawsuit was settled in 2020; the first Trump administration agreed not to interfere with abortion access for migrant youth in federal custody going forward. Four years later, the Biden administration cemented the deal in official regulations: If a child who wanted to terminate her pregnancy was detained in a state where it was not legal, ORR had to move them to a state where it was.

That rule remains in place, and the agency appears to be following it; ORR has transferred two pregnant girls out of Texas since July, though agency sources said one of them chose not to terminate her pregnancy.

But now that Trump is back in office, his administration is working to kill the policy.

‘Elegant and simple’

Even before Trump won reelection, policymakers in his circle were planning a renewed attempt to restrict abortion rights for unaccompanied minors.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a politically conservative overhaul of the federal government, called for ORR to stop facilitating abortions for children in its care. The plan advised the government not to detain unaccompanied children in states where abortion is available.

Such a change is now possible, Project 2025 argued, because Roe v. Wade is no longer an obstacle. Since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark decision in 2022, there is no longer a federal right to abortion.

Abortion rights activists rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court after the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade, in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2022.

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Upon returning to office, Trump signed an executive order “to end the forced use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.”

Then, in early July, the Department of Justice reconsidered a longstanding federal law governing the use of taxpayer money for abortion. The DOJ concluded that the government cannot pay to transport detainees from one state to another to facilitate abortion access, except in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.

And now, ORR is working to rescind the Biden-era requirement that pregnant girls requesting an abortion be moved to states where it’s available. On Jan. 23, the agency submitted the proposed change for government approval, though it has not yet published the details.

Several of the ORR officials who spoke with the newsrooms said it’s unclear whether children in the agency’s custody who have been raped or need emergency medical care will still be allowed to get abortions.

“HHS does not comment on pending or pre-decisional rulemaking,” the agency’s spokesperson wrote when asked for details of the regulatory change. “ORR will continue to comply with all applicable federal laws, including requirements for providing necessary medical care to children in ORR custody.”

But the day the change was submitted, an unnamed Health and Human Services spokesperson told The Daily Signal, a conservative news site, “Our goal is to save lives both for these young children that are coming across the border that are pregnant and to save the lives of their unborn babies.”

Like other experts who spoke with the newsrooms, White, the former head of ORR’s unaccompanied children program, said he thinks the San Benito directive and the anti-abortion rule change are meant to work hand in hand: Once pregnant children are placed at the San Benito shelter, the new regulations could mean they cannot be moved out of Texas to get abortions — even if keeping them there puts them at risk.

“It’s so elegant and simple,” White said. “All they have to do is send them to Texas.”

Mose Buchele with The Texas Newsroom contributed reporting.

This story was produced by The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom. The California Newsroom is a collaboration of public media outlets that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED (San Francisco), LAist and KCRW (Los Angeles), KPBS (San Diego) and other stations across the state. The Texas Newsroom is a public radio journalism collaboration that includes NPR, KERA (North Texas), Houston Public Media, KUT (Austin), Texas Public Radio (San Antonio) and other stations across the state.

Growing up, Eleu Navarro says he and his family dealt with food insecurity a lot. They came to the U.S. from Mexico in the early ‘70s.

“As a child and my other siblings, it was our job to either recycle cans or dumpster dive,” he told LAist.

Navarro says the experience made him realize that he wants to do his part to help others. Now, as the program director for Growing Hope Gardens, he’s helping fight food insecurity.

Every week, he and hundreds of other organizations partner with the North Hollywood nonprofit Food Forward to pick up fresh produce that feeds the community.

Gleaning at the markets

Eleu Navarro is a program director for Growing Hope Gardens, a nonprofit that maintains food gardens and teaches people how to grow food.

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At the Santa Monica Farmers Market, Navarro picked up hundreds of pounds of free food. This kind of gathering is called gleaning, which is when excess food in public areas gets harvested.

That produce helped Growing Hope Gardens, a nonprofit that runs food gardens in Los Angeles County, feed more than 50 families in Santa Monica and residents at a workshop in Boyle Heights.

“ We make sure that whatever we glean from here doesn’t go to waste,” he said.

This is Food Forward’s farmers market recovery program, one of multiple ways they rescue good produce and get it into the hands of needy residents. On this day, dozens of boxes were stuffed with romanesco broccoli, fennel, white cauliflower, rainbow chard, artichokes, kale and more.

The nonprofit’s system is simple. Volunteers show up to markets in L.A. and Ventura counties with boxes and distribute them to farmers who’ve joined the program. Then, as the market nears closing time, they put in whatever produce they’d like that didn’t sell.

Samatha Teslik, Food Forward’s community programs director, said the boxes get collected, weighed, sorted and picked up within the hour. Weighing is how they track how much gets donated, which ends up as a tax write-off for farmers later on.

 On a good day, the Santa Monica Farmers Market alone yields upward of 5,000 pounds. On a slow day, they still get at least 1,000 pounds of fresh produce.

“ There is a little bit of physicalness to it for sure,” she said. “But we work really hard to provide a fun and engaging experience for our volunteers so that they leave feeling really good and want to come back.”

Volunteer Josh Debuque works with others on the team to weigh each box on a scale.

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On this visit, Growing Hope Gardens was one of three partners picking up donated produce.

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Helping Angelenos

Food insecurity affects about 1 in 4 L.A. County households, according to Food Base L.A. Largely low-income residents struggle with this, since it’s often tied to economic issues, but recently, more higher-income residents are also experiencing food insecurity.

Most of Food Forward’s fruits and vegetables goes to L.A. County, according to founder Rick Nahmias. He said they make it clear that the goods need to get passed along to someone who’s self-identified as being food insecure. They don’t check tax returns or citizenship.

“That produce can end up in soups at a soup kitchen,” he said. “It can end up in grocery bags being given out in MacArthur Park. They can go into boxes being given to veterans.”

A box of broccolini donated by Milliken Family Farms.

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LAist

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A box of rainbow chard also donated by Milliken Family Farms.

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Residents can sign up to be part of the glean team at farmers markets or become a backyard harvester. These volunteers pick fruits from registered trees on private property, as well as public and commercial orchards. The minimum age for farmers market recovery is 12, while kids as young as 5 can join the backyard harvest program.

“Whether food waste is a big issue for you, food insecurity or just wanting to do something good in this world where sometimes we’re not feeling super great,” Teslik said, “[it’s] an hour-and-a-half to two hours where you can really make a tremendous impact.”

There's a difference between a good peach and a perfect one. The good ones make it to your local farmers markets. The perfect ones are too ripe to survive the trip; for those, you have to be standing under the tree. That's the idea behind the Masumoto Family Farm's Adopt-a-Tree program, now accepting applications through March 15.

Now in its 23rd year, the program allows teams of up to 12 people to harvest certified-organic fruit directly from the farm over two summer weekends.

Most participants are friends, neighbors, coworkers and families from urban and suburban areas, many returning year after year.

"So many folks are very disconnected from their sources of food," said Nikiko Masumoto, a fourth-generation Japanese American farmer and author. "We are trying to provide different portals of entry for folks to ask questions and wonder and be curious, and then get to experience themselves a slice of farm life."

This year brings a restructured format with two tiers: Junior ($950 for roughly 250 to 300 pounds of fruit) and Senior ($1,750 for roughly 500 to 600 pounds). How many individual peaches is that? It's hard to say — Masumoto said some Elbertas last year clocked in at over a pound each, while others were closer to a quarter pound.

The Masumotos recently added Baby Crawford peaches to the program — a grafted heirloom variety that helps buffer against climate-driven shifts in their Elberta peach and Le Grand nectarine ripening cycles.

If you’re new to the program

Fair warning — the Masumotos are upfront that this is a sweat-equity commitment, not a leisurely farm visit. Expect potentially 100-degree heat and a full morning of picking.

Teams also need to hold three weekends open — the last in July and the first two in August — because the farm won't know the exact harvest dates until mid-July.

David "Mas" Masumoto holds a freshly picked peach at the Masumoto Family Farm.

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"We are not centering this around human ease," Masumoto said. "It's about the fruit and what the trees are telling us."

New applicants must attend a virtual info session before applying. The remaining session is on Feb. 24. The farm must turn away applicants each year — they intentionally keep the program small to preserve the community feel.

For those who want Masumoto fruit without the full commitment, the farm also runs a low-key drive-through where you can order a flat of peaches online and pick them up at the farm.

For more information, visit masumoto.com/adopt-a-tree. Applications are due March 15. Questions can be directed to nikmasu@gmail.com.