Vintage 1940s Daily Peas Crate Label 🫛 Hood, CA, Calendar, Neat Design!

Who Packed Daily Brand Peas? 🫛 Daily Brand California Peas, Stillwater Orchards Co., Hood, California

Size: 7 3/4" x 5" ~ Little to no wear.

Neat design! A whole month's calendar, SUN. through SAT., with a big red "Daily" scrawled right across it, and fat green pea pods climbing up both sides on a black oval. The message is plain as day: eat your peas, every day. This is a vintage 1940s Daily Brand crate label for California peas from the Stillwater Orchards Co., growers, packers and shippers of Hood, California, and it was never pasted on a crate.

🔍 What's on it

An oval label on a black ground. In the middle, a blue calendar page with the days SUN. MON. TUE. WED. THU. FRI. SAT. across the top and the dates 1 through 31 below, the 1st falling on a Monday and the 31st on a Wednesday, no month and no year, so it works for any month you like. Across it, Daily in big red-and-cream script, with BRAND and a ribbon reading FOR EVERYBODY. Green pea pods and vines frame it on both sides. Below, PRODUCE OF U.S.A., CALIFORNIA PEAS, and STILLWATER ORCHARDS CO., GROWERS PACKERS SHIPPERS, HOOD · CALIFORNIA. No printer is named. The back is plain.

🍐 Stillwater Orchards, since 1860

This one comes from one of the oldest farming families on the Sacramento River Delta, and they're still at it. As the family tells it, David Osborn came to California from Scotland in the 1850s, right on the heels of the Gold Rush. He didn't strike it rich in the mines, so he settled on the Delta and ordered pear trees from France, which arrived in 1860. His nephew James Elliot added other crops, and in 1951 David J. Elliot Sr. and Jr. formed David J. Elliot & Son. The family has been growing and packing pears there for more than 160 years under the Stillwater Orchards name, and some of the trees are more than 160 years old themselves.

And here's the best part: Daily is still their brand. Stillwater's Bartlett pears are sold today under the Daily brand at stores like Raley's, Safeway and Sprouts. So the same Daily name on this pea label is on pears in the grocery store right now. They used it on more than peas back then too, on persimmons and pears as well as these peas.

Hood itself is a little Delta town on the Sacramento River, just south of Sacramento. It was named in 1910 for William Hood, the chief engineer of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and got its post office in 1912.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this vintage advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That calendar looks great framed in a kitchen, right where you'd hang a real one, and it's a perfect gift for a gardener, a pea lover, or anybody from Hood, Courtland, Sacramento and the Delta.

Crate labels are a reminder of a bygone era, and the lithography on them is unparalleled even to this day, in my opinion. Museums and art institutes have galleries dedicated to them, and more and more collectors are seeking them out to preserve their history. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries, they will be very difficult to acquire.