California's Citrus City

California's Citrus City

Bees buzz among lemon blossoms on the JK Thille Ranches in Santa Paula, Calif. (pop. 28,598), pollinating a crop that has yielded fruit—and prosperity—for four generations of the Dorcas McFarlane family.

As McFarlane strolls through the orchard, she inspects rows of lemon and avocado trees. "I'm looking at color, growth patterns and whether we replanted too close to an old tree," says McFarlane, 74, whose great-great uncle Wallace Hardison planted some of Ventura County's first citrus trees more than a century ago.

Lemons are a leading crop in Santa Paula and Ventura County, where 347,000 tons of the fragrant fruit were harvested in 2004. Ventura is the nation's top lemon-producing county and Santa Paula is nicknamed the Citrus Capital of the World.

Nature blessed Ventura County with the ideal combination of good soil, year-round sun and cool ocean breezes for growing a variety of fruit crops, including avocados, strawberries, oranges and lemons.

Some 150 growers in the Southern California county produce more than 40 percent of the nation's lemons on 23,000 acres of land. The lemons are trucked from the orchards to the packinghouses, where they are cleaned, sorted, waxed and boxed for shipping. Three-fifths of Ventura County's lemons are sent overseas, mostly to Asia. The remaining fruit ends up in supermarkets and restaurants across North America.

"Lemons have a winter pick and summer pick. (Ventura County is) the only place in the United States, basically, that's able to have a summer pick," explains Earl McPhail, the county's agricultural commissioner. The winter harvest starts in December or January, and the summer pick in June, July or August. But out in the orchards—where a tree may bear blossoms, young green fruit, pale yellow fruit, and fully mature lemons all at once—that translates into workers plucking ripe fruit virtually year-round.

Santa Paula's first citrus trees actually were orange trees planted in 1874 on land owned by town founder Nathan Weston Blanchard. It took 14 years for the trees to bear fruit but, when they did, the town blossomed, land prices soared and the population boomed. In 1893, Blanchard and Hardison founded the Limoneira Co., now the oldest ongoing citrus operation in California. The citrus industry continued to grow, and years before its 1902 incorporation, Santa Paula garnered its reputation as the "Lemon Capital of the World."

Lemons remain a principal crop and way of life around Santa Paula, though strawberries and nursery stock have replaced lemons as the leading cash crop in the county's $1.3 billion agricultural industry. In Santa Paula itself, avocados vie with lemons as the main crop, and Limoneira Co.—despite its lemony name—is the nation's largest avocado-grower.

Still, lemons and oranges are what Santa Paula celebrates each July during the Citrus Festival, established in 1967. Lemon-eating and lemon-peeling contests and bobbing for lemons and oranges make the festival an old-fashioned, family-friendly good time.

During the festival, orchards around Santa Paula buzz with the activity of bees pollinating the crop and farm workers harvesting the fruit that built the town's reputation as a citrus city.

In the shade of a lemon orchard, Lalo Berumen, 63, supervises a crew of fruit pickers clipping stems and dropping their fragrant harvest into lumpy canvas bags. Berumen, a foreman for the Limoneira Co., knows the drill well, having started work at Limoneira 45 years ago as a 17-year-old picker.

"In the summer, the sun is pretty bright. You look at lemons all day long, and get blind," he quips while overseeing last summer's harvest. "Everywhere you look, there's lemons!"

Santa Paula's 39th annual Citrus Festival is scheduled July 14 to 16. Visit www.ci.santa-paula.ca.us for more information.

Elisabeth Deffner is a freelance writer in Orange, Calif.

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