O.C. Cities Harvest History by Saving Groves, Farms : Lifestyle: A once-agrarian society wants its children to know the scent of orange blossoms in the air.

When Bob Hoyt was mayor, he spent a lot of time explaining to schoolchildren why their city was called Orange when not a single orange grove was growing within its borders.

“That got me to thinking,” said Hoyt, a councilman from 1966 to 1980. “So I went to the parks department and said I wanted an orange grove. They laughed, but I said, no, I’m serious. Everyone thought planting an orange grove was sort of a silly thing, and I had to get real insistent about it.”

To satisfy the mayor, the city searched for a good spot and, in 1975, planted about an acre of Valencia orange trees in W.O. Hart Park on Glassell Street. It is the only orange grove in the city, and one of only a few thousand acres of citrus left in the entire county.

The city of Orange was the county’s first municipal farmer. But now, other cities that are rapidly losing their agricultural heritage are creating similar living museums by purchasing orange groves and farms.

San Juan Capistrano is in the process of buying the 56-acre Kinoshita farm, located in the heart of the city, for $9.5 million. And the city of Irvine has begun appraising a 16-acre orange grove owned by the Irvine Co. in an effort to save it from development.

The local leaders said they are going into the farming business to ensure that the fruit that gave Orange County its name isn’t relegated solely to grocery store shelves.

“This was an agrarian economy, and I think it’s vitally important to remember the history here,” said San Juan Capistrano Mayor Gary L. Hausdorfer. “On the West Coast and especially Southern California, we have lost some of the character and qualities that drew people here in the first place.”

Most of Orange County’s cropland disappeared in the 1960s, when the heart of the county was developed. In 1959, about 123,000 acres were harvested, including 37,000 acres of citrus groves. By 1969, more than half of those had been converted to housing tracts, highways and shopping centers. Now, only about 18,000 acres of crops remain, including only about 4,200 acres of citrus.

Orange County’s $250 million-a-year agricultural industry includes nursery stock, strawberries, avocados and row-crop vegetables such as asparagus, bell peppers, cauliflower and cabbage, as well as the citrus groves for which the county was once famous.

Hoyt, whose grandparents were orange growers, missed the sweet aroma of orange blossoms that filled his hometown before the groves were cut down to make room for subdivisions and shopping malls.

Like other children growing up in Orange, Hoyt, 67, used to pick oranges for pennies per crate. The city also had the world’s largest packinghouse, but all the groves disappeared by the 1960s.

“The whole city used to live off the crop,” Hoyt said. “It was a glorious place to live in those days. Now when I’m gone, it’s still going to be sitting there as a reminder of what we had here once.”

John Ellis, a deputy agricultural commissioner for Orange County, likes the idea of government buying groves and farms not only for its aesthetic and nostalgic appeal, but for its educational value.

“I talk to my own kids about growing and farming, but they don’t relate a jar of pickles to a cucumber. To them, milk comes from a store,” Ellis said. “So if they can get a firsthand impression of an orange and how it is grown, they’ll have an appreciation of where their orange juice came from.”

San Juan Capistrano decided in October to buy the Kinoshita farm, which is surrounded by residential areas and schools, so the family wouldn’t sell the area’s last farm field to developers. The deal between the city and the farming family is expected to close by the end of January.

“It wasn’t fair to keep telling him he couldn’t sell his land. We had to let him sell or buy it from him,” Hausdorfer said.

Most of the money will come from a $21-million open space bond issue approved by voters in April.

Preserving a vegetable field or orange grove isn’t just a matter of shelling out the money to plant it or buy it. It takes a real farmer to harvest those crops or orchards, irrigate and fertilize them properly, prune them and ward off pests, diseases and freezing temperatures.

“Farming is hard work,” Ellis said. “It’s expensive to cultivate and irrigate orange groves. Some years you show profit, some you don’t. It’s a hard business. And they may lose money if they don’t know what they’re doing.

“If you just want the aesthetic appeal of orange trees, that’s a different goal, and more easily obtainable. But if you want production, it takes a knowledgeable management program.”

Orange Mayor Gene Beyer said the Orange grove, which was dedicated to Hoyt, isn’t as well-tended and healthy as it should be. Many of the trees look scraggly and sick, as if they weren’t being tended properly.

“We need to work on that,” Beyer said. “We’ve had some problems with trees there. I know how hard it is to maintain orange trees just in my own back yard.”

San Juan Capistrano officials won’t even try to manage the Kinoshita Farm crops, which are mostly corn, lettuce and strawberries. Instead, the city plans to lease the land back to the Kinoshita family.

“We can’t afford to run a full-scale farm,” he said. “The city will be the farmer, and we would pay wages to the people actually farming. But any profits would go back to the city.”

Also, as part of its new plan to preserve 140 acres of open space, San Juan Capistrano expects to buy and preserve some orange groves too. Many of the orange groves are dying from lack of attention, but the city hopes to save at least a few acres.

“We would be doing it to preserve history and an overall quality of life rather than make it economically viable,” Hausdorfer said. “But you have to be willing to spend the time and the money to manage it right. If you just let nature take its course, the trees will be dead. So there has to be a community feeling and support.”

Irvine officials don’t want to lose money on their proposal, so they are studying the viability of managing a grove, including the cost of irrigation, pest control and security fencing. They also plan to explore the various options for operating it, such as leasing it back to Treasure Farms, which manages the Irvine Co.’s agricultural fields, or maintaining it as a historic park.

The grove in question, on Jeffrey Road south of the Santa Ana Freeway, has been slated for development. The Irvine Co. has said it is open to negotiations, and the city and developer have jointly hired an appraiser.

The money for the grove would come from $4 million the city is getting from Proposition 70, a state bond measure that set aside money for open space.

Hoyt said he is happy to see other cities finally appreciating his idea. In Orange 15 years ago, “it was a very inexpensive thing. The lands were already there, and all we had to do was plant them.”

Now, because of the county’s high land costs, preservation has become a much more costly and difficult venture involving millions of dollars and complex real estate negotiations. But some city officials say the nostalgia and quality of life the purchases bring are priceless.

“People love the fact that we can still do some farming locally,” Hausdorfer said. “Our city’s philosophy is to preserve part of our past, and if you lose (farmland), then you have generations of young people who have simply no idea what happened here years before.”

Vanishing Farmland

Agricultural acreage has declined dramatically in Orange County since the surge of development began in the 1950’s. The dwindling acreage is prompting several cities to preserve groves or farms to retain their agricultural heritage.

TOTAL CROPS* In thousands of acres 1949: 146 1959: 123 1969: 51 1979: 26 1989: 19

CITRUS GROVES In thousands of acres 1949: 67 1959: 37 1969: 17 1979: 7 1989: 4 * does not include nurseries and cattle ranches, which is not reported in areas. Source: O.C. Agricultural Commissioner