Recovering Growers See Warm Trend on the Way : Weather: After losing about $100 million in crops to the freeze last weekend, citrus farmers are encouraged by predictions of higher temperatures tonight.

On modest and massive farms alike, Ventura County growers fueled smudge pots, checked wind machines and watered orchards Saturday as forecasters predicted another night of freezing temperatures.

Farmers acknowledged as they worked that luck will count as much as money in the fight to save their crops, trees and livelihoods.

“When temperatures get extreme, there is nothing else to do but open a beer and start planning for next year,” said Steven Smith of Santa Paula.

But Smith and other growers were encouraged Saturday by predictions from the National Weather Service calling for milder temperatures, warming northeast winds and a cloudy inversion layer to help trap warm air near the ground. Those conditions were absent last weekend, when the county suffered $100 million in crop losses from the county’s first hard freeze of the season.

An extremely cold air mass just missed the county, weather service meteorologist Terry Schaeffer said.

“We dodged the bullet on this one when the coldest air mass went farther inland,” Schaeffer said. “We look pretty good, especially for the Oxnard Plain, the Santa Clara River Valley and the Santa Rosa and Las Posas valleys.”

Schaeffer said that Saturday night temperatures in the Ojai Valley and the canyons above Santa Paula were expected to dip into the mid- to upper 20s, at least 10 degrees higher than the 15-degree deep freeze last week. Ojai was expected to be the coldest area in the county at 25 degrees.

Sunday night temperatures were expected to stay above freezing in most areas, he said.

“But we’re still not out of the woods,” he said. “January is typically the coldest month of the year.”

Growers on Saturday decided their strategies to fight the frost based on the size of their operations, their philosophy and finances.

Smith was among the growers who decided to gamble on Schaeffer’s predictions for a mild night Saturday and leave his smudge pots cold to save on fuel.

“You hedge your bets on a small farm,” he said. “There is only so much you can do.”

He and his wife, Robin, ran sprinklers Saturday to keep ground temperatures up when the water freezes to form a layer of insulation.

But they had to sacrifice about a third of their 25-acre ranch, because the drought has left water in short supply and high demand.

“If Santa Paula Creek was still proper, I could irrigate the whole ranch,” he said. “But the creek went dry in September.”

He does not even consider using helicopters on a ranch his size, because the $500-per-hour cost would be prohibitive.

But Richard Lypps, who oversees farming operations for Newhall Land and Farming Co.’s 860 acres of pink grapefruit, navel and Valencia oranges, and lemons, said many of his decisions are similar to those of the small farmer.

Lypps does not use the smudge pots or orchard heaters, he said, because they are not economical when the cost of labor to light the pots is added to the rising cost of fuel.

He also gambled by watering only 10% of his orchard because of the scarcity of water.

But his ranch has the advantage of temperature-activated wind machines that warm up the groves when the mercury falls to the critical point, about 29 degrees for oranges.

In the most damaged orchards of Valencia oranges, tree after tree stood yellowing and dry, except for those nearest the warm engines that drive the wind machines, where leaves were vivid green.

Although his ranch can afford to use helicopters, he elected not to call them in, because he said they often duplicate the work done by wind machines.

“You can spend a lot of money,” he said, “and not be sure that you’re going to save any extra fruit.”

But in the long term, Lypps noted, the deeper pockets and broader base of the Newhall operation will give it an advantage over smaller ranches. The Piru citrus orchards, for example, are part of an agricultural network that draws revenues from walnuts, almonds and prunes in Chico; avocados, lemons and grapes in Santa Maria; and cotton, alfalfa and tomatoes in the San Joaquin Valley.

“That’s the nice part of being diversified and larger,” Lypps said.

Richard Underwood, a citrus and vegetable grower for more than 50 years on 400 acres in the Somis area, said he may not fire his heaters Saturday night, but “I’m making sure the fuel tanks are full and the wind machines are ready.”

Underwood, who grows specialty row crops in addition to citrus, said he had covered about two acres of his most valuable baby lettuce with plastic.

“Now I’ll prepare the rest of the way by sleeping,” he said Saturday afternoon.

Randy Axell, a citrus and avocado grower whose 95 acres are his family’s sole source of income, said his ranch had fared better than some, with only about 25% losses in his groves.

“I don’t use helicopters, because they are too expensive for me,” he said. “But we’ve got our water ordered, our pots filled with fuel and our wind machines ready.”

Axell said his family, which prepares for the bad years by saving during the good ones, will feel the pinch from the loss of this year’s crop in a way that the larger corporate grower will not.

“When I take a hit, I go to the bank and borrow more money,” he said. The corporate grower, he said, can spread the losses out among a larger base of assets.

But he cautioned all growers about too much optimism over the milder-than-expected temperatures Saturday night.

“Winter’s not over,” he said. “We’ve got 45 more days to go.”