Growers Now Face Erosion Problems : Weather: Owners of hillside orchards work to prevent future damage. But no one complains about the recent rain.

Still reeling from $128 million in crop losses from a December freeze and smarting under rising water costs, Ventura County farmers now face new expenses to repair erosion damage from heavy rains.

No estimates on the amount of erosion damage in the county were available, but ranchers whose hillside orchards were laced with cascading rivulets during recent storms were working Tuesday to prevent more damage from further rainfall.

Some growers installed pipes to divert runoff from trees. Many worked to unclog pipes and drains that were stopped up with dried leaves. Others brought in tractors to clear mud off roads.

On one Santa Paula ranch, it will take bulldozers to move huge boulders that rolled down from the hills and blocked access to the back of the ranch, said Don Reeder of Pro-Ag Inc., the Moorpark-based company that manages the ranch.

“That’s about $7,000 in unplanned expenses,” said Reeder, the president of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “It’s really sad when it’s in a frost area and you’re working to protect trees with no leaves.”

But no one was complaining about the erosion damage Tuesday, despite the vagaries of nature that dried out fields during nearly five years of drought only to pound them with almost eight inches of rain in less than a week.

“It’s damage that we’ll open the door for any time, as long as we get the moisture with it,” said Rob Brokaw, whose family owns a nursery and ranches in Santa Paula and Ventura.

Growers who had braced for more rain Tuesday gained time for repairs when a second storm front fizzled out, leaving only about half an inch of rain in Santa Paula and a third of an inch in Ventura. The two tropical storms brought the total rainfall since Feb. 28 to 7.98 inches in Santa Paula and 6.39 inches at the County Government Center. Both areas still need another eight inches this year to reach normal rainfall levels.

National Weather Service meteorologist Terry Schaeffer called for a chance of showers Tuesday night, but he expected no significant rainfall again until the weekend. By late Saturday or Sunday, Schaeffer said, a colder front from the north is expected to move into the area.

“The next storm won’t be as big as the last one,” Schaeffer said. “That’s something you get once every five or 10 years.” The storm that began Thursday and continued through Monday was the wettest the county has had since 1980, when a Santa Paula rain station measured 7 inches in 12 hours, he said.

“But the next storm is still not a foregone conclusion,” he said.

A gentler rain would have prevented erosion damage, but the hard rain carried benefits as well. In addition to delaying the need to irrigate, it drove farther into the soil the minerals that build up around tree roots, Reeder said.

“The leaves already look better,” he said.

Reeder said he doubted that many vegetable growers would experience erosion problems because their fields are mostly on flat terrain.

“They may have to drain off some water,” he said. But all things considered, “we’ll take the rain any time.”

The heavy rainfall and continuing drizzle also are damaging nearly ripe strawberries that ranchers harvest early to take advantage of the lucrative spring market, said Richard Doener, controller at Bob Jones Ranch Inc. in El Rio.

He said the ranch’s losses would be in the thousands of dollars, but he declined to be more specific. Hard rain harms the nearly ripe berries and stimulates mildew growth.

“It’s normal for this time of year,” he said. “We just call in the helicopters to spray for the mildew, and they take care of it for us.”