Picking Up : Local Orange Groves Good as Gold After Bad Winter

A fragrant scent hung over the field. Ladders reached into the shiny green reaches of citrus trees.

Workmen on the ladders leaned into the verdant boughs. Gloved hands, magician-like, excised orange after orange, tossing them into red satchels carried over shoulders.

Harvest time was in full swing in the orange groves of the Irvine Ranch.

The scene Wednesday harked back to an era when oranges were a huge element of the county. But even though reduced in number and economic influence, the orange trees of Orange County still constitute an important industry--especially this year.

State agricultural officials said Wednesday that Orange County’s citrus crop is among the few to have survived a disastrous freeze last December. That unusually cold weather during Christmas week ruined oranges in hundreds of groves.

“Statewide, the Valencia oranges will be down 59% this year compared to last year,” said Ray Borton, an economist with the state Department of Food and Agriculture in Sacramento.

By contrast, the Valencia groves on 3,000 acres of the Irvine Ranch mostly survived.

“The cold weather veered eastward and didn’t hurt us as badly,” said Alan Reynolds, orchard manager for Treasure Farms, which leases the Irvine Ranch land.

“We had a small amount of damage. The temperature here in some spots reached down to 23 degrees. But up in the Central Valley it got down to 11 degrees. We (in Orange County) were lucky. That’s all it is was: luck. If that cold weather had come south with the same intensity as up north, we’d have lost it.”

Only about 5% of the trees in Orange County suffered damage, Reynolds said. And since April, harvesting has been under way.

On Wednesday, thousands of oranges hung from the boughs of stately trees, lined in military precision, at Treasure Farms. Workmen moved from tree to tree, stripping each of its fruit.

The quick removal of the oranges is deceptive, said Carlos Ruiz, field superintendent for Irvine Valencia Growers, the cooperative that harvests oranges for Treasure Farms.

“It may look as if the men are pulling the oranges off, but they are not,” Ruiz said. “Each man carries a cutter in his hand. They slice the orange off, then toss it into the bag. If the orange is pulled off, it leaves a hole, and the orange wouldn’t last long after that. It wouldn’t last for shipment overseas, where most of these oranges are going. . . . We must be careful not to leave stems that would puncture other oranges after they’re packed. All of this takes great skill. These men have been working at this for many years, and they now how to do this.”

The workers are all legal immigrants from Mexico, Ruiz said. All are men.

“We had some women who worked in the groves a few years ago, but none now,” he said.

The filled satchels weigh about 55 pounds, Ruiz said. “A worker starts high on the tree then moves down as the bag starts filling.”

With the speed of an athlete, Marcello Gilis, 24, moved up and down his 20-foot ladder, adroitly snipping orange after orange and tossing them into his shoulder satchel.

Gilis and 51 other workmen on the job emptied full satchels into metal bins. A motorized “bin retriever” then moved into the grove to mechanically load the bins.

“The bins go to the packing house, then the oranges are washed and packed by machines,” Ruiz said.

As the day wore on, some of the workmen called jokes to each other. Some sang.

Oranges disappeared from tree after tree--much as orange trees themselves have tended to disappear in Orange County over the past 30 years, Ruiz said.

“I can remember when orange trees covered so much of the land,” he said. “It’s a shame to see them go. But what can you do?”