Farmers Dream of Frost-Free Christmas : Weather: A forecaster says this winter will be mild and maybe even wetter than average, unlike last year’s killer cold season.

A year ago, farmers watched in horror as temperatures plummeted to devastating lows. Many spent nights in their groves, stumbling in to the family Christmas dinner weary and worried about the night ahead.

But this year, farmers can relax over the holidays, National Weather Service meteorologist Terry Schaeffer said. For the next week, he forecasts only a few nights cold enough to warrant the use of heaters and wind machines to warm the groves.

And none of those nights will bring the kind of dry and damaging cold that farmers saw last Christmas, with temperatures that hovered in the teens and low 20s for hours on end. For the winter as a whole, Schaeffer expects a more normal season, with relatively mild cold spells and average or above-average rainfall.

“If I’m right, it will be good for the recovery of the trees,” Schaeffer said.

Mild weather and good rainfall in the coming year would be a Christmas wish come true, said Richard Pidduck, a citrus and avocado grower whose Santa Paula orchards were among the hardest hit by the December freeze.

Buoyed by Schaeffer’s predictions, Pidduck is taking his family out of state to visit relatives for Christmas.

“But I’ll be tracking the weather very closely, and I’ll be ready to come back at the first hint of a serious threat,” he said.

Last year, before the four-day deep freeze began Dec. 21, Pidduck was confident about the year ahead.

“I had a good crop on the trees and a reasonable cushion in my bank account,” he said. “This year, I’ve used up the cushion and I don’t have much of a crop, so I’m a little bit more anxious.”

Pidduck and other growers whose ranches were in the county’s cold pockets expect light crops this year as trees continue to recover, with production at about one-third of normal. Most plan to be back in full production by the spring of 1993.

Ventura County farmers lost $128 million in the most financially destructive freeze in the area’s history. The four-day cold snap destroyed one-third of county’s lemon crop and more than half of its oranges and avocados. Growers of celery, strawberries and flowers also lost millions. Damage to trees is expected to keep yields low for another year, growers said.

The freeze sent agricultural unemployment soaring in the county, as half of the county’s 7,000 farm laborers lost their jobs. About 3,000 of those people remain out of work, said Earl McPhail, county agricultural commissioner.

In a normal year, many of those people would be at work picking or packing the early lemon harvest that usually begins in December. But this year, the harvest will begin late. In addition to diminished production caused by the freeze, the trees suffered from a cool and foggy summer that did not encourage growth.

“The fruit just hasn’t matured yet,” McPhail said.

Sarah DeLeon, who owns a Santa Paula labor contracting firm with her husband, Ralph, said their company has work for only about 50 people. This time of year, the firm, known as SAMCO, usually has 300 people on the payroll, she said.

“We’ve been in the business for 27 years, and we’ve never seen it like this before,” she said.

Another 100 of SAMCO’s workers are employed outside the state. Growers paid to fly SAMCO workers to pick oranges in Florida and macadamia nuts in Hawaii.

“That’s why macadamia nuts are so expensive,” she said.

Rex Laird, executive director of the county’s Farm Bureau, said Ventura County growers have raised enough money to help a few farm-worker families who are in danger of being evicted from their homes.

“It’s kind of a meager attempt,” he said. “But we are trying to raise more money. It’s in everyone’s best interest.”

Meanwhile, growers like Pidduck and Bob Davis, whose Ojai citrus ranch lost one-third of its crop, are prepared for the winter ahead.

“I have my wind machines in place and my heaters set up,” Davis said. Last Christmas, Davis stayed in some of his best groves, using everything in a grower’s arsenal to protect his fruit, including heaters, wind machines, water and helicopters. And he said the prices he received for the fruit from those groves made his efforts worthwhile.

But he hopes for a Christmas this year that is less eventful than the last.

“You can’t let a little thing like a freeze stop Christmas,” he said. “But last year, it came damn close.”