Citrus Festival Celebrates a Way of Life for Residents of Santa Paula

When Santa Paulans attend their city’s annual citrus festival, they aren’t just celebrating a piece of history.

Al Guilin, executive vice president of Limoneira Co., one of the oldest and largest citrus growers in the area, says the lemon, orange and grapefruit industry is so central to Santa Paula, he can’t imagine the city without it.

“It would be a different city if it weren’t for the citrus here,” said Guilin, who helped sell Limoneira T-shirts and hats at this year’s festival, which attracted thousands of participants Friday through Sunday at Veterans Memorial Park. “I don’t know what it would be.”

Ventura County farmers probably first grew lemons and other citrus fruits in the early 1890s, Guilin said.

Now citrus is the county’s biggest crop and Guilin estimates that the Santa Paula orchards account for more than a third of the lemons, oranges and grapefruit grown in the county.

Overall, orchards bearing these three fruits covered 40,834 acres around Ventura County in 1991 and had a value of $320.6 million, according to the annual crop report of the county’s agricultural commissioner.

Gary Wikholm, who served as festival chairman this year for the local Kiwanis Club, which sponsored the event, agreed that the citrus industry is vital to Santa Paula’s economy.

“We’re all dependent on it,” he said.

In his work as a physician, the most common insurance payments Wikholm receives are from United Agriculture, Citrus Trust and other private funds operated by the area’s growers.

Most of his patients are farm workers, Wikholm said. And he treats back problems and broken arms and legs caused when workers fall off ladders while picking fruit.

As Wikholm helped run the bingo games in the Kiwanis Club’s tent at the festival, Alice Porras, 58, took orders for sopas, tacos and other Mexican specialties in the nearby food booth sponsored by Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

Porras, who was born in Santa Paula, said citrus even plays a role in the homemaking traditions in the city’s Latino community, which accounts for about 60% of the population.

Lemons, the largest single crop in the county and in Santa Paula, are particularly important, Porras said.

Latino families use lemons to make menudo, a dish made mainly of tripe and hominy, Porras said.

They also use the fruit for housecleaning. “We use it in the dishwater a lot,” she said, adding that the lemon is particularly good at removing the scent of egg from dishes.

Lemon is also used to deodorize garbage disposals and to remove spots from clothes, she said.

But the most important thing about Santa Paula’s citrus industry is that it provides jobs, Porras said.

“There are people who can’t get jobs any other place” except the orchards, she said.

One of these farm workers is Marcelino Garcia, 28.

Garcia attended the festival Sunday afternoon with Jesus Espinoza, 19. They both earn their living picking lemons, earning $40 to $60 a day.

“We do like it,” Garcia said. But “we really don’t know anything else.”

“It’s difficult and heavy” work, said Espinoza, adding that part of the job is lugging bags containing 40 to 50 pounds of lemons over their shoulders.

Benito Cancino, 33, was more frank about his ambivalence toward his job picking lemons.

“It’s a lot of work for little money,” said Cancino, who came to the festival with his wife, Alva, and 2-year-old son, Jose Luis.

Eventually, Cancino said, he would like to learn English so he can work in an office.