JAUNTS : Just Ripe for Pickin’ : * Families find it’s fun to gather produce ranging from blackberries to black-eyed peas at Moorpark farm.

If the farmers’ market or the produce stand still isn’t fresh enough for you, there is still one option left: Pick it yourself.

That’s exactly what you do at Tierra Rejada Family Farms in Moorpark. You wander the tidy rows of fruits and vegetables spread out over 50 acres and pull off what you want.

Right now, the best pickings are blackberries, cucumber, zucchini, beans and strawberries, which are a new crop for the farm. Later summer offerings include apricots, lima beans, tomatoes, black-eyed peas and onions. There will be pumpkins in the fall.

The farm draws hundreds of people to the rural setting on weekends and they get a kick out of hand-picking what they will put on the dinner table that night.

The pick-your-own crowd has changed over the years, according to owner Rick Brecunier. Years ago, the do-it-yourself pickers were the no-nonsense people who canned their own fruit and vegetables.

“Now it’s more recreational,” he said. “Grandparents bring their grandchildren out. It’s a nice environment.”

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Jane Taschereau of Westlake Village was among a dozen or so pickers at the farm on a recent weekday. Her shoes were wet and muddy, but she didn’t care.

“I’m here all the time,” she said, after picking a basket of blackberries, and bags of green beans and baby squash. “Where else can you find things this fresh?”

“I enjoy cooking and when things are ripe here, I’m in heaven,” she said. The price is right too. “I can feed six people at a dinner party with this,” she said, holding up $1.65 worth of baby squash.

As for price, the strawberries were selling for 69 cents a pound, peaches and squash 55 cents a pound, green beans 75 cents a pound, and olalliberries--a cross between a youngberry and a loganberry--$1.50 a pound. (By comparison, a pint of strawberries at just under a pound was running about $1 at the supermarket.)

Brecunier said people are bowled over by the taste of freshly picked produce. “It knocks your socks off.”

In fact, when people are picking they find it irresistible to sample the stuff. “That’s expected--as long as they don’t sit down and make a meal of it,” said Craig Underwood, owner of Underwood Farm Market in Somis. Underwood and his partner, James Barker, recently teamed with Brecunier to help operate the Moorpark farm.

The new one-acre patch of strawberries has been a hit this spring, and they plan to increase the crop next year. The berries are big, juicy, and the picking is fairly easy.

On the weekends, the busiest times, there might be 40 to 50 people picking strawberries at any one time. Throughout the ranch there might be 80 to 100 pickers at any one time.

There isn’t much you’ll need to know before you head for the field. The produce stand at the entrance to the farm supplies bags and baskets, and little wagons for transporting produce back to the stand to be weighed. The crops are labeled, and to get to some, like the blackberries, you’ll need to walk a bit.

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Pickers are expected to work down a row and not hop from one row to the other, or trample the plants. Barker said they will guide people to the best picking spots.

“But they generally take no heed and dive in at the beginning of a row,” Barker said. “A lot of them pick more than they intended to.”

Many are repeat customers. In fact, a number of Italian families--one from as far away as Las Vegas--come back year after year to pick hundreds of pounds of tomatoes to can their own tomato sauce.

The farm grows 20 varieties of tomatoes, six kinds of cucumber, and four different green beans. The farmers are open to requests from customers for specialty crops, such as the mega-hot habanero pepper they grow.

“We’re not organic,” Underwood said. “But we practice safe farming methods. We spray minimally--only when we need to prevent crop loss.”

Brecunier’s father-in-law, Monroe Everett, bought the farm in 1935. Brecunier joined the operation in 1970 after he married his wife, Linnea. His first pick-your-own crop was pumpkins, and the farm now operates a popular pumpkin patch, as well as a cut-your-own Christmas tree lot.

Schoolchildren visit the farm and pick fruit and vegetables. By joining forces with Underwood Farms, Brecunier hopes to provide even more of a hands-on view of farming to the public.

Jane Hulse, who spends as much time as possible out of doors, is a regular contributor to Ventura County Life. If you have any outdoor recreational news, send it to her at Ventura County Life, 5200 Valentine Road, Suite 140, Ventura, 93003, or send faxes to 658-5576.

* WHAT: Tierra Rejada Family Farms, pick-your-own produce.

* WHERE: 3370 Moorpark Road, Moorpark.

* WHEN: Open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

* FYI: On the weekends, kids can take pony rides and see farm animals. The fruit and vegetable stand also sells herbs grown at the farm.