Fat Pickings : Summer Harvest Is Bountiful--and It Goes to Market Locally

Work starts early on the 800 acres farmed by A.G. Kawamura.

By 6 a.m. every morning but Sunday, field laborers, their heads wrapped in red handkerchiefs, are out in force slicing sweet corn from stalks and picking green beans from stems.

“It’s always busy in Orange County,” said Kawamura, 40, who, like many other area farmers, leases his land from the Irvine Co.

According to agricultural officials, however, August is different here in at least one respect: A wider range of crops is harvested at this time of year than at any other time.

“Just about anything you see on the wet table in a grocery store is harvested now,” said John Ellis, the county’s deputy agricultural commissioner. “Summers are the most active in terms of variety.”

In Orange County, that means not only corn and green beans but cucumbers, peppers, squash, tomatoes and even some leaf lettuce--all of which brought in about $21.6 million last year.

Currently, Kawamura’s responsibility extends to about 200 men and women--virtually all of them Spanish-speaking--who, unlike the seasonal migrant workers in other areas, generally work steadily all year for about $4.40 an hour.

“We try to take care of our employees,” said Kawamura, whose family has farmed in the county since 1955.

The work is hard but can be satisfying.

“I like the fresh air,” said Donaciano Munoz, 31, who has spent most of his life employed on farms, as were his parents. “It’s part of my heredity. When you’re born into it, it’s easy.”

Javier Terrazas, 23, said he takes pride in the product.

“When I’m in the grocery store and I see something of ours,” he said, “I point it out to my friends.”

The produce gets to the grocery store by a fairly direct route.

The process begins at the fields. Kawamura said that 40 years ago, Orange County was much more rural; farms were surrounded by other farms, where today they are surrounded by freeways, cities and housing tracts.

In the middle of Kawamura’s cornfield, however, the atmosphere is as rural as anywhere in America as crews trek behind tractors, slicing ears of corn off their stalks and tossing them into a bin. The process is slightly different for green beans, which stooping workers pick by hand and throw into baskets.

Later, they sort the produce according to its quality, then pack it in wooden crates. Before day’s end it will be transported to a warehouse in Fullerton, where it is refrigerated and stored.

And within 24 hours, Kawamura said, most will be on display in the produce departments of supermarkets throughout Orange County. While many of the farm’s winter crops are sent out of state, he said, most of those harvested in summer are sold locally.

“It’s great corn,” offered Arnold Troftgruben, 76, a retired teacher who said he makes regular forages from his home in Santa Ana to Kawamura’s field to buy directly. “The sooner you get it, the better it is.”

Because of competition from out of state and the high cost of production in California, Kawamura said, last year was not a good one for his company.

“Business is not great,” the farmer said. “We’re not running back and forth to the bank making deposits. We’re hoping for a better fall.”

Part of the solution, he said, lies in not producing more than can be sold. At the same time, Kawamura is adopting better technologies to improve productivity per acre. But in the final analysis, he said, the success of ventures like his lies with supermarket customers.

“We have a population that doesn’t know much about agriculture,” Kawamura said. “If we can convince people in Orange County to buy local products, we can feed the county with its own resources.”

He paused a moment before continuing.

“After all,” Kawamura said, “this is Orange County. We can grow almost anything here.”