Rail Tour a Chance to Explore Rural Roots

Farmer Francisca Cornejo knows all about carving new markets, having helped her family turn a small roadside fruit stand near Fillmore into a thriving open-air food shop that draws thousands of visitors each year.

Now, she’s pushing a cash crop of a different kind.

Cornejo and other growers in the bucolic Santa Clara Valley are teaming with the Fillmore & Western Railway Co. to launch the Agri-Express, a rail service designed to draw tourists eager to experience life on the farm and willing to dig into their wallets to do so.

Chugging along a line dubbed the Orange Blossom Route, passengers will visit the farms, nurseries and packinghouses that blanket Ventura County’s agricultural heartland between Santa Paula and Piru, a six-hour, 20-mile tour.

Aboard a vintage locomotive, they’ll hear from growers such as Cornejo about the challenges and changes facing farmers in this verdant valley, especially at a time when many are being squeezed by rising production costs and slumping commodity prices.

“This is the kind of thing we need to help keep small farmers alive,” Cornejo told a group of hospitality workers aboard a dry run of the tour this week. “We have tourism in this corridor and we need to maintain it.”

The effort taps a larger movement to marry agriculture and entertainment. Scrambling to win the hearts and minds of the produce-buying public, small farms are increasingly opening pick-your-own plots, carving cornfield mazes and offering other farm-themed enticements to draw customers hungry to reconnect to their rural roots.

More than 600 farms in California now offer such direct-marketing components, a fivefold increase over the past decade. Dubbed “agritourism” or “agritainment,” those efforts now generate an estimated $75 million statewide, additional income that for some growers can mean the difference between staying afloat or drowning in red ink.

Some counties, including El Dorado and Ventura, have eased restrictions on growers who want to give visitors a taste of country living through festivals, fairs and other on-farm activities.

The Agri-Express puts the tourism trend on the rails, ushering passengers past sugar cane fields and citrus orchards for an up-close view of a valley still largely untouched by urbanization.

Billed as the only agritourism rail tour in California, the venture is the brainchild of David and Tresa Wilkinson, who own and operate the Fillmore & Western Railway Co.

The rail company draws about 60,000 passengers annually with its dinner trains, special event excursions and seasonal treks to a pumpkin patch and Christmas tree farm. But the couple have been interested for years in running the farm tours, an idea that only recently picked up steam as farmers launched their own agritourism ventures.

The tours will be held March 24, April 21 and May 19. Costs are expected to range from $59 to $89 per passenger and include lunch, entry fees and seasonal samples of fruits and vegetables.

“This valley is rich in agricultural history, and the train has played a big part in that,” Tresa Wilkinson said. “A lot of people don’t know anything about where their fruits and vegetables come from. This provides an opportunity to take the train and see up close how the food gets to market and to your table.”

At the Limoneira Co., the county’s largest grower and the first stop on the tour, officials figure they’ve got plenty to sell.

After more than a century of farming the fertile fields in the Santa Clara Valley, the Santa Paula-based grower has embraced the agritourism movement, offering a range of farm-themed adventures such as horseback riding, chuck wagon lunches and gourmet orchard dining. The Agri-Express begins with a tour of Limoneira’s 80-year-old lemon packinghouse.

“We’ve decided this is going to be another key component of our business,” said Sarah Skeels, Limoneira’s special projects manager. “What we have here is rare and we want to share it. We want to promote the community, promote this company and promote this valley.”

The valley itself is movie-set pretty, with the rails slicing through fragrant orange groves and fields heavy this time of year with pumpkins and sugar cane. The tour will include stops at Cornejo’s Fruit Stand near Santa Paula, Giessinger Winery in downtown Fillmore and Rancho Camulos east of Piru, a working ranch studded with walnut trees, pepper fields and botanical gardens.

As the tour this week cut through property farmed by California Watercress, farmer Catherine King was onboard handing out samples and talking up the importance of efforts such as the agritourism train. She said people need to know that local growers work hard to resist development pressures and preserve agriculture.

“We’ve seen tremendous changes over the years,” King told the hotel workers and tourism officials. “Our biggest hope is that we’ll be able to have the next generation make a life in farming, but it’s going to be hard.”

For more information, visit www.fwry.com.