Farmers Have Warm Feeling About Effects of Cold Spell

After the icicles had melted from Bob Pinkerton’s lemon trees, he plucked a pale yellow fruit from a branch, cut it in half and took a bite.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Pinkerton said Wednesday, wiping the juice from his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s a perfectly good lemon.”

Although this week’s subfreezing temperatures have destroyed the entire lemon crop in the San Joaquin Valley, Pinkerton is one Ventura County farmer who actually expects to benefit from the cold snap.

The devastating losses of lemon crops elsewhere in the state will drive up the price of lemons, Pinkerton said. As a result, Pinkerton--as well as other local lemon farmers--stands to make more money on the crop this season.

“It’s never good when farmers suffer damage,” said Pinkerton, who is the first vice president of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “I hate to gloat; I don’t want to gloat. But we’ve been very fortunate here in Ventura County. . . . That we’ll make more money goes without saying. It’s all based on supply and demand.”

Pinkerton was relieved that the temperatures that dipped to the upper 20s early Wednesday had not damaged his 100 acres of lemon and avocado orchards. Like other farmers throughout Ventura County, Pinkerton ran his wind machines and sprinklers all night to keep his groves warm.

The 54-year-old Santa Paula man was just one of the worried local ranchers this week. California produces 80% of the nation’s lemon supply, and Ventura County accounts for 65% of the state’s lemons.

As it turned out, however, the three nights of frigid air produced another positive side effect: Pinkerton believes he may finally be rid of the swarms of perseae mites and citrus thrips that have been attacking the leaves of his avocado trees.

Of the countless types of parasitic insects in the county, perseae causes the most alarm, he said. The mites latch onto the undersides of leaves and drain them of chlorophyll, killing them.

Despite spraying, the perseae and citrus thrips infestation has been impossible to control, Pinkerton said. But he thinks the past few nights of subfreezing temperatures may finally have ended the problem.

“Hopefully, it will wipe out these pests,” he said. “Nothing else has worked.”

After checking his crops Wednesday morning, Pinkerton ducked into his truck to listen to the latest weather forecast, which would determine his plan of action that night.

“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” said the newscaster. “We are beginning to back out of the cold snap.”

In fact, temperatures in Santa Paula and Moorpark were expected to be in the low 30s this morning, said Wes Etheredge, a meteorologist at WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

Temperatures in Fillmore, Piru and Ojai this morning were predicted to be in the upper 20s--making them the county’s coldest communities. In Ventura, Oxnard and other areas along the coast, overnight temperatures were expected to be in the mid-30s, Etheredge said.

Today should mark the beginning of a gradual warming trend, he said. Daytime highs are expected to be in the upper 50s in coastal areas; low 60s in Fillmore, Piru and Ojai; and upper 50s to low 60s in Moorpark and Santa Paula.

“Christmas Day will also be mostly sunny,” Etheredge said, predicting early Friday temperatures throughout the county in the upper 30s to upper 40s. Saturday and Sunday, daytime temperatures will reach the 60s, he said.

Pinkerton said he doubted he would again be forced to keep his 15 wind machines and sprinklers running throughout the night. The machines and sprinklers increase the temperature near his crops up to 5 degrees, he said.

The propellers atop his 50-foot-tall wind machines stir up cold air and provide a “ceiling” to keep the warmer air closer to the trees. The well water running through the sprinklers saturates the trees with water at 60 degrees, which also gives off heat as it freezes, he said.

“We aggressively attacked the freeze and won,” Pinkerton said. “As a farmer, you’ve always got to plan ahead because you never know what can happen. We’re at the whim of Mother Nature.”