It’s been a wet week. Ojai and its mountains had the highest rainfall totals in all of California. Hydrographers call this precipitation pattern “flashy” – years of very low rainfall followed by a spectacular deluge when the conditions set up right. The Transverse Mountains sitting next to the Pacific. A perfect setup for orographic lift.
How do the trees and their precious fruit survive? The Ojai Valley was formed by this same weather pattern, so the “soil” is very rocky, and has a thick layer of rock underneath, especially in the higher eastern end of the valley where Churchill Orchard sits. Seasonal floods have pushed the rock downstream for millions of years, so the drainage is excellent.
Mike and the crew covered the Kishu trees in plastic sheeting – protection against the moisture, but also against the raindrops hammering the delicate skins. Yes, we have done this before. The covers will come off as soon as we have some sun.
On July 17 I was interviewed by Martha Raddatz, co-anchor of the ABC Sunday news magazine show This Week with George Stephanopoulos, about current immigration enforcement activities.
Why me? I’ve been doing production agriculture for 47 years; I work and have worked a lot with Mexican farm workers, and I’m willing to talk to journalists.
Our time was brief. The interview will be part of a big picture look at the Trump agenda 6 months in, including the Border Patrol, Tariffs, Downtown LA Immigration enforcement actions, and California agriculture. The entire segment is expected to end up at 6-7 minutes total, so there’s no telling how much of our conversation will end up being used.
I tried to say just a few things:
Farm labor is skilled labor and very hard work. It’s easy for somebody sitting at a computer to deem physical labor unskilled, but they should try it before they label it. You’re not going to replace skilled physical labor with people off the welfare rolls, and you’re not going to be able to automate the work — you need the people. Food production in the US today is utterly dependent on farm workers, many of whom are undocumented.
If you remove farm workers from the fields you’re going to impact production. That’s arithmetic – crops need to be planted, tended, harvested, packed – that takes skilled people, and fewer people yields less food.
Immigrant farm workers come to this country, and have been coming to this country forever, because there is a demand for their labor. So if you don’t want them to come, go after the demand – enforce on the employers who draw them here, not the laborers. And if you do want them to come, then make it possible for them to be here – let there be a path to live and work and pay taxes here legally.
Farm laborers are not criminals, as they are so often made out to by the current administration.They’re hardworking individuals trying to provide for their families.
A second subject that I tried to talk about is the social and personal disruption that the current enforcement actions are causing. Statistics from the people who have been rounded up show that most of them have been here for at least 10 years, and many for 20 years. They live here, work here, shop here, pay taxes here, send their children to school here. The way the current round-ups are going, families are losing their breadwinners, often without knowing that the person has even been taken until he doesn’t come home, or where he’s been taken, or how to find him. Entire communities are staying at home from fear of going out, and as they stay home the businesses that they spend their money at are closing, and more people lose their jobs. The human cost is enormous, and it’s going to get worse.
I have an undocumented friend. She wanted to tell her story but the producers heard from the Legal Department that they couldn’t guarantee confidentiality, so she chose to stay home. I asked if she wanted to tell her story to me and I could pass it on; here it is, as dictated in Spanish to her daughter who translated it on the fly as she was typing it into her phone:
I want to share some of my life story. Already here living in Ojai. Since I arrived 25 years ago until today, I have worked hard. I never asked the government for help. I have always paid my taxes. I have worked hard to give my children an education because I am a single mother. I had moral support from my family but I had to work double shifts. I did not come to this country to take or steal from you. I taught my children to work since they were 16 years old. I taught them to work. I know that we are in a country that does not belong to us. I want to apologize. Because I know the law is violated. But rest assured that I consider myself a person who was never a burden to your government. I had the opportunity to apply for a U visa, which I had no idea existed due to domestic abuse and I never did. I always worked. And today, in these days, my family and I are following the policies of the new government. I am no one to criticize this government, but I know that deep down in your heart I hope and understand us. We just want to live freely, not to be harassed because of the color of my skin, my physique, or my language. It’s a great shame to walk or go to the store, to church, because I’m just taking care of myself. And since I’m not talking about work, I lost my job. All because of the fact that people are scared these days. There are no sales in restaurants, and I had to rest. I’m surviving on my few savings, or my children can help me a little. I want my voice and my story to be told. I know I’m just a voice, but behind me there are acquaintances who are worse off than me. They have small children and are afraid to be separated from them. Acquaintances who have been deported. And yes… if they ask me why don’t you go back to your country… it’s not that I don’t want to leave, but that my children have lived their lives here, thank you very much. Even if I’m not here, it won’t change, but I know that someone with a good heart has made everything. I speak for all those people who are suffering. Thank you very much.
Mike’s been farming Churchill Orchard for 12 years now!
He’s developed his own game… Mike talks about learning how to farm with nature and still bring in a delicious harvest in this 3-minute video.
Mike: “The oak trees take what, 5% of the space of the orchard? Maybe.
I guess I would argue that we take up a lot more space than the oak trees do. Whether it’s roads, cars, citrus trees, etc…. the least we can do is carve out a little bit for what has been here for eons.
We don’t need to fill every square foot with citrus. The hope is to find it some balance, right? We look for that balance because we think it makes for better farming. We think that having more habitat for birds, more habitat for certain insects, promotes what we’re trying to do agriculturally. We can we can have a successful orchard and give up that space and have a magnitude healthier environment for the orchard.”
Video: Churchill Orchard’s Native Planter: Mike Sullivan
Since Mike came to Churchill Orchard 13 years ago, he has steadily embroidered its citrus and avocado groves with a crazy quilt of native plants. There is a method to this madness.
We just noticed – January 2024 is the 20th Anniversary of the birth of our little “Little Wonder” Kishu mandarin brand. It kinda snuck up on us. But we thought we would take a moment and celebrate the little guy.
Kishu mandarin has a history far older than its rebranding as “Kishu” in 1880s Japan.
We encountered the Kishu in 2000 on a tour of Citrus Variety Collection conducted by Ottillia Biehr. We thought it was cute and might make a nice little Christmas snack.
So we planted 50 Kishu trees (special order, because no one was growing the Kishu), and waited for them to grow.
As soon as we had fruit, we took the first Kishus to Bill Fujimoto at Monterey Market.
Bill had introduced our Pixie tangerines to his customers, and we thought we had another great mandarin to share.
Things got a little out of hand. People started calling the house, wanting shipments.
We built a primitive system for taking orders (ht Formdesk!), and the Little Wonder was born.
Our first mail order was packed on the dining room table (no barn yet).
We entered the Logo Era, the short-lived Recipe Era (Ham a la Kishu?), the Kishu Merch Era (that Kishu apron was fire), and the Meme Era (surfing Kishu bear!)
It’s time to do a little roundup of the nice articles that have made us a part of the fruit lover’s world. We’re grateful to these writers and editors. Some of you are here because of them.
Shoutout to David Karp, Ruth Reichl, José Andres, Lisa Morehouse, Kit Stolz, Sarah Henry, Alejandra Borunda, and Russ Parsons (!)
We had a block of Pixie trees that turned out to be growing on the wrong rootstock.
Turns out that the wrong rootstock for Pixies is a goodrootstock for Kishus.
So we are grafting – or “topworking” – them over to Kishus.
Yes, more Kishu trees.
Grafting? Yes – here’s a brief introduction.
Grafting is an ancient horticultural practice where tissues of two plants are joined so that they grow together as a single plant.
The top part of the grafted plant is called the scion; the lower part is called the rootstock.
The rootstock provides the roots, anchorage, and support for the scion. Rootstock can also provide resistance to pests and diseases, or tolerance to specific environmental conditions.
The scion provides the desired characteristics of the tree, such as fruit variety, flower color, or growth habit.
The bud union is the point where the scion and rootstock are joined.
In a successful graft, the vascular tissues of the two plants grow together.
If the bud union fails, the graft will not be successful.
To topwork our Pixies into Kishus, Sam Garibay, the skilled artisan who does the actual grafting, will “scaffold” or prune the Pixie tree back, leaving only a few branches of 2-3 inch diameter or smaller. He does this some weeks before the actual grafting, and leaves at least one branch to serve as a “nurse limb”, with leaves to keep the water and nutrients flowing up into the parts of the tree what will receive the grafts.
Using a very sharp grafting knife, he then slips 1–3 pieces of Kishu budwood under the bark – so it makes contact with the Pixie cambium layer on the upper side of the remaining scaffold limbs. Paint with sealer, and cover with paper cones to protect the tender buds.
Then wait.
A few months later, we have 40 takes out of 53 trees grafted. That’s with Sam coming back to regraft two times. Some of the little sprouts are so wee and tiny that they might not make it.
If the topworking is successful, we’ve switched the tree to produce a different variety of citrus. The mature root system can push a lot of energy into those new branches, so we could be seeing more Kishus in a couple more years. It’s not an instant makeover, but puts these trees back in production in 3-4 years.
We just noticed – January 2024 is the 20th Anniversary of the birth of our little “Little Wonder” Kishu mandarin brand. It kinda snuck up on us. But we thought we would take a moment and celebrate the little guy.
