Family farm makes life 'peachy' for Boys and Girls Club
By JEFF GOODMAN, Bakersfield Californian Staff Writer - Thursday, June 17th, 2010 - 6:00 PM
Vickie Murray with Murray Family Farms shows children at the Boys and Girls Club of Bakersfield how to prepare the pit of a cherry, to be used in a seed-spitting contest, by eating the fruit around it. Murray Family Farms donated the fruit for the children to help educate them about eating fresh fruit.
California farm diversifies for success
March, 2010 edition - Fruit Growers News
By Alan Kandel, Western Editor
Murray Family Farms is based in Kern County, Calif., at the southernmost end of the San Joaquin Valley. The diverse agritourism operation has two locations: a 42-acre fruit farm and a 70-acre fruit and vegetable farm, what the Web site refers to as the “southern gateways to California’s Central Valley.”
Besides on-site bakeries and petting zoos, the business offers u-pick, wagon rides and other family activities. Prima Frutta Packing, Warmerdam Packing and Hurst Berry are responsible for wholesale sales. They pack and ship the farm’s fruit domestically and internationally to Japan, Korea and Taiwan, among other countries.
Murray Family Farms, like nearly all of its state counterparts, has had to weather rough economic times, weather and water vagaries and wide swings in production and pricing, but to Steve Murray, challenges are nothing new.
When Steve was 18, his father died and the estate went bankrupt. This forced the Murrays to rely on food stamps. Steve was attending college at the time.
The family eventually got back on its feet, however, and Steve completed his studies at the University of California, Riverside. After graduating, he became a pest control adviser for Monsanto, which he did for 25 years.
Having relocated to Bakersfield, Calif., in 1983, Steve started S.M. Apiaries, amassing up to 300 beehives, on top of his involvement with Monsanto.
In 1989, Steve, his wife Vickie and their three children traded their Bakersfield home for a 20-acre table grape farm in the country. Ten of those acres were leased and turned into a cherry nursery, and they used Steve’s credit card to buy more farmland.
And the rest is history, more or less.
Realities
Since the frost of 2006 and the three-year drought, the economy and the weather have made life increasingly difficult for Californians – southern cherry farmers in particular. In the face of such adversity, many farms and farmers have been forced to make adjustments.
“Because money is tight, we now ‘cash-flow’ all development activities,” Steve said.
Water at Murray Family Farms comes courtesy of the San Joaquin River by way of the 52,000-acre Arvin-Edison Water Storage District. Thanks to water shortages, the district has had to rely on pumps to extract water that was “banked” in the aquifer during wet years. In 2009, only 2 inches of rain fell in the district. This year, rains have been more abundant, but if they persist through harvest it could create issues for cherries and blueberries. An early spring could also be followed by an untimely frost, he said.
The economy has created pressures of its own. Fruit prices and tourist numbers can still be affected, even when the weather cooperates. Attendance is up but the public is spending less per person. Prices for blueberries were pitiful, but those for California cherries were good due to the light crop, Steve said.
The Murrays turned to agritourism as a diversification strategy, but it has risks of its own.
“Agritourism eats up all of your available cash and then soaks up all of your profits in continuous upgrades, new venues and infrastructure,” Steve said. “In 2009, we had about 7,000 school kids in group tours visit our farm, down by 30 percent due to cuts in school transportation budgets. Attendance will be down an additional 25 percent in 2010.”
More than 75 percent of the farm’s income comes from international sales through the packing houses and interstate travelers at the fruit stands. The farm also brings in dollars from farmers’ markets in southern California and the coast. More than 75 percent of its expenses go to local employees that live in a seriously distressed economy, Steve said.
Uniqueness
The farm’s employees are the keys to its success, however. Juan Garcia is the farm manager, and the retail managers are Liliana Loquin, Bob Enger and Laura Garcia. The farm also employs two students in the Bakersfield College culinary program as bakers, he said.
Besides the approximately 36 full-time employees needed for winter work, as many as 660 are present during peak cherry harvest, 600 of whom are contracted pickers. But the enterprise could get by with just four full-time employees if agritourism weren’t part of the operation.
Besides the roughly “170 varieties of tree and vine fruit for farmers’ markets and our two fruit stands,” the farm also grows 360 acres of commercially produced apricots, blueberries and cherries, Steve said.
“We are known for producing some of the earliest cherries in California.”
Furthermore, “Chilling is essential for many of the crops that I produce,” Steve said. “We continue to break records on low winter chilling.”
Agritourism customers consist of local residents, school children and tourists. There are tours for college students and faculty. Both Bakersfield College and California State Polytechnic University participate.
The farm participates in 18 farmers’ markets. Steve expects to team up with an existing Community Supported Agricultural program very soon. For more information, call 661-330-3030 or visit the Web site: www.murrayfamilyfarms.com.
