In an all-night battle marked by bone-chilling cold, the screech of frost alarms and roaring wind machines, Ojai citrus grower Emily Ayala focused on keeping her Pixie tangerine trees alive.
Ayala started the machines around 10 p.m. Friday, when the thermometer hit 32 degrees. Joined by her husband and father, she was back out at 1 a.m. to light smudge pots, trying to create some badly needed heat.
By 3 a.m., when temperatures had plunged to the mid-20s, Ayala, who is four months pregnant, finally crawled into bed. She and her family have farmed 75 acres in this often cold corner of the Ojai Valley for five generations.
"There's not much you can do," said the 34-year-old Ayala, surveying foot-long icicles hanging like fringe from the bottom of orange trees early Saturday morning. "I like farming because I'm my own boss to some extent. Mother Nature is the real boss on a day like today."
Still, she wasn't giving up as she prepared to try to save her crops a second time Saturday night, when temperatures were expected to drop again.
A few miles away, another Ojai grower, Jim Churchill, was taking some of the same precautions Friday night. As he walked his 17 acres of citrus and avocados near midnight, he made quick calculations on what was worth trying to save and what he should let go. "I'm writing them off," Churchill said of a small grove of Hass avocados adjoining his citrus orchard. "I just can't save them."
It was a battle happening around the state as the cold snap had its greatest effect on citrus groves. Some areas -- particularly Ojai and parts of Tulare, Kern, Fresno and Madera counties -- suffered partial or total crop losses, officials said. "We suffered a hit," said Joel Nelson of California Citrus Mutual, a growers organization.
Elsewhere, the weather broke records in Southern California, delighted skiers and provided strangers with a conversation ice-breaker but generally didn't keep people from going about their business.
As the sun was fading Friday, Churchill and his wife, Lisa Brenneis, rushed to cover tangerines with freeze-protection fabric. Their long overnight struggle had begun in earnest.
Friends had arrived earlier in the day to help out. Marty Fujita and her 12-year-old daughter, Dana Cook, hastily pulled ripe fruit from branches. Fujita's husband, Chuck Cook, helped Churchill drape the sheeting over the tree tops.
