Avocado Grower Is the County’s Biggest Single Loser in Freeze

Just over a month ago, the fruit hung heavy from the trees at Saddlerock Ranch in the mountains above Malibu, and owner Ronnie Semler was days away from harvesting a bumper crop.

Then Arctic air blasted across California, and the avocado trees Semler had nurtured for nine years were ravaged in a few hours. A million-pound crop that would have sold for upwards of $1.40 a pound was destroyed. And the frost-damaged trees held out little promise of recovering to produce a crop next year.

Although Los Angeles is no agricultural center, the devastation at Saddlerock Ranch is proof that last month’s freeze damage was not limited to California’s Central Valley. Officials say Semler was the biggest single loser in the county, where crop damage is estimated to exceed $12 million.

Others who suffered in the freeze were San Gabriel Valley strawberry growers and avocado farmers in Azusa and Hacienda Heights, as well as nurseries in the South Bay, said E. Leon Spaugy, the county’s agricultural commissioner.

State officials recognized the destruction last week when Gov. Pete Wilson added Los Angeles County to a list of 30 other counties requesting federal disaster relief. If President Bush adopts the disaster declarations, as expected, then Semler and other farmers will be eligible for low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration and the Farmers Home Administration.

“We were literally weeks, if not days, from picking,” Semler said. “It’s been devastating.”

Semler’s scenic 350-acre ranch, hidden on a plateau at the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains, looks as if it has been scorched by a firestorm. Most of the 13,000 avocado trees, one of the county’s largest avocado groves, have been transformed into brown skeletons. Teardrops of shriveled fruit cling to a few trees, and dead leaves carpet the ground.

A neighbor across Mulholland Highway lost a much smaller crop, estimated at 40,000 pounds.

The freeze left its pall on Saddlerock Ranch, east of Kanan Dume Road, in the days before Christmas.

Semler’s workers tried to keep the temperature up by watering the grove, but the water formed sheets of ice as temperatures hovered in the low 20s for several nights in a row. Semler considered hiring helicopters to push air onto the trees, but the weather was so cold, extra circulation would not have made a difference, said Gary Gunther, a consultant at the ranch.

Now field hands must cut away deadwood and protect exposed trunks with whitewash. It will be spring before Semler learns whether his trees are so badly damaged that they have to be uprooted.

So far, experts have told him they think most of the trees can be saved.

Semler, 47, bought the ranch not long after it was destroyed by a brush fire in 1978. He decided to plant avocados to create a fire break for the rest of his property and to provide a green, aesthetic buffer against the dry scrub brush surroundings. And the trees promised a crop that would more than pay for the ranch’s operation, Semler said.

Water costs have been his biggest burden during the nine years it took for the trees to reach maturity. With bills from the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District running as high as $12,000 a month, Semler last year paid $200,000 to install two 1,000-foot wells and to expand a holding pond.

The devastation of the crop was particularly difficult because the grove had just reached full maturity and was expected to produce three times the crop it did a year ago, ranch consultant Gunther said.

All but six of 15 ranch employees had to be laid off because of the loss, Gunther said.

For his part, Semler said, he is fortunate to have other sources of income.

Not only is he a real estate developer, but Saddlerock Ranch--named for a striking stone landmark that can be seen all the way to the ocean--also takes in money for boarding and training horses.

And, Semler said, he hopes to fall back on a more traditional Malibu industry--movie making.

“Hard to Kill,” “The Golden Child” and other films have paid to use locations at Saddlerock Ranch. Semler said he plans to increase advertising in the hopes of attracting more film crews.