Downtown Ventura

Ventura Walking Tour

This afternoon we had a walking tour of downtown Ventura, led by local historian Richard Senate. Downtown is a short walk across the Freeway bridge from our hotel.

View of Downtown Ventura from our hotel room balcony

Local Historian Richard Senate

We started our tour at the Post Office where large murals by depression era painter Gordon Grant, funded under a grant from the WPA, covers the lobby walls.  These large murals are oil on canvas and depict industry in Ventura county.

WPA painting by Gordon Grant

WPA painting by Gordon Grant

WPA painting by Gordon Grant

The offices of author Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the Perry Mason series, are immortalized in this former bank building.

Erle Stanley Gardner entrance

Downtown Ventura architecture is unique and colorful occasionally used by movie studios for filming TV and movie productions.

City Hall

Former Greyhound Bus Terminal

Victorian, one of several remaining

On a return visit, we walked to the Mission church, San Buenaventura Mission and returned under the Freeway through a public art project commemorating the Tortilla Flat neighborhood which was demolished in the 60s to make room for the 101 Freeway.  John Steinbeck wrote about the Tortilla Flats of Monterey and Carmel, not related to the Tortilla Flat of Ventura.  This was a poor neighborhood notable for the smells of rotting produce and lettuce spilled by passing produce trucks winding their way through the curves to the ports.

San Buenaventura Mission

San Buenaventura Mission

Tortilla Flat Art Project

Tortilla Flat Art Project under the Freeway

Passing under the Freeway art project leads us to Surfers Point on the Pacific, a short walk down the promenade back to our hotel.

Crowne Plaze in the distance

Next Page

Proceed to Churchill Pixie Tangerine Orchard

Downtown Oxnard

Woolworths, Downtown Oxnard

We stopped for lunch at Fresh and Fabulous, a cafe in the former Woolworths building.  The Woolworths lunch counter was preserved and a small museum serves as a tribute to the former department store.

Woolworths Building, downtown Oxnard CA

Fresh and Fabulous in the Woolworths building

Memorabilia

It was fun viewing old Woolworths memorabilia in a store hallway.  Postcard machines, a stamp machine, a photo booth, an old Coke machine bring back memories although I have to admit I have never seen a ballpoint vending machine.

Woolworth Memorabilia - remember these?

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Proceed to Downtown Ventura Walking Tour

Mission Produce, Oxnard

Mission Produce

Mission is a large Avocado packer in Oxnard that literally is bursting at the seams due to worldwide demand.  They currently pack over one million pounds of Avocados per day for an annual total of 500 million avocados.  A new facility under construction that we visited will have 4 times the capacity of the current facility.

Mission Avocado in Oxnard, CA

We were greeted by the Vice President of Engineering and also an Engineer from Process Improvement.  Both gentleman said they had degrees in Mechanical Engineering which is understandable after seeing the complexity involved in processing over a million Avocados per day.

VP of Engineering who was our Host holds a netted bag of Avocados destined for Costco

Avocados arrive in flat bed trucks.  Each white container contains 950 pounds of Avocados.

Avocados to be packed

The containers are loaded from the truck into a hydro washer where a cold 45 degree brine solution serves to rapidly cool the container and wash dust and other contaminants from the fruit.

Hydro Washer

Avocado Sorter

Avocado Sizing

Once sorted by size, Avocados are boxed and each individual box weighed and bar coded.

Avocado Weighing station

Weighed and barcoded

Avocados being packaged for Costco

Bins of washed and graded fruit ready for packing

International

  Mission supplies Avocados worldwide.  Here crates of fruit are banded for shipping to Japan.

Preparing pallet for shipping by boat to Japan

Transit times for Ocean crossing

  Packed fruit in the shipping warehouse is kept cool waiting for pickup by truck.

Shipping Cooler

Construction

 Mission purchased the former USPS sorting facility in Oxnard  and nuked it.    They are in the process of building a 4 story building to quadruple their processing capability. 

We visited the construction site and viewed the staged materials ready to be assembled erector set style.  Mission hopes to be up and running by June 2014.

Large Footings heavily reinforced

Next Page

Proceed to Downtown Oxnard,  our next stop.

Sun Valley Growers, Oxnard CA

Sun Valley Growers

Our first field visit this week was also my favorite.  We visited Sun Valley Growers, a large wholesale cut flower grower in Oxnard. Sun Valley Growers has greenhouses and covered fields loaded with Gerbera Daisies, Lilies and other cut flowers for assembly by them into arrangements for 1-800-Flowers and also for loose cut flower bouquets for sale in Trader Joes, Costco and some Food Stores, notably HB Foods of Texas. Last year we had the opportunity to visit HB Foods in Austin and San Antonio.  HB Foods is a Whole Foods type grocer.

Arrival at Sun Valley Growers

Once at Sun Valley Growers, a representative from the Company met us and took us through their facility explaining all facets of the operation from packing to shipping, growing, preparing seed beds and cutting flowers.

Sun Valley Representative

Inside the warehouse it is a quite cool 50 degrees where a team of workers assembles the cut flowers for shipping to wholesale customers.

Arrangements for customers such as 1-800-Flowers are assembled en mass where a large overhead monitor detailed which variety flower and quantity of each color should be added to the bouquet.  The displayed instructions are referred to as a recipe.

Recipe for Assembling a Bouquet

Assembled Bouquets

After assembly, cut flowers are boxed and palletized for loading on tractor trailers.  Some stems such as the Gerberas are shipped standing in buckets of water.  This room is kept even cooler than the assembly rooms, at a chilly 45 degrees.

Assembled Bouquets in cold storage

Next step was to go outside and warm up.  We visited open sided greenhouses holding thousands of Lilies growing for the Easter market.

Easter Lilies

Easter Lilies

The Lilies are clear cut when harvested.

Clear Cut Harvest

Soil beds are prepared by completely removing the previous crop and hauling it offsite in order to preven pathogens and disease from infecting the soil and new crop.

Preparing Soil

Fumigated and Ready for Planting

A new crop is started in the prepared beds.

New Cut Flower Crop emerges

The Gerbera daisy growing areas are one of the most colorful on the property.

Libbie in a Gerbera field

A trip to a growing facility is not complete until we examine some of the controls.

The first of these is the CO2 monitor.  CO2 is introduced in the Gerbera growing environment in order to promote growth and increase flower yields.

CO2 Monitor

We noticed a familiar looking device hanging from the rafters. This is a Sulfur burner which is used to control powdery mildew in the wet environment.  A few spoonfuls of sulfur is put into the burner then it is plugged in.  A heating element oxidizes the sulfur powder into a gas which settles throughout the greenhouse effectively destroying powdery mildew.

Sulfur Burner

Proceed to the next page,  to Mission Produce, an Avocado Packer.