Food Share

Food Share

We visited the distribution center of Food Share.  The center serves as a warehouse for affiliated agencies and does not directly distribute food themselves. 

 Our guide for a tour of the warehouse was Christina Forina, Coordinator for Volunteers. We arrived to volunteer some time to the center.

Christina, Coordinator for Volunteers

  

Food waiting for distribution

Food assembled for a member agency

For our volunteer project we wrote Thank You cards to donor agencies.  Libbie and I wrote 2 Thank You letters each including addressing and inserting our cards into envelopes.  Since we were a group of 26 and if each person did 2 Thank Yous, there should have been a total of 52 letters written and addressed.

Heritage Square - Oxnard

Heritage Square - Oxnard

The City of Oxnard purchased a series of Victorian and Craftsmen style houses and moved them out of the path of development.  The houses have been arranged facing inward with a center square as a focus point and sold to private individuals for uses as offices, restaurants and specialty retail.  We had lunch in one of the houses in a cafe named "La Dolce Vita".

La Dolce Vita

Docents in period costume gave a brief talk on the history of the Square and then led us on a walking tour.

Docent in Character

The Square has a unique blend of beautiful period homes saved from the wrecking ball.

The Square

Our docent leads the walking tour

Nice attention to detail

Windows with curved glass in this beauty

Next Page

Proceed to the next stop, Food Share

Conroy Farms - Strawberries in Oxnard

Conroy Farms

Strawberries are the #1 cash crop in Ventura County, having displaced Lemons by a large margin.  We visited the strawberry Fields of Conroy Farms which employs 300 pickers at the season peak which just happens to be last week.  Our host for the Conroy Strawberry fields was the second generation owner.

Owner-Farmer, Conroy Farms

Conroy Farms has 117 acres of Strawberries.  Interestingly, the Strawberries are ripped out every year, the field is tilled and laser leveled for drainage, plastic mulch covering laid down and then replanted.

Ripe Strawberries

  Strawberries are picked and packed directly into consumer packaging without any further handling.  Shelf life is short and strawberries can't be washed since they start molding immediately.

Picked directly into Consumer packaging

Consumer Packaging ready for shipping

Strawberries that are overripe or otherwise damaged are picked in bulk containers and sent to Smuckers for crushing.

Strawberries for Crushing

Ripening Strawberries ready in a day or two

McGrath Family Farm

This was not my favorite of the Organic Farms we visited.  The owner was more of a gentleman farmer than a real farmer, most of his fields are leased out to commercial corporate growers.

McGrath Family Farm

We took a short walk in the newly planted field led by owner McGrath.

Farm owner McGrath

Newly planted organic vegetable crop

New planting

A dirt driveway/road runs along the field.  Alongside the road this planting of corn acts as a dust shield keeping the vegetables clean.  The corn will reach 5 to 6 feet in height which will nicely protect the crops from a cloud of dust by passing farm vehicles.

Row of emerging corn seedlings

Next Page

Proceed to Heritage Square, Oxnard

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?

Next Page

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.