A popular Orange County farm is restoring damage to its beloved strawberries after some of its produce and equipment took a hit from recent storms that delivered measurable rain to Southern California.
Irvine-based Tanaka Farms was closed this past weekend after some of its produce was impacted by the rain last week. From Friday through Monday, the farm was closed to the public and since the rain tapered off, crews have been hard at work restoring what the storm damaged.
“It’s just too much water in a short amount of time,” Kenny Tanaka, who owns the farm, said. “If it was spread out over three, four days, it wouldn’t be as bad. But one or two days with three to four inches of rain really soaks in and just makes these troughs really heavy.”
Tanaka’s crew is working on replanting strawberries, replacing the wood that was damaged and placing new troughs to support their produce.
“We’re re-fixing a lot of the troughs that we’ve grown our strawberries in,” Tanaka said. “From the rain, it really soaked the ground. The troughs got really heavy because all the water that was in them, so a couple of them fell over with the wind.”
The storm damage happened roughly a week before the farm is set to host its Hikari: Festival of Lights event. While farmers are working diligently to fix the damage and prepare for the festival’s opening day on Nov. 28, Tanaka said he hopes the public will show them grace.
“For Hikari, hopefully we’ll have it 100% up by opening day,” he said. “Bear with us if we only have 80% of the lights up and 80% of everything that’s going on.”
In addition to the Irvine farm taking damage, Tanaka’s farm in Costa Mesa, Hana Field, also took a hit. Because of the extensive rain, barn animals from that location had to be moved.
“The cow and pasture area is like three, four inches underwater so we had to evacuate those animals out,” Tanaka said. “Brought some here and then we took some to OC Fairgrounds. They graciously let us house some of our animals over there until we could fix our barnyard over there. We didn’t lose any animals and they’re all safe.”
Tanaka Farms announced it reopened to the public on Tuesday. Another system is taking aim for the region Thursday and Friday; it’s unclear if the farm will remain open those days.
Source: NBC Los Angeles