At  Friends Ranches in Ojai, where tangerines thrive, sweetness has a season.

It starts sometime in March, when the days begin to warm but the evenings still carry a coastal chill, and people start showing up at asking the same urgent question: Are the Pixies ready?

Emily Ayala knows the rhythm well. As vice president of Friends Ranches, her family’s citrus farm in the Ojai Valley, she has spent years explaining that Ojai Pixie tangerines cannot be rushed. They ripen when they ripen. And that, in many ways, is the point.

“Everything that’s good, it’s seasonal,” Ayala says. “That’s why Christmas is special, that’s why your birthday’s special, that’s why Pixies are special.”

Deep Roots in Ojai Farming

Friends Ranches has deep farming roots in the Ojai Valley. Ayala says her family has been farming there since the 1870s, and that her grandfather spent his life planting citrus trees, especially tangerines, at a time when the mainstream citrus market was not particularly interested in them. He experimented with varieties that others overlooked, including the small, seedless, late-season fruit that would eventually become one of Ojai’s most beloved agricultural signatures: the Ojai Pixie tangerine.

Ayala calls her grandfather “the OG Ojai Pixie guy.” While a family friend, Frank Noyes, planted the first Pixie tree in the valley, she says her grandfather was the first to plant them in meaningful quantities. Today, the Ojai Pixie has grown from a niche experiment into a regional calling card, supported by a community of family farms and the Ojai Pixie Tangerine Growers Association. The association describes Ojai Pixies as springtime tangerines grown by family-scale farmers in the valley, with fruit typically ripening in March and selling into May or June, depending on the crop.

What Makes an Ojai Pixie Tangerine Special 

Pixies are not just any citrus. They are late-season tangerines (AKA mandarins), prized for their sweetness, easy-peeling skin and vivid flavor. Ayala says Ojai’s east-west valley is part of what makes them exceptional. Cool air drifts in from the coast at night, but the valley stays warm enough during the day for citrus to develop deep, concentrated flavor. The fruit gets what it needs: chilly nights, warm days, but not extremes.

“That fluctuation in temperature from cold at night, but not freezing, to hot during the day, but not 110, makes a really good flavored tangerine,” she says. “At least, that’s what we think.”

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A Community Built Around Citrus 

The Ojai Pixie Tangerine Growers Association was created to help growers share information about producing what it calls a “finicky fruit” and to coordinate marketing under the Ojai Pixies name. Its members exchange lessons on pruning, fertilizing, harvesting, selling and even cooking with Pixies. Nearly 40 family farms now grow Ojai Pixie tangerines in the valley, according to the association.

Ayala’s role in that community is both practical and personal. She is not simply preserving a family business; she is helping steward a valley-wide identity built around a fruit that depends on place, timing and shared care. Friends Ranches grows roughly 65 acres of citrus, about half tangerines and half oranges, including Dancy tangerines, clementines, W. Murcotts, Tahoe Golds, Yosemite Golds, Gold Nuggets and Lee tangerines. “You name it, we’ve probably tried to grow it,” she says, especially if it ripens late.

From Biology to the Family Farm 

Farming was not inevitable for Ayala, even though it was always close. Her parents encouraged her to explore the wider world. She studied biology, spent time in Central America helping teach a field course, and became increasingly fascinated by insects. That interest led her to graduate school in entomology and eventually back to Ojai, where science and family history converged.

“I was always interested in biology,” she says. Agriculture “felt like home to me to study.”

That entomology background still shapes the way she sees the ranch. Friends Ranches relies heavily on the natural balance of the orchard: beneficial insects, predator species, bobcats that help control squirrels, and the broader living system that surrounds the trees. For Ayala, sustainability is not a slogan. It is a long-term relationship with land that her family has already farmed for generations and hopes to keep farming decades from now.

“We’re gonna be farming it in 30 years, hopefully,” she says. “We’ve been farming it for 100 years already, so keeping the land viable as a farm is what we view as sustainable.”

A Practical Definition of Sustainability 

At Friends Ranches, the definition of sustainability extends beyond soil, trees and insects. It includes people. Ayala says Friends Ranches’ employees have been with the farm for decades, and that sustainability means treating workers like family: showing up for graduations and life events, offering vacation and sick leave, buying lunch, and recognizing that a farm only works when people depend on one another.

“They rely on me as much as I rely on them,” she says. “That’s the way a good working farm is.”

Her view of farming is refreshingly direct. She wants consumers to understand that agriculture is not a pastoral abstraction. It is labor, timing, risk, water, weather, pests, markets and constant attention. An orange can take well over a year from blossom to harvest. A farmer cannot simply leave for two weeks and hope the orchard manages itself. Ayala compares it to “gardening on steroids,” or sometimes to raising thousands of children.

She also wants people to think more carefully about the words they use around food. Organic and conventional, she notes, are often misunderstood. All farmers try to avoid unnecessary inputs, she says, because materials and labor are expensive. In Ojai, growers also face the modern reality of invasive pests and citrus disease threats. Regional citrus farmers, in particular, are keenly aware of and vigilant to prevent the Asian citrus psyllid, a disease deadly to citrus. Indeed local citrus depends not just on individual farms but on a valley-wide effort.

A Woman in Agriculture 

Ayala’s honesty feels especially resonant as 2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer. The year is intended to raise awareness of women’s roles in agrifood systems and the challenges they face, from land tenure to technical and financial constraints.

Ayala has lived some of that change firsthand. When she returned to agriculture 25 years ago, she says, she was not always listened to, especially by produce managers. Farming meant working with mechanics, truck drivers, packers and buyers — fields that have long been male-dominated. But she has seen progress.

“Being a woman in agriculture has gotten easier, I feel like, in the last 10 years,” she says. She points to women now running businesses in parts of the supply chain that once felt closed off, including trucking. Still, she laughs at any romanticized idea that empowerment must mean doing every job herself. Her favorite work is not driving a tractor. “I’d rather have my hands in the dirt.”

The Case for Eating Seasonally 

Scientist, farmer, marketer, family member and advocate for seasonal eating all at once, Ayala’s groundedness is part of her appeal. She can explain citrus physiology, defend conventional growers, describe the joy of a perfect tangerine and remind visitors that orange juice should not taste the same 12 months a year.

“You should eat really good California citrus from December through June,” she says. “And maybe not so much in the summertime.”

In an era when consumers can buy almost anything at almost any time, Friends Ranches offers a different lesson: anticipation has flavor. The best things are not always available on demand. They arrive when the land, weather and farmer agree.

And when Ojai Pixies finally do arrive, Ayala knows exactly what she loves most: handing someone a piece of citrus so good it changes their mind.

“My favorite part of life,” she says, “is sharing a really good piece of citrus with somebody who thinks they don’t like citrus, and getting them to change their mind.”

This article was written by Alison Needham (@atable_defloured) for CA GROWN. Images by James Collier, Paprika Studios.