Everyone driving through the county of Ventura on their way to somewhere else sees the same postcard: ocean views, surfers, and the Pacific Ocean stretching toward the Channel Islands National Park. Fair enough, it’s a good postcard. But pull off the highway and head inland a few miles, and Ventura County turns into something else entirely. This is one of the most productive farming regions on the Ventura County coast, growing everything from hillside avocados to citrus groves that have belonged to the same families for generations.

From Lima Beans to Avocados

Ask anyone at Kimball Ranch how long they’ve been growing avocados, and the answer comes with a story attached. The Kimball family has farmed Heritage Valley, a stretch of sun-drenched land just a few miles inland from the beaches, for six generations. Rachael Laenen, Director of Farming and Operations, says her family arrived in the 1860s growing lima beans and sugar beets, not avocados. They cycled through walnuts, plum tomatoes and citrus over the decades before finally landing on the crop the region is known for today.

More than 99% of Kimball Ranch’s orchards are Hass, and the trees themselves are more fascinating than you might think. An avocado tree carries two crops at once, one nearly ready to pick and one still forming, and out of all those spring blooms, only about 1% actually turn into fruit. A single tree can crank out up to 200 pounds of avocados a year, which is a wild amount of guacamole. Every one of them gets picked hard and unripe, since avocados don’t ripen on the branch, only after. That’s why Kimball ships fruit the same day it’s harvested instead of parking it in cold storage. A grocery store avocado simply can’t compete.

Strawberries, By the Truckload

No guide to what grows here gets far without strawberries. California grows roughly 90% of the country’s supply on around 34,000 coastal acres, and the Oxnard area, just south of the city of Ventura, is one of the state’s biggest growing regions, packed with multigenerational families farming both organic and conventional berries. Here’s the thing about strawberries that surprises people: strawberries don’t ripen after they’re picked, so what gets loaded into that clamshell is exactly as ripe as it’s ever going to be. Every berry gets picked by hand, and during peak season, growers harvest their fields as often as every three days.

Out in Santa Paula, along Highway 126, Prancer’s Farm grows its own Monterey strawberries and lets visitors pick them straight from the field. Mario Robledo, who runs the farm with his wife Vanessa, says freshness isn’t a slogan out there; it’s the whole operation. “Our produce, our vegetables, everything is right from the fields to here. It doesn’t go into a refrigerator.”

The Citrus Legacy of Ojai

Up in the Ojai Valley, Friends Ranches has been growing citrus since the 1870s. This farming family is largely responsible for one of California’s most sought-after little fruits: the Ojai Pixie tangerine. VP Emily Ayala says her grandfather was among the first growers to plant Pixies in serious quantity. He turned what was once a niche variety into a valley-wide specialty. Now this variety is grown by nearly 40 family farms coordinated through the Ojai Pixie Tangerine Growers Association.

Friends Ranches farms about 65 acres split roughly evenly between tangerines and oranges. The tangerine lineup alone reads like a citrus tasting menu: Dancy tangerines, clementines, W. Murcotts, Tahoe Golds, Yosemite Golds, Gold Nuggets, and Lee tangerines, alongside the famous Pixies. California grows over 90% of the country’s lemons and supplies about 60% of all the citrus eaten in the U.S. Most of it coming from just five counties, including Ventura. Ripening isn’t instant either. A lemon can take four to six months to go from flower to fruit, while some orange varieties take almost a full year. That’s a lot of patience packed into every bag of Ojai citrus.

Liquid Gold, Also in Ojai

Citrus isn’t the only thing crushed to perfection in the Ojai Valley. Ojai Olive Oil is a third-generation family farm that started almost by accident. Ronald Asquith stumbled onto a grove of centuries-old olive trees near the family property, trees that had gone untended for nearly a hundred years and were somehow still producing fruit. He and his wife Alice bought the land and started milling oil from those heritage trees the very next year. The main grove dates back to the mid-1800s. It was planted during the Spanish Mission era when the valley still had a communal olive press.

The farm has racked up more than 50 gold medals and Best in Show wins, including over a dozen at the New York International Olive Oil Competition, and the current owner, Philip Asquith, holds a Master Miller title from the California Olive Oil Council. Now run organically and biodynamically by the third generation, it’s proof that this valley doesn’t just stop at citrus.

One Farm, Nearly Everything

If avocados, strawberries, and citrus cover the headliners, Underwood Family Farms covers just about everything else. The family has farmed in Ventura County since 1867, and Craig Underwood officially founded the current operation on five acres in Moorpark back in 1980. Today, the farm spans 200 acres between its Moorpark and Somis locations.

Marketing Director Susanna Underwood sums up the range best. “At Underwood Family Farms and Underwood Ranches, we grow a wide variety of crops from avocados to lemons, all different kinds of citrus, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, salad vegetables, and flowers.” Seasonal additions round things out even further, with peas in spring, pumpkins in fall, and tomatoes and peppers through summer.

The Rest of the Pantry

Prancer’s Farm alone is proof that Ventura County grows a lot more than its two headliners. Between the fruit stand and the additional nearby farmland, the Robledo family works roughly 90 acres, producing lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, rosemary, heirloom tomatoes, oranges, and mandarins. Summer brings tomatoes and watermelon to the u-pick lineup, including seeded, seedless, yellow, and occasionally orange varieties that Mario says still catch visitors off guard. Fall means pumpkins, corn, sunflowers, and marigolds, and spring turns the fields over to tulips.

That kind of range isn’t unusual here. Ventura County’s mix of coastal fog and inland heat, thanks to its position between the Los Padres National Forest and the ocean, gives growers the flexibility to grow citrus, berries, row crops, and orchard fruit within a short drive of one another. It’s part of what makes the quality of life out here feel different, and it’s exactly why area farmers markets and farm stands along Highway 126 stay busy nearly every month of the year.

Ventura County, Deliciously Worth the Detour

A few stops are worth bookmarking if you’re building a road trip around all this. Downtown Ventura is anchored by Paradise Pantry, a farm-to-fork spot that leans on Central Coast producers for its cheese counter and 400-bottle wine list. In both Ventura and Ojai, Pinyon runs a wood-fired pizzeria and bakery that changes its menu with whatever’s actually growing nearby. Their menu includes a dessert built around an Ojai Pixie Tangerine Caramel, made from the same citrus grown just up the road. Up in Ojai, Boccali’s has been serving its strawberry shortcake, made with those same California-grown berries, since 1986. Right down the street, Majestic Oak Vineyard pours estate-grown wines from a vineyard planted in 2008, if wine tasting is on your agenda.

None of these are the main event, though. The main event is what’s growing in the ground between them. Avocados on the hillsides, strawberries in the coastal fields, citrus groves that have outlasted four or five generations of the same families. And then you have farms like Underwood that seem to grow just about everything in between.

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Article by Meg van der Kruik. Photography by James Collier & Hilary Rance