My work recently moved to a new location, in the city of Irvine, closer to the business center. Irvine like the city of Los Angeles is a bustling center of commerce, an urban city of high-rise buildings and condominiums, and beautiful tract homes. One big company headquartered here is Blizzard Entertainment famous for gamers. It produced some of the most popular video games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft.
I recently found out that - in the midst of this urban city acres of land have avoided urbanization and remain as farmland. One of those farms is Tanaka Farms, a family-owned farm that is in the heart of the city of Irvine. Tanaka Farms sits on a 30-acre land, part of what used to be a 100-acre strawberry farm. The other 70 acres have been turned into a golf course. Today we paid a visit to this farmland.
The farm produces 60 varieties of fruits and vegetables throughout the year, mostly by organic farming methods. It grows row crops according to the season and its produce is available for sale to the public every day from a market stand on site. One can either walk up or drive through.
The Farm also offers “U-Pick Activities”, where one can go pick his own fruit/vegetable directly from the farm, and experience a wagon ride. Strawberry picking is from March to June, watermelons, and cantaloupes from July to August. Educational tours are also offered where kids learn about the farm’s history, the crops it grows, and techniques that it uses such as organic farming, crop rotation, companion farming, organic fertilizers, and composting.
There is a public restroom fenced off and screened by what looks like corn plants.
Tanaka Farms has a compost bin for the community. It takes organic waste such as garden trimmings, veggie scraps, coffee grounds., fruit peels, and cores which are later processed into compost.
The compost bin is open to the community.
The farm also has a gift shop that sells souvenirs or Christmas crafts
Today’s visit was an interesting one, could have been a 40-minute ride from home. Here’s some view from our car ride to the farm.
We capped the day with a stop at a Japanese noodle house named Kaiba.
[//]:# (!pinmapple 33.681995 lat -117.816763 long tanaka farms d3scr)