The Largest Grower of Roses West of the Rockies is in Fillmore, CA!

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In this episode, Paul has the opportunity to sit down and speak with Scott Kittich, owner of Otto & Sons Nursery in Fillmore. Not only is Otto & Sons the largest growers of roses this side of the Rocky Mountains, the robust 40+ acre nursery includes acres of citrus trees, stone fruits, and perennial favorites. Whether you lean towards Floribunda, Grandiflora or Hybrid Tea roses, Scott and his knowledgeable staff can help avid home gardeners – and beginners alike – select from a variety of colors and fragrances. 

Beware! Not all plants are suited for the growing condition of Ventura Country! Water availability, soil conditions, and climate are all important factors that must be considered when selecting a varietal. Just because plants may be available at *some* stores, doesn’t mean they’re right for Ventura County. 

Passionate about the care of roses, Otto & Sons also offer in-person pursuing classes on Saturdays in the month of January. Can’t make it to class? You’re in luck! During Covid, Scott and his team recorded and shared many care videos on the nursery’s website. While recording this episode, Scott let us in on an interesting piece of trivia….There are more citrus trees located in residential landscaping than in commercial farms!

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Have ideas for future episodes? We’d love to answer your questions – leave a comment! For any home buying or home selling needs in the Ventura County area of California, please reach out to Paul@HomeAndRanchTeam.com or visit www.HomeAndRanchTeam.com

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Premium Content: Episode Transcript

Paul Ward (00:04):
Hi everyone, it’s Paul Ward here, and welcome to another edition of Farm Talk. I’m very excited. Today we are out in Fillmore, California at a renowned nursery operation, Auto and Sons Nursery, and our guest is the proprietor owner, Scott Klittich. Scott, welcome to the show.
Scott Klittich (00:19):
Thanks for having me.
Paul Ward (00:21):
Of course, you and your wife Cindy are are the owners of this fine operation.
Scott Klittich (00:25):
Yes, yes we are.
Paul Ward (00:26):
And then we wanna thank our sponsors, Escrow Hub and the Money Store. So Scott, tell us a little bit about Otto and Sons.
Scott Klittich (00:34):
Well, Otto and Sons Nursery began as my dad was a landscape contractor in the San Fernando, Los Angeles Valley. We’d do a little landscaping and you always pull a few plants out and save ’em for the next job. First a half you have an acre, then an acre, then two acres in Chatsworth. Then we sold that and eventually bought this piece up here. It’s almost 40 acres up here in Fillmore.
Paul Ward (00:53):
Wow! And is all 40 acres planted in roses?
Scott Klittich (00:57):
Probably about 28 of it is in roses right now. We just took out additional 10 acres of Valencia orange trees. Valencia oranges don’t make money. Nursery makes money. So we’ve pulled those trees out. Eventually we’ll get ’em burned and we’ll get that area graded, irrigated and gravel. But that’s probably a next year project.
Paul Ward (01:15):
When you walk around, it’s mid-November and it looks like it could be April or May. It’s just absolutely stunning. Every rose bush is blooming, every other plant is blooming. I gotta ask, what what’s your secret?
Scott Klittich (01:31):
You know, spring is always a big bloom time because the plants are dormant in the wintertime. They’ve been trimmed back. Generally it’s been cold and wet, hopefully. And they come out with spring looking beautiful. Then summer comes along and it’s hot and it’s dry and they can’t hide in the air conditioning like we can. So they suffer out there and they kind of go into summer dormancy at that point. But then fall when you get the cool nights and warm days, they just burst right back on out like a spring bloom. In the garden here, we add nutrients to our water. They’re all on drip irrigation, so they all get the water that way. We adjust the pH and give ’em the nutrients they need. We see an issue- we spray for it to control any pests because we wanna make it look nice. So it just takes care.
Paul Ward (02:17):
For the home gardener that might not be able to run fertilizer through the irrigation system. Do you have any tips?
Scott Klittich (02:24):
There’s a number of ways. There’s a number of fertilizers that provide a long term fertilizer nutrient source. Most of them are, the one we have here in the, the shop is a three month fertilizer. So it adds nutrients slowly over that time, so you only have to apply it like three times a year. So it’s pretty convenient in that sense. . , and that’s a great way to do it.
Paul Ward (02:44):
The, the variety of roses seems to be endless. How many varieties are out there?
Scott Klittich (02:52):
We carry about seven or 800 varieties.
Paul Ward (02:55):
Really? Wow. That’s incredible!
Scott Klittich (02:57):
700 or 800. I think there’s actually actually probably 10,000 varieties out there in the world. Then there are those in the marketplace; about 700-800. Generally speaking, if one of our vendors carries the rose, we carry the rose.
Paul Ward (03:11):
Are roses divided into types?
Scott Klittich (03:14):
Different classes. There’s a hybrid that you’re probably most familiar with, which is a single flower on a single stem, like you’d get from a florist. The Grand of Florence have large flowers, but generally those are multiple flowers on a single stem. Flora Bunda have multiple flowers again, but they’re smaller and mostly spread out throughout the plant on short stem. It’s kinda like a bouquet. Flora Bunda are my favorites cuz I think they bloom a lot more profuse. The Hybrid Teas are classic for a vase. You know, and so those are three main classes, but also is a shrub category. Within the shrub category are the English Roses or the David Austin Roses specifically. That is actually a new class. It was created, gosh, probably 30 years now ago; in that David Austin, a rose breeder out of England took the Flora Bundas, which I do like. He took the old varieties, which have great perfume, great fragrance, and he did a lot of crossing to get new varieties that have good fragrance and repeat bloom. And very popular right now, the David Austin’s.
Paul Ward (04:20):
So if I’m walking around and you know, I’ve got some space in my yard; and I’m a little bit overwhelmed just because there are so many, beautiful varieties. How do I know what’s gonna fit in that space? I mean, they’re all kind of relatively small when they’re sitting in the pot .They could grow one foot, they could grow six feet.
Scott Klittich (04:42):
That’s right. Fortunately at the nursery here we have a signage on all the varieties. It’ll tell you how large they get. We have the display garden behind us here, which you actually can come look at it and say, “That’s perfect for me.” Stick your nose in the flower; because that’s like the first thing people always wanna do- is to smell the fragrance and see if that catches them. So that’s a good way. Or research. We have a great website. On our website, you can go through and sort by, you can filter by, Hybrid Teas, white color, strong fragrance, strong disease resistance, and it’ll give you actual physical list that you can print off of the varieties that fit that criteria. Then come on out here and look at the the varieties and see they’re actually what you’re hoping for.
Paul Ward (05:24):
Then I saw that you’ve got something called Rose Care University. What’s that all about?
Scott Klittich (05:29):
Rose Care University. We started that, gosh, it’s probably 15 years now, I suppose. Maybe even longer that maybe 20 years by now. And it’s a class we do in January. We do the same, same class for two hours every Saturday in January. Myself or my sons will run it and we teach people how to prune roses in the wintertime. So it’s a little, little more skill needed because you’re taking something that’s in bloom or whatever, it’s like five feet tall and you’re cutting it down and like cutting it down. You’re giving you’re cleaning up the branches, allowing it to have more airspace, gives you best better disease resistance, and it’s healthier for the plant than you get that spring bloom. So we do a two hour class on that. We cover all different classes of roses, the Hybrid Teas, Grand of Florence, Flora Bunda, shrubs. We do climbers, we do tree roses. Each time the process is almost the same on all of them but it’s a different shape. So we do that. And generally we have anywhere from 60 to a hundred people each class. We charge a little bit for it. We give a little coupon for them to come back and buy something if they want. But it’s a fun thing we do.
Paul Ward (06:36):
If somebody’s not local, cuz our audience is getting pretty broad. How can folks learn more if they’re not already doing it?
Scott Klittich (06:42):
Well with Covid, we were really proactive in that we actually put a bunch of videos online. Not of the class, but we took and did a 10 minute, 15 minute video of each one of the garden here. We’d trim it back and show people on the video how to do it. I’ve had people come to me and say, “Oh, I saw you on the video. I watched it four or five times. It was really helpful to be able to know what to do and describing where to cut and how to cut.” So that’s a good place to go there. But come to the class. The class is fun. We have a good time with it.
Paul Ward (07:07):
Sure. Well, you’re learning from other folks. Good questions.
Scott Klittich (07:10):
A lot of enthusiasm.
Paul Ward (07:11):
And you’ve got other events?
Scott Klittich (07:13):
We do. We do Tomatomania in March. We’ll do that. That’s where our good friend Scott Daigre comes in with his Tomaania crew and we’ll we host it. They come in with usually a hundred varieties of seedling tomatoes and lay ’em all out there alphabetically and people can go and pick and choose and look at the tags and see what they want and get fun ones; black ones, purple ones, red ones, of course, orange ones, big ones, small ones, tiny ones. So that’s a fun event.
Paul Ward (07:40):
And they’ll teach you how to plant them.
Scott Klittich (07:42):
They’ll show you how to plant them and what kind of mix to use and where to put ’em. And if you’re on the coast, I mean, there’s some varieties you do better on the coast. Some varieties do better inland. You wouldn’t think that, but tomatoes are different that way.
Paul Ward (07:56):
Interesting. You’ve got something coming up where you can actually pick roses for free. Is that right?
Scott Klittich (08:00):
Yeah. On the day before Thanksgiving, we call it our Thankfulness Sale. We invite our customers to come on out to the rose garden behind us and go through and harvest roses; one bucket per person, to come on out and collect roses for their Thanksgiving table. We’ve done it for years now. Overwhelming success. People are very happy with it. Making their tables look that mch more beautiful for Thanksgiving for the families. So that’s a fun thing.
Paul Ward (08:27):
That’s a nice giving back to the community event.
Scott Klittich (08:28):
We don’t charge for it. We just ask you to come on in, bring a bucket, bring your own clippers. We ask you to stop by a station so we can sterilize your clippers when you come in so you’re not bringing something from your garden to our garden. But it’s a fun time. Lot of enthusiasm. People talking about to each other. Perfect strangers taking up conversations. It’s nice.
Paul Ward (08:49):
Very cool. And you’re also known for your fruit trees, not just roses.
Scott Klittich (08:53):
That’s right. We do specialize in fruit trees and also perennials. The fruit trees we have, oh, I think is probably 200 varieties when you include things like rhubarb and artichokes and there’s like 10 varieties of blueberries and different, you know, raspberries, of course we have apples and peaches, nectarines, all kinds of stone fruits like that We have citrus, a good selection of citrus avocados. We have a really good selection of fruit and cheese.
Paul Ward (09:20):
You’re not exactly in a high traffic location. I mean, you’re off the beaten path. Fillmore is a small town. You’re a few miles out of town but yet people still flock to this location.
Scott Klittich (09:32):
You we started doing roses and I think, I’m pretty sure, we are the largest grower of roses west of the Rockies.
Paul Ward (09:42):
Oh really?!
Scott Klittich (09:43):
No one else does a selection or variety that we do. And people come, we’ve got some customers that come from Phoenix, some from Las Vegas. We have some people come from Oregon. They’ll drive down, visit family, come back here, pick up their plants and take ’em back home with them. It’s kind of fun to hear of the different people doing that. The first time I heard, I was like, are you crazy? That’s a long way to go. But people are passionate about roses. There is a passion there of the fragrance, the smell, it just draws people in.
Paul Ward (10:17):
Well and your variety is incredible. I mean, you’ve got verigated petals and the different colored pedals. On the same bush.
Scott Klittich (10:25):
Yeah. Different kind of striped ones. You know, so striped ones are always a unique thing that only certain people like it or they hate it. You know, it’s kind of like that way. The fragrance is always what keys people into roses. And one way to check on fragrance; cuz your sense of fragrance is different than mine, different than theirs. And cuz the fragrance is actually the oil that the plant produces. And as the oil evaporates during the day, cuz the warm weather, you’re smelling the fragrance, but by evening it’s gone. So if you do go on trim roses, trim them in the cool part of the day add then bring ’em in and keep ’em well hydrated in some water in a cool place, a refrigerator of course, would be the best. But that helps to keep it. And I’ve had people say, “Well, my husband can’t smell this.” It’s usually the husband can’t smell it . And it’s just a sense of fragrance that each of us has. It’s unique.
Paul Ward (11:15):
Now for the novice who comes and appreciates what you have, but is a little bit overwhelmed but wants to get something. What would be kind of that one rose that would, that everyday rose, that would be kind of hardier than the others that you would say that they’d appreciate the most?
Scott Klittich (11:31):
Well, the one rose that we sell the most of actually is called Iceberg. It’s the number one rose in California. We sell like 25,000 of that one variety, which is by far more than anything else. Because with Iceberg, you don’t plant just a single rose. You plant six or a dozen or a hundred cuz you’re putting along a pathway or a walkway or a driveway or a fence line and it’s a white rose. It’s a Flora Bunda, the kind I like and it balloons profusely. It’s got a nice kinda apple scent to it. It’s not one for bringing into a vase per se. The flowers don’t last long time in a vase, but it’s just very prolific in the garden. I say it’s municipality friendly so that people that have cities that are taking care of roses in public areas the maintenance guys can whack it back and it comes back real well. It’s just a hearty plant.
Paul Ward (12:23):
And they might not be the best pruner too. They’re just using an electric hedger.
Scott Klittich (12:28):
They’re on a time clock. They’re getting it done and getting it and getting outta there. So it’s a good all around rose for that. Now once you get past that, I’d say, “What’s your favorite color?” You know, and I’ll direct ’em to the purples or the pinks or the reds or fusia or whatever tone that they’re looking for, and kind of go with your personal flavor of color that you like. And the style, whether it’s, you know, that’s why the rose garden’s nice. Cuz you can kinda look and see, well break this one back behind us. Not a lot of petals on it. Right. But it’s a lot of flowers and some over here are more the Hybrid Tea type that are blooming profusely. So it comes down to each person’s personal interest, what they like.
Paul Ward (13:07):
So we are in we are in citrus country and you do grow and sell different varieties of citrus. What are your thoughts on that?
Scott Klittich (13:18):
Citrus are, you know, there’s more citrus planted in people’s landscape than there is commercial citrus in California.
Paul Ward (13:25):
Really? So if you take every house in California..
Scott Klittich (13:28):
Every house and everybody’s got an orange tree or a lemon tree or a lime tree or kumquat. Every house has a tree. So you add all those up, it’s more than the citrus trees are grown in California.
Paul Ward (13:37):
That’s incredible.
Scott Klittich (13:38):
Yeah. So, you know, if you’re in California, you gotta have a citrus tree, of course. We have a nice selection of that, you know oranges both the Valencias and the Washington Navals; we have Bares lime, the Mexican lime; that’s good for bartending. you know. That one’s good. We a really good selfection of citrus.
Paul Ward (13:59):
And what’s the key on soil with that? You just bought a tree and you’re gonna stick it in the ground.
Scott Klittich (14:05):
Fortunately citrus is not real picky, you know I would say the most, the biggest thing with citrus is winter temperatures. You don’t wanna freeze. If you get to below 30-32, you’re gonna have some damage on the foliage and possibly the fruit too, depending on how cold it gets. So that’s gonna be a concern for where you’re at. So if you’re inland someplace where it gets cold, below 32, you’re gonna have issues like that. Contrary, like grapefruit won’t do well at the coast cause they want the heat. So it’s gonna be someplace warm enough, but not too cold. So Santa Clarita’s a great place for growing grapefruit; plenty of heat, cold’s, marginally you’d be okay most of the times. The soil type, they’re not really particular about soil. Biggest thing is they should be in full sun. It’s hard to put it between two houses that doesn’t get four hours light won’t cut it for you. They like their nutrients like all of us like to get fed. So gotta keep your nutrients up.
Paul Ward (15:03):
That quarterly or…?
Scott Klittich (15:04):
It depends on the product you’re using. Whichever fertilizer you have, it’ll say on the I always encourage people to go to the bag and see what it recommends as far as how often, how much. Cuz the bigger the tree of course the more nutrients you’ll need.
Paul Ward (15:16):
And you’ve got a lot of perennials.
Scott Klittich (15:18):
We do have a lot of perennials. I brought my son in. He graduated from college two years ago, maybe three years ago now. He was a college graduate with during Covid so no ceremony, just kind of “Bye.” Right, right. Anyway, we brought him in and he’s really taken a handle of our perennials. We have over a hundred varieties of perennials, lavenders, and lot of things that go well with roses. Just different colors. Different. A lot of ’em drought tolerant, so they’ll do well with a lack of water.
Paul Ward (15:45):
Are you finding a lot of people, speaking of that, a lot of people are kind of going in the direction of succulents?
Scott Klittich (15:51):
A lot of people do go to succulents and we don’t do any succulents.
Paul Ward (15:56):
Oh, you don’t? Okay.
Scott Klittich (15:57):
We don’t do succulents at all. . Succulents are a good thing for texture and for the no water or little water gardens.
Paul Ward (16:10):
But there are still tricks that you can do with regular plantings.
Scott Klittich (16:14):
Oh yeah. For perennials, the drip irrigation is a key on most that and also a nice layer of mulch. Drip irrigation puts the water where it needs to be. You’re not getting it on the sidewalk or the patio where it doesn’t it doesn’t need to go. So you’re putting it where it needs to be. And then the…
Paul Ward (16:29):
Right mulch.
Scott Klittich (16:29):
The right mulch, a nice thick layer of mulch. Thank you. Thick layer of mulch. Three to four inches.
Paul Ward (16:34):
Oh, that much?
Scott Klittich (16:35):
Yeah. If you’re just putting down this much, you’re not doing anything but making it aesthetically pleasing. You want three to four inches, a nice, nice big layer. Cause you get your soil biology will break that down, which adds nutrients to your soil. It does a number of things that reduces weeds cuz weeds can’t- You might get weeds coming in there, but they’re easy to pull cuz they can’t get established well and that layer of mulch holds the moisture, reduces temperature, which is really important in the hot summers.
Paul Ward (17:00):
Do you water less then? I mean, do you water less frequently?
Scott Klittich (17:03):
You would water less because of the mulch, which to do that you have to get the mulch saturated to start with. So you’re starting with a good profile with moisture in there, but once it’s wet, you’ll be watering less.
Paul Ward (17:12):
Okay.
Scott Klittich (17:13):
Yeah. And we put all of our drip lines on the dirt with mulch on top of that.
Paul Ward (17:17):
Gotcha. Yeah. So maybe you’re saving maybe 25% you think?
Scott Klittich (17:20):
I think it’s actually more. I think I’ve seen studies where it’s closer to a third.
Paul Ward (17:23):
Really? Yeah. Wow. That’s incredible. And you’ve got other acres, I mean acres and acres of roses that are not necessarily for the public.
Scott Klittich (17:33):
Right. Our primary business is wholesale to retail garden centers. Landscapers building contractors.
Paul Ward (17:40):
So folks are not local. They can find your product out of their store. Retailers, what are some of those retailers?
Scott Klittich (17:46):
Armstrong Garden Centers, they’re one of our good customers. They’re from San Diego up to far, I guess up to up to Thousand Oaks, I guess as far north they go. But they’re, I think they have 20 stores. So they’re throughout the Green Thumbs purchase from us, they’re in our area. Also a lot of independent garden centers that buy things. Architects and landscapers coming through and getting, collecting things for their jobs. We had a delivery day going to Kelly Clarkson. It was kind of fun. So we have Barbara Streisand, she’s come through here and there’s actually a rose named Barbara Streisand. So she came in and she says, “How’s my rose? How’s my rose doing?” It was pretty fun.
Paul Ward (18:25):
And can folks go online and find you?
Scott Klittich (18:27):
Yeah. Online OttoandSonsnursery.com. You’ll find us there and where we’re at and what we do. A whole great website. We really put a lot of work into it.
Paul Ward (18:38):
And you’re doing other filming events and other things like that? Now you’re dabbling in that?
Scott Klittich (18:42):
Yeah. In our garden, we’ve had a couple things. IKEA came through. They were doing a a filming for music around the world. They did a filming of artists in Argentina and Denmark and Germany. And they came to our place too. They had a reggae guy coming, I don’t even know the artist’s name, but he came a hundred people all putting the production together. He came up for a day and a half and set everything all up and it was kind of fun. We had another artists (and) Guess Jeans came on out. They came, had two models that had ’em set up on one of our walls here and taken pictures of them and they were all showing their jackets off and stuff.
Scott Klittich (19:20):
Its kinda funny. We don’t do any weddings here, but we’ve had 4H clubs do meetings. We have rotary groups come in, garden clubs have come in. We have a gal who does a painting class, a little watercolor class. She comes in, does a little class for people. So it’s small things like that. We had one bridal party that got married in Moorpark about a half hour away, (they) came through here and they all got in front of the fountain and took pictures of everybody and then they went to Fillmore for their reception. So that was kind of fun.
Paul Ward (19:52):
They got the roses in the background. So if I was to pick out three or four roses to take back to my, my home garden or maybe a citrus tree or a fruit tree how would you assist somebody with making sure that they’re off to a good start?
Scott Klittich (20:07):
We have a really nice garden shop we have set up and it’s open Wednesday through Saturday, 8:00am-4pm. We have full-time staff in there and they can certainly help you decide what fertilizer, how to plant. We have handouts for how to plant. We have handouts for the different fruit trees for the, just explaining what to do and how to plant them. Blueberries are kind of unique. They need little extra care. We can certainly educate people on what that needs to be. Of course, there’s all kinds of gift items. My wife and likes to go shopping along with one of the gals in the shop there. And they collect things that are fun, you know, fun gift items for Thanksgiving or Christmas or just general fun gardening things. We have fountains over there. Mulches, things we planting in, we have tools where the shovels, rakes, typical things. You say pruners.. . thuings there that would help you to be successful in your garden. That’s the goal. We want you to be successful.
Paul Ward (21:01):
Yeah. And the last thing you want is to buy a plant and then it doesn’t do well.
Scott Klittich (21:07):
Generally speaking, people have problems. They water too much or they don’t water enough.
Paul Ward (21:11):
I’ve also heard that sometimes nurseries, f they bring plants in from other regions, I mean your plants are all grown here locally. So they’re familiar with our weather, but if you bring a plant in from Oregon or Washington, you might not be surprised when it doesn’t do well.
Scott Klittich (21:30):
That’s really has been an issue mostly with fruit trees in the box stores. The home office will order fruit trees for coast to coast stores and California’s unique. Then we have low chilling requirements. So you can’t get a high chilling variety like a Macintosh apple (it) will not fruit here. Interesting. So you need to get things that are will grow well in our area. The guy back east doesn’t know our situation cuz he is buying for the whole country. So that’s why the independent garden centers are the way to go cuz they know the area, they know what to buy, they find out where you live and they can recommend something. We could recommend something for for you to plant in your yard that you’ll be successful with.
Paul Ward (22:10):
That’s a really, really good point. So we’re located here outside of Fillmore in the east end of Ventura County. This isn’t really known as a rose region right? It’s more historically been citrus.
Scott Klittich (22:24):
So it’s been citrus. When we first moved here back in the 1980s, 79, somewhere in there, it was all citrus. The whole valley was citrus. No avocados, no nurseries. We were it. And my dad, who found the area, really found a good area that has a good climate. The temperature is good and as far as the wintertime, it does get a little hot in the summertime, but that’s gonna be managed. There is plenty of water where we’re at. A lot of places in Ventura County have challenges with water, but our whole valley, fortunately, gets water from top of the grapevine to top of canyon country. All these hills, all these mountains around here, all flow right down through this river valley here. And that recharges our groundwater, which is really important. We have two wells that we get our water from.
Paul Ward (23:10):
The aquifer actually is pretty high out here.
Scott Klittich (23:12):
Yeah. It’s good. And they say it recharges easily because it’s a lot of sand and gravel. So it holds that water there. As you get further and further towards the coast, you have more challenges and a lot of farmers are having challenges out that way for sure. But it’s a beautiful valley. Since we moved here, there’s dozens of nurseries that have moved here. A lot of ’em were in the San Franando Valley and Los Angeles area and power line properties. And they got booted out for price issues there and bought property out here. It’s, it’s agood growing area and a lot of nurseries have found that to be, and over time the citrus, there’s not much money in citrus. It’s all changed avocados or row crops. Those are the two higher value crops a lot of the growers are going to.To change things out for.
Paul Ward (23:59):
So what do you see the future of nurseries as?
Scott Klittich (24:03):
I think the future is bright, you know, I see people, especially with Covid, people actually got the chance to work in their own gardens and (there was) a lot of enthusiasm. A lot of brand new gardeners came into gardening business I suppose. And went to the nurseries. Nurseries had the best years ever during Covid. Cause everybody in construction, anybody that the home improvement industry area all had really good financial years. And so I think we created a lot of good gardeners. Hopefully they were successful gardeners. I think they’ll be looking for to continue that and to make their own little oasis at their home and enjoy the outdoor living that brings them. So I think in the valley itself, water will be a concern. There’s always pest issues on the horizon that are a concern. Regulations are always there.
Paul Ward (24:58):
Those aren’t going away.
Scott Klittich (24:59):
They’re not going away. But it’s farming. You always have water issues, labor issues, regulation issues. I mean, I’ve been doing this for 40 years and we had those 40 years ago. So, I mean, it’s just farming and you deal with the weather, it gets too cold, it gets too hot, you know, it’s just always something. But we’re farmers. We enjoy what we do.
Paul Ward (25:19):
Well, that’s important.
Scott Klittich (25:20):
We’re passionate.
Paul Ward (25:21):
Gotta enjoy what you do.
Scott Klittich (25:22):
Gotta enjoy what you do. I enjoy getting up the morning, getting out here. And even though I’m in the office a lot now I still like to get out and see what’s going on and it’s really a fun career and I think a lot of people enjoy doing it and to see customers come in and just the enthusiasm they have when they come see this and load their cars up and hear the successes and bringing their kids and grandkids out here. It’s really nice. Right.
Paul Ward (25:45):
And we seem to have a lot of more small farmers now. It’s not just your big corporate folk. It’s a lot of people wanna just kind of get back to the land and back to nature. And Covid kind of brought a lot of people to this area that’s for sure. Never thought about it. Now you can work at home, you don’t have to do the crazy commute every day. So a lot of people are trying to kind of get back to the land.
Scott Klittich (26:09):
Yeah. Get back to make their yard again. Their oasis, you know, they’re trying to make it a special spot for them. And where we’re at, we’re a half hour from Ventura or Santa Clarita, or an hour from Dodger Stadium. So it’s a good spot to be at. There’s a lot of people that can come out here and enjoy and find something they like.
Paul Ward (26:28):
Well, Scott, thank you so much for being our guest on this edition of Farm Talk. We’ve loved having you.
Scott Klittich (26:33):
Well, thank you Paul. Appreciate the time.
Paul Ward (26:34):
TAbsolutely. And of course, we wanna thank our sponsors, the Escrow Hub and the Money Store. And be sure to tune in next time for another edition of Farm Talk.