Gilcrease offers full cornucopia

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2000 | 9:12 a.m.

What: Gilcrease Orchards

When: Open 7 a.m.-noon daily

Where: 7800 N. Tenaya Way, take U.S. 95 north to Ann Road exit, loop left to Tenaya Way

Information: Call 645-1126

John Theodore Gilcrease is 84 years old and still stands well over 6 feet, 2 inches tall. With his faded work shirt, blue overalls and dusty shoes, he resembles the farmer in Grant Wood's "American Gothic," minus the pitchfork.

It's an apt image. Gilcrease has been farming all his life. His 100-acre plus property northwest of downtown, Gilcrease Orchards, is one of the surprise attractions this city has to offer.

The sign tells you that you have arrived at a pick-and-pay farm where a delicious variety of fruits and vegetables in season await the discerning picker.

Prices are around two-thirds (or even less) of what you'd pay in a local supermarket for comparable products, depending on supply and demand. Gilcrease uses no sprays whatsoever on his produce, though he readily admits to having problems with birds, rabbits and squash bugs.

Gilcrease has never been far from Mother Nature. He works seven days a week pruning trees, inspecting vines and greeting old customers.

"Most people call me Ted," he says, inching his way down a steep slope to a grove of his fig trees, which are tied into canopies so as better to shield them from harsh sunlight and to keep the wind from bruising the delicate fruit surfaces.

"We grow two varieties," he explains, "black figs and Kadota figs, which are a pale yellow." Generally people pick these figs firm and let them ripen at home in a brown paper bag. "They'll spoil in plastic," he informs a visitor.

The orchard has an interesting history. In 1920 Ted's parents, Leonard and Elda Gilcrease, moved to Las Vegas from Reno. His father was an engineer for General Electric who grew up in California's Central Valley and at one point he decided to make a go of desert farming.

Eventually, though, he gave it up, leaving his wife and two sons to carry on the family business. So in 1950 Ted Gilcrease acquired his current property, starting an alfalfa farm and aided by a now-dried up spring northwest of the orchards.

Growing alfalfa enriched the soil with nutrients and as Las Vegas grew, so did the demand for fresh fruits and vegetables. So gradually, he began to plant: apples and squash, tomatoes and cantaloupe, apricots and cucumbers, zucchini and watermelon. Now the orchards are chockablock with vines and fruit bearing trees. Seventy percent of this acreage is fruit; 30 percent is vegetables.

After a visit to the apricot trees, where this year's crop is just about finished, we get into a car and drive over to the vegetable area. It is one of those rare summer days here where a light drizzle is falling and Gilcrease is glad to see it.

"Look at those tomato vines," he says. "We use underground drip irrigation to grow our tomatoes, but we always welcome a moderate rain."

This is an irrigation system using a series of pipes that run beneath the rows of various vegetables such as zucchini, cucumber and tomato. This has been an unusually hot and dry year, he explains, so without these methods, there would be little or no crops right now.

There are other ingenious methods of planting here, such as peppers interplanted between tall ears of corn, and a series of stakes strung together with plastic netting into trellises that are home to twisty cucumber vines. Cucumbers will climb trellises all by themselves, but not tomatoes, according to Gilcrease. Just as he is expounding on this, we spot a rabbit running across his okra patch.

Soon after he offers a lesson in tomato picking.

"You have to be willing to get your hands stained when you pick tomatoes," Gilcrease says. "Pick a bushel of them, and you'll get a light gray stain from the tomato leaves on your hands, which is hard to remove."

"The redder a tomato is, the riper it is" he says, "but if you pick a tomato when it is pink, it will ripen in a few days." He advises against picking green tomatoes and also against picking small zucchini.

"Zucchini is plentiful, but it has a short life. That's why we charge 20 cents a piece for them, regardless of their size. That way, we discourage people from picking the little ones.

"The other day a 30-pound girl found a 10-pound zucchini, and she paid for it all by herself with her two own dimes."

Out by the front gate, several people are weighing and paying for their bounty, helped along by a young employee. Next to the gate, there are watermelons, cantaloupes and bottles filled with deliciously sweet apple juice made from Gala apples. This juice is 100 percent pure, pasteurized and made without any preservatives or additives. A quart is only $1.25 and the juice is tree sweet.

When asked why the melons are already picked, Gilcrease is ready with his answer.

"People don't know when a melon is ripe" he says, checking a large cantaloupe for ripeness. "They'll pick a non-ripe one and blame me." Now you can get cantaloupe for 25 cents per pound and watermelon for around 19 cents per pound, though the price often goes as low as 14 cents.

"The best time to come," Gilcrease says, "is early in the morning, before it gets too hot, and early in the week, before we get too busy." No matter what day you come, though, plan on finding something good to eat at a really low price and having a good time in the process.

And plan on seeing Ted Gilcrease, and all his 84 years, doing just what he's been doing for the better part of a century.