In a heat wave, fruit gets sweeter, cows make less milk and many restaurants order less food.
Here are several ways the week's extremely hot weather is rippling through our food chain, from Yolo County tomato fields to downtown restaurants.
Keeping cool in the barn
Near Marysville, Mike Luis has his dairy barn set up like an outdoor bar: misters, fans, shade-cloth awnings and all-you-can-drink water.
"Our number one thing is cow comfort," he said.
If Luis can keep his 250 cows from overheating, they'll produce more milk, he said. Cows lose their appetite when the temperature rises above 100 degrees, he said, and production can drop by as much as a third.
Cows aren't very savvy about staying cool. They tend to cluster when hot, Luis said, which makes them even hotter.
This explains the investments in comfort. Last month, Luis made his latest addition: a system to sprinkle water on the tin roof of his barn.
"These last two afternoons, when it's been so miserable, I go out there and spend some time with my cows in the barn," he said. "It's nice under there."
24-hour tomatoes
By 2:30 Wednesday afternoon, the thermometer at Riverdog Farms in western Yolo County read 112, and manager Brian Boyce was sending crews home two hours earlier than usual to rest for thismorning's work.
Harvest starts at 6 a.m. at Riverdog. Picking on some vegetable farms in the region starts as early as 4 a.m. during hot spells.
A heat wave tends to cut hours on the farm, but Boyce's tomato plants begin to work overtime. When nighttime temperatures stay above 65 degrees, he said, the fruit will ripen around the clock, boosting production.
Extreme heat can hurt tomatoes, too, Boyce said. Blossoms dry up and drop from the vines, leading to problems weeks later.
"When the fruit's not there is when you notice it," Boyce said.
Sweet peaches
At Twin Peaks Orchards in the foothills west of Newcastle, the heat tends to boost the sweetness of fruit on the trees, said owner Sheila Enriquez.
"There's always more sugar in the later peaches," she said.
The century-old farm grows more than 80 varieties of peaches, plums, pluots, nectarines, and most will make it through the heat wave just fine, Enriquez said. Some fruit – especially what's not shaded by leaves – will burn, though, and end up tossed on the grassy floor of the orchard at picking time.
On Wednesday morning, Angel Mora plucked peaches from low-hanging branches and set each one in a vintage wooden fruit box strapped to his waist.
Mora and the rest of the picking crew started at 6 a.m., and their schedule changes little with the weather – there needs to be enough sunlight to make out shadings of color that help determine if a peach is ready to pick.
To market
Some of the Twin Peaks peaches find their way to eaters via the Produce Express warehouse in Sacramento, which distributes fruits and vegetables to more than 1,500 local restaurants and food service customers.
During a hot spell, many restaurants pare their orders, expecting customers to stay home, said General Manager Jim Boyce.
"It hurts their trade, which affects us, naturally," he said.
Heat waves affect restaurants in different ways, said Michael Mindel, senior vice president of marketing at Il Fornaio, the national chain with locations in Roseville and downtown Sacramento.
Il Fornaio's Capitol Mall location is enclosed in the air-conditioned envelope of a large office building. A heat wave makes the restaurant feel like a refuge to those outside and encourages workers upstairs to stay indoors all day.
"We'll see people who come in and get coffee in the morning, then will get lunch there and then dinner," Mindel said. "When the warm weather rolls around, we're delighted."
On the other hand, at the company's Roseville location, the large outdoor seating area and a potentially long walk across a parking lot mean that heat waves eat into business, particularly at lunchtime.
As to whether heat dulls the appetite, there's little medical evidence one way or another, said Maxine Barish-Wreden, a director of the Sutter Downtown Integrative Medicine program.
"Common sense suggests that we may feel more sluggish and have less energy to get up and prepare meals and eat and drink, but I don't know that there's any scientific basis for that," she said.
Call The Bee's Jim Downing, (916) 321-1065.
