It’s harvest time for grower Rodney Schatz, who has been cultivating the exotic tart-sweet fruit on his ranch off Alpine Road east of Lodi since 1971.

“Got suckered in,” Schatz quipped, when asked why he started growing kiwifruit.

“They told us it would be like fuzzy gold nuggets,” his wife, Raetta Schatz explained.

Joking aside, Rodney Schatz said the returns on kiwifruit have been somewhat less than solid-gold, but comparable to grapes, which comprises the majority of his farming operation.

It is a labor-intensive crop, harvested by hand. But the biggest expense comes later in the year when the vines are pruned and this year’s green shoots or canes, which will produce next season’s fruit, are selected and tied to the trellises.

Over the past 11 years, he’s harvested an average of about 29,000 pounds of kiwifruit, which is sent to a packing house in Reedley.

Once cased and kept in cold storage, the fruit can be marketed through next spring, when fruit from New Zealand and Chile comes into the market.

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