Marylee Shrider: Murray Family Farms won't be unhinged by fire
| Friday, Nov 07 2008 07:58 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 02:08 PM
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The Kern County Fire Department battled a fire at Murray Family Farms east of Bakersfield on Oct. 30. The fire destroyed the Halloween hay maze that was set up as an attraction for the holiday.
Boxes of apples are displayed at Murray Family Farms.
Vickie Murray holds a "Budda's Hand" inside the barn at the Murray Family Farms.
The Murray family from left, Katie, Sean, mom Vickie, dad Steven and Steven, at their farm Friday.
Vickie Murray didn’t shed a tear over the fire that incinerated her three-acre hay maze the day before Halloween. Heck, she barely raised an eyebrow.
Most business owners would be more than a little upset to watch one of their main attractions go up in smoke at the height of their busiest season, especially when it’s a fire Kern County Fire officials call “suspicious.” But Murray, who, with husband Steve owns Murray Family Farms east of Bakersfield, simply shrugged it off.
She’s grateful nobody was hurt. It could have been a lot worse considering the blaze started in the middle of the day and the farm was swarming with kids playing and picking out pumpkins. Some of those kids were wending their giddy way through the hay maze when it caught fire.
So the loss of a little hay is nothing, Murray says. A slight inconvenience. A blip.
Murray has a knack for keeping things in perspective, something she developed while raising three kids while building the popular pick-your-own-fruit farm. It’s been a labor of love for the cheerful redhead and her affable husband, who could have avoided a lot of hard work and frustration by selling their fruits and veggies to grocery chains and at farmers’ markets.
No way, says Murray, who wants local kids to know the thrill of eating fresh-picked fruit.
“We decided we wanted to sell directly to the customer,” she says. “We loved it when a little old lady bit into a cherry and, with tears on her cheeks, said ‘This is how a cherry is supposed to taste.’”
The Murrays bought their prime piece of property off Highway 58 and General Beale Road in 2002, after pleading for six years with the previous owners to sell. The couple broke ground on their 365-acre fruit farm, despite some sound advice from Al Bussell, whose own pick-your-own place served Kern County residents for 30 years before his death in 2004.
“He warned us it was a high-risk business, with a low return,” Murray says. “He told us not to do it.”
They did it anyway, selling produce from a small trailer on the property while jumping through every bureaucratic hoop the county could come up with. Four years later, the couple finally opened the doors to their big red barn of a market in June 2008.
Along the way, the Murrays and their three children had worse things than bureaucracy to battle.
At age 8, the Murrays’ eldest son, Steven was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism that often manifests itself in socially and emotionally inappropriate behavior. A gifted child who could memorize cities, states and countries on wall maps near his desk, Steven couldn’t tune out distractions to “plug into what the teacher was saying.”
With the help of his determined parents and teachers, Steven began to take control of his illness in high school. Now 22, he’s a stellar college student with a gift for languages.
Around the time Steven started to turn things around, his sister Katie was diagnosed at age 11 with a debilitating kidney disease. By age 18, Katie’s kidneys were completely destroyed and she underwent a kidney transplant at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University.
A year later, doctors removed that kidney, rejected and infected, from Katie’s tired body. Now 20, she’s been on dialysis three times a week ever since.
But not for much longer, says her hopeful mom, who expects to donate one of her own kidneys to her girl in January.
“After two years, she’s better to the point where she’s ready for another transplant,” Murray says. “If the doctors say I’m able, it’s going to be mine.”
The Murrays think the person who torched their hay maze may have been a disgruntled visitor with a match and an attitude.
Fortunately for those of us who are fans of fresh-picked fruit, country farms and dogged determination, it will take more than some pyronut to unhinge the Murrays. They’re settling in for a nice long run.
These are Marylee Shrider's opinions, not necessarily The Californian’s. Call her at 395-7474 or write mshrider@bakersfield.com.
