SacFM

Florin Strawberries

Roots, the food history behind Sacramento menus By , checked November 7, 2026 Sacramento County farms, map and what’s in season

The berry country south of Sacramento around Florin and Elk Grove, where Japanese American families grew strawberries between their grapevines until May 1942.

The Cosumnes

Wilton Rancheria’s citizens descend from the Eastern Miwok and from both Valley and Hill Nisenan, the Tribe writes. Its timeline records the Moraga expedition taking down the names of 12 villages on the Cosumnes River in 1808, a Mexican attack on the Tribe’s ancestors on the lower Cosumnes in 1826, and Sutter forcing them to the upper river in 1843. In 1847 Sheldon obtained the Omochumne land grant and hired some of the ancestors as farm laborers. Elk Grove was founded in 1850.

In July 1927 the United States bought 38.77 acres in Wilton in trust for the Tribe’s ancestors, which formally established the Rancheria. Its people adopted their first constitution in 1935. The Tribe’s headquarters are now in Elk Grove, where its land was taken into trust in 2017.

“Hunting, fishing, and gathering plants along that stretch of the Cosumnes River continued to be a staple for sustenance in those early rancheria days.”

Wilton Rancheria

Water Under the Plain

In November 1890 George Taylor brought “eighty-two pounds of large and luscious strawberries” from his place at Florin to market. A Florin correspondent wrote in 1906 that the early settlers had found a “never-failing, underground water supply,” where a well could be bored in half a day, and that for those first growers an acre of berries kept a whole family busy through the picking.

Until May 1895 the berries went by express to Denver, Portland, Butte and Salt Lake, twenty to a hundred boxes a day. That month the growers’ Florin Fruit Association sent a whole carload to Portland, and the berries sold for about a dollar a box.

In 1901 G. Cox of Florin worked out a newcomer’s budget. Water lay 16 or 18 feet down, and two acres of strawberries cost $84 to plant and would yield 600 crates the second year, netting $400. Will Taylor of South Florin had picked twenty-one tons of Jessie strawberries from six acres in 1899. White hands earned $1 a day and board, and Japanese hands $1 a day without it.

Strawberries Between the Vines

Beginning in the 1890s Issei immigrants replaced Chinese laborers in the fields around Florin, and by the 1910s Japanese immigrants leased or owned more than a thousand acres there, according to Preserving California’s Japantowns. In 1905 L. M. Landsborough of Florin explained the Japanese method. Growers had been cutting off runners in a shallow ditch, and an acre of about 10,000 plants dwindled to perhaps half that by the second year. The Japanese growers rooted the runners in the bed until the rows held five times as many plants, and dug ditches narrow and at least 2 feet deep. The rows ran east and west, the north side ripened first, and the picking went from April 1 to December 1.

Doris Nitta Taketa, born in Florin in 1929, remembered that her father planted strawberries and then put little grapevines in among them: “by the time the strawberries were no good they had grapes, kind of coming up.” His grapes were Tokay and Thompson Seedless, and the berry she remembered was “Oregon plum or something, you can’t get that now because it doesn’t last too long.” Leo Uchida, born in Florin in 1926, grew up on a 50-acre farm of mostly grapes with about 2 acres of strawberries: “If you weren’t working in the strawberry, then you’re working in the grapes.”

Mary Tsukamoto’s family moved to Florin in 1925, and her father farmed strawberries with his children as his crew. Doris Nitta Taketa remembered a town with three grocery stores, a shoemaker, a tofu factory and “a basket factory for strawberries.”

“It is a fact that in the vicinity of Florin ... the people did not make a success of strawberry culture until the advent of the Japanese.”

L. M. Landsborough, Pacific Rural Press, February 4, 1905

By the Carload

In June 1903 six to seven carloads of berries left Florin every day.

That year the district grew Jessie, Dollar and Triumph berries for Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Butte and Helena. The Jessie shipped poorly, and Sacramento got the ripe berries “that are too soft to ship.” By 1906 Florin grew several hundred acres a season.

On a Sunday in May 1914 the Florin district loaded 5,000 crates into waiting cars in two hours, 100,000 boxes and five million berries. In March 1916 Wells Fargo planned a strawberry special of about ten cars for Portland, Spokane, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria, under the Union’s headline “Elk Grove and Florin Put Los Angeles in Shade.” In April 1925 Elk Grove planned to load its first car of the season on April 25.

Japanese-owned shippers included the Florin Berry Company and the Florin Fruit Exchange, and berry baskets came from the Nishi Basket and Capital Basket companies, according to Preserving California’s Japantowns.

  1. 1895A carload to Portland
  2. 1903Six or seven carloads a day
  3. 19145,000 crates in one day
  4. 1916A special of about ten cars

The Land Law

On May 1, 1913, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan toured Florin with Governor Hiram Johnson. The Fresno Bee counted “1500 Japanese farmers and 400 Americans” in the district’s 25 or so square miles, and found that Japanese farmers now “practically control the grape and berry industries of that section.” They owned the factory where the berry boxes were made. When the party got back to the capital, the senate was taking up the bill “designed to restore Florin and similar communities once more to Caucasian owners.” In April a Florin delegation led by Landsborough, with a number of Japanese businessmen, had argued that the bill would “work a hardship upon the fruit and berry growers who need Japanese labor.” The Alien Land Act passed in 1913. The Uchidas’ farm was in the oldest son’s name “because at that time, aliens couldn’t own the land.”

Florin had two grammar schools, divided by the railroad, and Leo Uchida remembered that “the East was all Japanese, segregated.” The Florin JACL dates its desegregation of the all Japanese American Florin East Grammar School to 1939.

In April 1934 five hundred Japanese and Filipino strawberry pickers struck in the Florin district for 25 cents an hour, up from 20. Berries were selling at 92 cents a crate. On April 10 deputies used tear gas, and the next day the growers were offering 22½ cents and about 800 pickers were idle.

May 1942

On May 16, 1942, Mary Tsukamoto wrote in the Florin JACL’s bulletin that “the busy strawberry season has helped us keep our heads,” and that “even a half a day’s work will mean so much to all of us.” The same bulletin reported that “since last week, many from our community have gone into Walerga and Marysville.”

On May 11 Dorothea Lange photographed a soldier and his mother in a strawberry field at Florin for the War Relocation Authority. He was 23 and had been furloughed to help his mother and family prepare to leave. His mother had worked in a strawberry basket factory until the year before, when her children leased three acres of strawberries “so she wouldn’t have to work for somebody else.”

The Nittas left a ripe crop. “They never even picked the strawberries,” Doris Nitta Taketa said. The Uchidas boarded the train at Elk Grove for Manzanar, each with one suitcase. Densho counts about 1,200 people from Elk Grove and Florin sent to Jerome, and others went to Tule Lake and Manzanar. On November 11, 1942, a WRA photographer captioned the Nakaya ranch: “Strawberry field--plants now dead.”

Doris Nitta Taketa remembered that Al Tsukamoto asked Bob Fletcher, who used to be an inspector at the grape association, to take care of his land, and that Fletcher took on Bill Okamoto’s land and Joichi Nitta’s as well. Out of the net profit Fletcher paid the taxes and the mortgage. “Otherwise we would have lost it because Papa still owed money for the land,” she said. In November 1942 the Nitta farm was 40 acres, 34 of them grapes. The Uchidas sold their 50 acres, buildings and equipment for $5,000 to a couple from Oklahoma.

On July 20, 1944, a $30,000 fire at Florin burned a storehouse holding the belongings of removed Japanese American families, along with three houses and a small factory.

“The years of living with our farmers have rooted our very souls deep into the earth of Florin. Wherever we go, whatever our fate, nothing can take away our love for Florin.”

Mary Tsukamoto, Florin JACL bulletin, May 23, 1942

After the War

The Tsukamotos came back in July 1945 to a Florin much of which had burned. The Buddhist church buildings served as hostels for returning families, according to Preserving California’s Japantowns. The Nittas came home in 1945 and had their farm back in 1946. Grapes went downhill, the family pulled out the vines and made a living from two or three acres of strawberries until about 1961 or 1962.

George Uchida doubted that any strawberry farm prospered after the removal: “strawberry is, you have to take care of it. It doesn’t grow by itself like a vine does.” The Florin JACL now calls the place “the former Florin farming community in south Sacramento.”

“Father had worked so hard to finally get a nice crop, and somebody else profited from it.”

George Uchida, Densho oral history, 2009

Strawberries Now

In 2018 UC Cooperative Extension mapped strawberry stands at Bond and Bader roads, at Calvine and Vineyard roads and on Excelsior north of Jackson Road. Another stood on Florin Road at South Watt Avenue. A UC advisor then worked with about 60 Mien farms in the Sacramento area, where the typical couple farmed an acre or two and picked berries to sell the same day at a roadside stand. On Bond Road the rows held Albion, Chandler, Santa Rosa and Seascape. In 2020 Hmong and Mien farmers ran roadside strawberry stands from Visalia to Sacramento.

Sacramento County counted 126 acres of strawberries in 2000 and 45 in 2025, worth $860,000. In Granite Bay, the 2026 season at Granny May’s Strawberry Farm ran from the second week of April to the end of August. In Galt, Daisy Creek Farms offers u-pick by appointment, and Lucero Organic Farms grows strawberries and sells mainly in the Bay Area.

  1. 126acres, 2000
  2. 99.9acres, 2014
  3. 45acres, 2025

Strawberries in season: who grows them and where to buy them

“Iu Mien and strawberry farms is a cultural phenomenon in Sacramento. It’s part of our identity as Iu Mien Americans. I think it’s part of our identity as Sacramentans.”

Sen Saetern, to ABC10, May 29, 2024

Timeline

  1. 1808 The Moraga expedition records the names of 12 villages on the Cosumnes River. The first people
  2. 1847 Sheldon obtains the Omochumne land grant and hires some of the Tribe’s ancestors as farm laborers. The first people
  3. 1850 Elk Grove is founded. The first people
  4. November 1890 George Taylor brings 82 pounds of strawberries from Florin to market. Strawberries
  5. May 1895 The Florin Fruit Association ships a whole carload of strawberries to Portland. Strawberries
  6. 1901 Japanese hands at Florin earn $1 a day without board. Japanese American families
  7. 1905 L. M. Landsborough of Florin describes how the Japanese grow strawberries there. Japanese American families · Strawberries
  8. May 1, 1913 Secretary of State Bryan tours Florin as the state senate takes up the alien land bill. Japanese American families
  9. May 1914 The Florin district ships 5,000 crates of strawberries in one day. Strawberries
  10. March 1916 Wells Fargo plans a strawberry special of about ten cars to the Northwest. Strawberries
  11. July 1927 The United States buys 38.77 acres in Wilton in trust, establishing Wilton Rancheria. The first people
  12. April 1934 Five hundred Japanese and Filipino strawberry pickers strike in the Florin district. Strawberries
  13. 1939 The Florin JACL desegregates the all Japanese American Florin East Grammar School. Japanese American families
  14. May 1942 Florin’s Japanese American families are removed, with strawberries still ripe in the fields. Japanese American families
  15. November 11, 1942 A WRA photographer finds the Nakaya ranch’s strawberry plants dead. Strawberries
  16. July 1944 Fire at Florin burns a storehouse of removed Japanese American families’ belongings. Japanese American families
  17. 1945 Families come home to Florin. Japanese American families
  18. 2017 Wilton Rancheria’s land in Elk Grove is taken into trust. The first people
  19. 2018 A UC Cooperative Extension advisor works with about 60 Mien farms in the Sacramento area. Strawberries
  20. 2025 Sacramento County grows 45 acres of strawberries. Strawberries

Where the Food Goes Now

Follow each Sacramento County farm’s food to the Sacramento restaurants and markets that name it.

Pick a farm

Farms in the Sacramento County and where their food goes: read it as a list

Sources

Checked November 7, 2026. Quotes from old newspapers and the 1942 bulletins keep their spelling. The strawberry at the top is Vilmorin’s British Queen, 1920.