Farm Gives Prisoners a Chance to Grow : Jails: At the county’s 120-acre spread, they learn to do work that can help them after they’ve finished their time behind bars.

Just before he was to be released from the Ojai Jail Honor Farm, Rick Yasutake was talking about a new career raising rabbits.

As he was changing cages for a small white rabbit destined for market, Yasutake, 28, who is serving a jail sentence for selling cocaine, said he has been reading up on rabbit breeding while in custody.

“It’s a moneymaking thing,” said Yasutake, who was released from custody on Wednesday. “Rabbit meat is high in demand.”

While Yasutake was taking care of his rabbit, another prisoner, Robert Torst, was checking on a sow that had just given birth to eight piglets. A third inmate, Gwen Owens, was yanking weeds between two rows of pumpkin vines.

The three are among hundreds of prisoners who have learned about farming while serving time at the county’s honor farm, a 120-acre spread run by the Sheriff’s Department.

The farm, which has a display at the Ventura County Fair this week, provides 75% of the meat eaten by prisoners in the county’s jails. Inmates also raise 40,000 pounds of vegetables a year, including corn, zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins and chili peppers.

“This is a working farm,” said Kathi Irvin, a civilian employee who supervises the female crop crews. “We have swine and a cattle operation. We actually raise plants and put them on the tables for meals.”

The farm was begun by the department in the 1920s with a handful of inmates who ran it by themselves. Deputies would check on them a couple of times a day, Assistant Sheriff Richard Bryce said.

In 1957, a men’s jail was built on the farm, and in 1984 the department began housing female inmates in a separate facility at the farm, Bryce said.

“One of our primary objectives is whenever possible to put inmate labor to work to offset the cost of their incarceration,” Bryce said. “There’s several spinoff benefits: It keeps the inmate busy so their time goes quicker, and they’re less difficult to supervise.”

Inmates are screened when they enter the facility, to determine where they will live and work. Those convicted of nonviolent misdemeanors are eligible for outdoor work details, Sgt. Rick Alaniz said.

Men--who take care of livestock and run the slaughterhouse--also can be assigned duties such as laundry, construction, woodworking or metalworking.

Women’s duties vary from sewing rag dolls for underprivileged children to serving food or working as janitors. They also landscape the facility’s flower gardens and care for the crops.

Inmates on the work details rise at 4 a.m. and hit the fields in the early morning, putting in five or six hours of farm labor each day, authorities said.

One recent morning, 12 women wearing prison blues worked among the tangled vines of the pumpkin patch, chopping out weeds and selecting the best pumpkin specimens for display at the county fair.

Owens, 33, of Oxnard had been in the Ventura County Jail for 5 1/2 months when she was transferred to the Ojai facility two weeks ago for disciplinary reasons.

Owens, who was convicted of being under the influence of cocaine, said she was angry about the transfer at first, preferring the duties at the Ventura County Jail, which left her more time to herself.

But she said her attitude changed after she began working in the fields.

“When I got here, it was something to see the grass for the first time in 5 1/2 months,” Owens said. “I think it was a blessing to me to be out here on a daily basis. It seems to me like I’m on vacation now.”

But inmates cannot forget for long that they’re in jail.

Women on the crop crew can talk only as long as they do not use profanity or glorify drugs, Irvin said. They must ask permission to get additional tools and to go to the bathroom.

At the end of a shift, the women line up along a chain-link fence, faces forward, their legs spread-eagle. Guards check to make sure no one has picked up drugs, which are sometimes dropped over the chain-link fence that borders Rice Road, jail officials said.

The women live in a white cinder-block room filled with iron-gray bunk beds. Possessions are kept in a plastic bucket. Four white faucets and four toilets line one wall, and privacy is at a minimum.

In the same complex is a dormitory for women convicted of violent crimes. Another room holds 11 cells for informants in protective custody and troublesome inmates. Neither are permitted to participate in the work details that other inmates say give them a feeling of freedom. A men’s facility is located down the hill.

“I think it’s great what they’re doing here,” said inmate Dotty Kollars, 48, who works on a landscaping crew. “You feel like you’re doing something useful.”

Many of the inmates have had no experience raising animals or crops before being placed in the facility, authorities said. Some do not like the idea of farm labor. But others use the skills to find work or provide food for their families.

“One inmate went on to landscaping in Malibu,” Irvin said. “She’s making more money than me.”

Torst, 30, said he enjoys his duties tending to pregnant pigs even though it means he is on call in the middle of the night to help with deliveries.

Torst checks on pregnant sows at 6 p.m. and again at 9 p.m. to see if they are close to giving birth. When piglets are born, he cuts the umbilical cords, clears their mouths and castrates them if they are not breeding quality.

“Look how cute they are,” he said, gazing at a row of pigs suckling their mother.

A sow and her piglets will be on display at the Ventura County Fair along with a doe and some pumpkins grown at the facility.