EARLIMART, CALIF. — I was warned that the day starts early. And as I stagger to the bathroom at 5 a.m., with darkness all around, I spy Howard Yu, sitting like a ghost in a dark corner, praying. He has been up since 4.

Showered and dressed, I wander into the large kitchen that is at the center of the Yu farmhouse near the town of Earlimart in California’s fertile Central Valley. There together, eyes closed, Howard and his wife of 40 years, Soo, are reflecting on their daily devotion at the kitchen table.

“Ah, you caught us,” Howard says cheerfully. “Are you ready for the morning walk?”

As if on cue, youngest daughter Salome enters in her warm-up suit. Soon, in the day’s first light, we are following a path from the house and around the perimeter of the farm. The air is cool and fresh.

The road leads east past an almost ready-to-plant Korean vegetable field, then along an almost ready-to-harvest rice field. With one of the Yus’ five dogs leading the way, I struggle to keep up with the Yu trio, all fast walkers. After 35 years of the farming life, Howard Yu isn’t about to slow down.

“I love rice!” he says, as we walk along the edge of the rice field. “The way it looks in the field. The way it smells and tastes.”

Howard’s morning walk is both exercise and field inspection. He carries a metal pole to open and shut water valves. “I check for water leaks because you don’t want to waste a drop, and your crops need just the right amount.”

At 71, Howard is a compact man with powerful limbs, a full head of white hair and bronzed skin. He wears a UCLA baseball cap, sunglasses, white T-shirt, khaki pants and tennis shoes. He doesn’t drink or smoke.

“In a few weeks, we’ll harvest the rice and send it off for drying, milling and sale in the U.S. and Korea,” explains Howard, who is as talkative and effusive as his wife is reserved and thoughtful. He reads farm journals; she reads novels.

After we complete a 30-minute loop and approach the farmhouse, the 70-acre nascent vegetable field re-appears. Next week, astride his tractor, Howard will begin tilling and furrowing the field. Then he will start planting Korean cabbages and radishes in sections over the next several weeks for a series of harvests, done by hand, starting in October.

Howard shows me the packing shed where the vegetables will be washed, dried, put in boxes, weighed and loaded for transport. He ships his vegetables and melons by truck to the L.A. Produce Market, where a Korean wholesaler sells them to Korean grocery markets and restaurants in Los Angeles and across the country. His vegetables are “farm-fresh,” picked and sold the same day. A certified organic grower who uses no pesticides, Howard has two tractors, a pickup truck, a diesel truck and a portable cold-storage truck.