Spring is in the Air, and so are Frost and Rain

When you live in an almond orchard Spring is delightful. It is like living in a fairy land. If the weather is nice we take some lawn chairs and eat lunch under the trees.


Almond bloom can also rive you nuts. We have two or three weeks to set the crop. We need nice days. If it is windy, the bees won't fly and pollinate the blossoms. If it rains mold and fungus can set in. If it freezes it can burn the little blooms.

I was up at 5AM to run water in the trees this morning. The warmer ground water helps break up the cold stillness on a frosty morning. The other thing we do is mow the centers. When centers are flat they capture the maximum solar radiation during the day and reflect it back at night. Every little bit helps.

The up side of the rain this week is we got the wheat fertilized. We flew on a dry fertilizer and the rain worked it in. That is pretty slick. You can't run a tractor in the wheat fields because the plants fill the beds. If we water run fertilizer it can be uneven, plus the fields are too wet to run water. So this method works pretty well.

We have been doing some maintenance around the orchard. This next week we will put in some replants, replacing downed or dead trees.

I hope y'all have a great week, and the weather settles down. [We need the rain so we can irrigate in the summer. I would just prefer rain before the almond bloom.]

P

One of My Favorite Colors

Can you see why this is one of my favorite colors? A fresh wheat field with the sun behind it just glows.

   What you can't see is the wheat seems to be a week or two ahead of normal. This is an indication we have had a mild winter, even if the rest of the country has taken a beating. We have rain in the forecast so we have been busy getting the work we need to do while things are dry. We also applied fertilizer on the wheat to keep it growing. There is a world-wide shortage of wheat and prices are rising. We want to make the best crop we can.

   We are also busy in the orchard cleaning out dead trees. We will do some re-planting this next week.

   The almonds are pushing hard. There are some orchards in the area that are starting to bloom. We should be blooming by next week. I hope how you can see how the unsettled weather makes me nervous. There is a lot riding on setting a good crop. When it rains or it is windy the bees don't fly. Without the bees the flowers won't get pollinated and they won't make almonds. While we need the rain, rain now can cause molds and fungus that kill the blossoms and they won't produce. Always something to do on the farm and always something to worry about.

   On the bright side, it is bright. We haven't had fog for a while. everyone is enjoying the sunshine. Hard to believe that in six weeks we will be thinking of planting cotton. We must be having fun because time sure is flying.

   I hope you are having a great week. I am going to go out and put some fertilizer on the roses, bushes and trees in the yard before dinner.

Cold and Fog

 You will never hear me complain about winter weather. It is a lot easier for me to warm up in winter than cool off in summer. [ I have not found a job where someone will pay me to be neck deep in a swimming pool all afternoon.] But, I do know that a lot of people get prefer summer and many get depressed during the winter, especially when we don't see the sun for a long time.

   For an almond farmer the important part of winter are the chilling hours. For our trees to go properly dormant we need a certain amount of cold temps. UC Davis has done the math and they have a website to monitor chilling hours.

   Of course there is not a lot I can do to change the chilling hours. They are what they are. In spite of the cold weather the past few weeks it has been a relatively mild winter so far. In fact, the almonds are already pushing. The new buds have begun to swell. Normally this is welcome sign of Spring. But, I know that there is still potential of some crappy weather over the next six weeks. Almond blossoms are fairly delicate: they are crushed  by even light frost, and a light rain can trigger fungus that rots the blossoms.

   Personally, for the almonds' sake I would prefer it to stay cold for a few more weeks.  But, like many other things in farming we take what we get and in the words of Clint Eastwood's character, Gunnery Sgt Tom Hiway, in the movie 'Heartbreack Ridge', we "Adapt, Innovate and Overcome."

I hope y'all have a great week.

P