A Crazy Weather Week

     What I wanted to show you is how fast the trees leafed out. Do you remember when I said they would go from being dormant, to bloom, to leafing out in one month? Well, here it is. If you look carefully you can see the nuts come out of the middle of the blooms. And, how about those leaves?

And, now for the rest of the story...
     The top picture was taken before lunch on Monday. This picture was taken Monday afternoon about 5:30. We had received an inch and a half of rain on Sunday. Monday was nicer, until we got half an inch of hail and rain in about fifteen minutes. We had a TV crew from the Univision station in the driveway to do a report on the weather and how it was affecting farmers. They couldn't believe their eyes when the hail hit.
     I didn't want to believe my eyes. For those who want to ask- I have no idea how much damage the hail caused. We may never know. In a good science experiment you have a control. The whole orchard got hit with hail so there is no way of knowing what we lost. Fortunately this is the only field we buy extra insurance to cover. That may have been a good decision.

Other than that we have been doing the same things y'all have been doing this week. Trying to get some work done and stay dry. The wheat loves this weather. We got some fertilizer on last week and this rain has been working it in. The cotton beds are soaked. It will take at least a week to get them dried out enough to work them. So, even if it stops raining it will be two weeks before we can plant. That will give the chance for the ground to warm up.

The weatherman says Spring will come to our farm next week. We'll drain the fields that have been flooded and get back to work.

I hope y'all have a great weekend.

P

Almond Bloom- III

   Well, almond bloom is past the peak. The petals are falling and the leaves are pushing out. It is pretty amazing, the trees go from dormant to leafed out in about a month. We have had a nice bloom. It was windy a few days last week and the bees don't like to fly in the wind, but other than that the last week has been nice.


   I rode the motorcycle down to a growers' meeting near Coalinga. Riding along the orchards was like riding through a living colonnade of color. A very different experience on the bike, not like driving by in my truck. Of course, the bees are a little more problematic.

   BTW- the growers' meeting was interesting. We are at historic high prices and there wasn't a word said about the markets. Most of what we talked about were the new government regulations and pending government policies. Kinda shows what we worry about. We'll have to talk more about that some time.

   We got the corn ground bedded up and started watering it. We should be ready to plant corn the end of next week. We'll see what the weather is like then and go from there.

   The wheat looks fabulous. We are going to fertilize it again this week and start the water again. Yes, we have had a lot of rain fall this winter. But, we still need to irrigate to make a crop. Remember last winter's rain? The guys who dry land farmed their wheat, that is they didn't irrigate, made a quarter to half a ton per acre of wheat- even with all that rain. Those of us who irrigated made over three tons per acre. And that is the reason we irrigate.

    We started working cotton beds last week. We run a cultivator over the beds to knock down the weeds and break up the clods in preparation for planting. We'll run at least two passes and then wait for the weather to warm up. I hope to have the beds and the equipment ready by April 1st. Then we wait for some warm weather and plant. We'll talk about it more later, but cotton is very susceptible to cool weather. Here are the two things I have learned about planting cotton over the years: if you plant seeds in dry soil they won't sprout and if you plant when it is too cold the seed will rot in the ground. That is it. That is all I know for sure about growing cotton. The rest of what we do has a certain amount of windage.

Yes, things are busy on the ranch again. We are coming out of hibernation. As my father-in-law says, it is time to 'whoop and scoot'.

I hope y'all have a great week.

P

Almond Bloom- Week II

 Well that was an interesting week. It wasn't the rain and the frost as much as that fierce wind the other day.

Thank you to whomever has been praying for our almonds. We sure appreciate it. They seem to have weathered the storms and last week's freeze fairly well.

The ten day forecast looks pretty good. The bees sure flew well in yesterday's sunshine.

We will be preparing forty acres this week to plant corn. We will disc and furrow out the field. Then we will pre-irrigate. When that dries down we will plant the corn the end of the month.

Things are getting busier as the days get longer and warm up.

I hope you have a great week.

P