Almost Caught with My Pants Down

It's almond harvest time again!


Even though I had everything ready a week ahead of usual, the first field was a little too dry and we had a lot of almonds stuck up in the trees after the shaker went through. The second field is better, but we are going to have to hand pole to clean up the first bloc. Arrrgh. I was ready a week ahead of time and I was still a week behind.


In other news-We are watering the cotton and working the wheat ground. A little more water and fertilizer and the cotton will be done. We'll open the wheat ground and leave it for a few weeks then bed it back up next month.

Community Gardens

By Paul H. Betancourt

Copyright July 2012

                First Lady Michelle Obama sparked a renewed interest in school and community gardens. You know me—I support anything that re-connects people and their food.

            In this case I absolutely support school and community gardens. I think when kids work all summer watering and weeding their school gardens and all they get is a salad they will have a new appreciation of what farmers do. When they watch bugs eat up their garden or find worms in those nice big ears of corn they’ll have a new understanding of why farmers use those ‘nasty’ pesticides.

            This is no joke and I am not just being a smart a—leck. I really hope every community and school garden flourishes. Growing food is one of the essential activities of life itself.

I am not sure I can explain why but, Corn is sweeter when we grow it ourselves. Tomatoes are tastier when they come from our garden.  There is a sense of satisfaction that is---priceless.

So, I salute all those community gardeners. My hat is off to every student working in a school garden. As a guy who make his living growing food I wish you all the very best.

I hope Y'all have a great week.

P