Winter in the Orchard
The past few months have been pretty quiet on the farm. Leaves slowly dropped from the trees as the temperature dropped through November and December. December was especially cold for us here in the Sacramento Valley. We had many nights drop into the 20s, which is unusually cold for this area.
Most of our time has been consumed with cleaning and sorting the almonds after harvest. We also added several new flavors to our roasted almond lineup, and a very exciting new addition, Raw Vanilla Almonds. In the orchard, we’ve done minimal pruning, and my mom has helped out a lot with “poling;” that’s when you knock the “mummies” (nuts stuck on the trees that didn’t come off during harvest) off with a pole. This is our best defense against the Naval Orange Worm moth, the worst pest we have in almonds.
The scheduling didn’t work out this winter for the tree grinder to make it to our orchard like we hoped. The portion of the orchard that we were going to remove to start our new organic orchard is still standing. We are going to charge ahead with the transition to organic anyway. Originally we were going to just farm them organically, but because so many customers have asked, we are looking into certification. We’re just getting started now and it’s a three year process to receive the “certification.”
The rains have been sporadic this fall and winter, with just enough precipitation to bring some very foggy weather. That is, until this past week. God has seemingly opened up the floodgates! The past few days have brought rainstorm after rainstorm with several inches of rainfall. Cold rainy weather is never fun to be out and about in, but we are extremely grateful. Hopefully the snow-pack is building sufficiently in the Sierra Nevada mountains to fill up our reservoirs this spring and summer.
Here is a quick video I shot today while William (my youngest son) and I went for a ride through the orchard to take a look after the latest round of rain. Unfortunately the rain came with a strong south wind, taking a few of our trees over.
The trees are apparently anticipating the coming spring, because the buds are already beginning to swell.
The buds are starting to swell.
The buds are just waiting to pop!
In the News: Our farm was featured in the Davis Food Coop Newsletter this month!
Davis Coop Newsletter
For those of you who haven’t been to the website for a while, we have great news: Free Shipping for all orders over $30!! For those of you who ordered within the past few months and took advantage of the free shipping, you may have noticed the minimum increased from $20 to $30 to qualify for the free shipping. UPS increased their rates at the first of the year, and the shipping costs were just too much for us on the small orders. Yet, we couldn’t give up on the idea…we still wanted to offer the free shipping to you all. Our hope is this will have the least impact on you because we know the free shipping helps out a lot.
Rebecca and I wish you all the best as this new year continues to unfold. We’ll be bringing more updates very soon as the season gets underway.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Hey Tom & Becca that was a fun tour. Wow, it’s way bigger than I pictured. That must be a ton of work.
By the way, how old are those trees? Could some of those downed ones still be rescued?
Any chance you’ll be vacationing in Colorado at the end of March? I think it will be another unique wedding.
Blessings on you and your upcoming season!
Yours in Jesus,
John
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Hi Tom and Becca,
Wow, how your life is evolving.Well, maybe that isn’t the best word. Changing, growing,. Tom you sure sound like a farmer. you must of picked up the lingo from Uncle Jim.
We are being “flooded” here in Surprise,AZ too. Sounds funny for the desert. There are no drains on the streets here so all of a sudden ,yesterday, I hit water on our own street about a foot deep going about 35. Ouched!! I hoped my car didn’t get too wet. We have already received enough rain here in this one week that has already exceded 2009. That was only 2.79 inches though.