February 29, 2012

Wednesday 29~~~~The farm tour is this morning about 60 miles from here near El Centro, Calif. in the Imperial Valley. I fixed us a big breakfast of scrambled eggs with bacon, peppers, onion and cheese with biscuits. It was sure good, but it almost made us late for the farm tour we are going on. It is located in the southern low desert of California at 60 feet below sea level. It is the University of California Desert Research and Extension Center. The Desert Research and Extension Center is a large and complex research center that provides professional management, land, labor and facilities for agriculture and environmental studies. The Imperial Valley enjoys a year-round climate suitable for farming. The sun shines more in the Imperial Valley than it does any where else in the United States. It also averages more than 8 hours a day including the months of November and December. The average rainfall is three inches a year. November through March is considered the "rainy" season. The only reported snowfall occurred on December 13, 1932. Up to four inches of snow was reported. Imperial County has been one of the top ten agricultural counties in the Nation for the last fifty years. Due to the lack of rain fall, the valley is entirely dependent on the Colorado River for irrigation. The water from the river brings so much salt to the soil, it is a constant battle for the farmer to rid the soil of the salt. It is quite a process and I won't try to explain it. The number one crop is alfalfa, one third of the crops raised are alfalfa and most of it is shipped to Japan. This year round crop produces 9-11 cuttings per year, two ton per acre per cutting and the price this year is $265 per ton. Vegetables rank second. There are also more beekeepers per capita in the Imperial Valley than worldwide. This farm tour is open for anyone to go to, it costs $15 per person They give you a brief summary about where they will be taking you and what you can do. Everyone is given a bottle of water, a small plastic bag for fragile produce and a very large well constructed bag that would hold at least 20 # of potatoes. They have you ride in trailers with bales of alfalfa to sit on pulled by tractors. They take about 40 people per trip and the other 40 people go to a class on agriculture in this valley, the planting, irrigating, harvesting and every step they do in the processing of all the produce they grow and ship elsewhere. We were on the first wagon trip and they stopped along the way and told us what was growing in the fields and the different types of studies that are going on in each field. They raise Holstein cattle on this farm and they do real good because Holstein cattle can handle the heat of 105 to 125 degrees in the summer than any other breed of cattle and the change of temperature when Fall comes, that was one of the studies they learned.
The trailers stopped at the fields of cabbage, lettuce, white radishes (huge) the size if my wrist and over 12 inches long, they are real good in sandwiches they say. They have a study on Carrots in which they are growing them in different colors like White, Blue and a deep carrot color. You can pick as much as you want to of anything. We really like cabbage, so we picked a lot of it. We picked 6 heads of lettuce and a large bunch of butter lettuce, red lettuce and the green leaf. I filled my one gallon bag with Broccoli and Kent pulled up some nice small beets in his. They said to take all you want, as they have one more day of tours and it will go to waste. They took us back to the house (Yard) where they had lunch all ready for us. They fed us salad with every vegetable they grew in it I think. It was so good, they added to our salads as we walked through the line `1/2 cup of chopped ham, beets, black olives, chick peas and crunchy noodles. They make their own onion dressing and it was definitely the favorite of everyone. They gave us a pamphlet on the care of produce the recipes and other things. They had the best country music for entertainment while we ate. The other group went to the fields while we went to watch the movie of the farms operations and they gave away several prizes. I won a tee shirt!! When the second group came back, we all again met at the house (yard) where they had ice cream with all the toppings for us and more prizes. The farm workers brought in a pickup load of heads of lettuce and we were begged to take some home as they had to get rid of it. We took 3 more heads of lettuce to give away in the park. We were tired when we got home. so we picked up pizza to bring home. After we ate, I worked for along time cleaning all the produce we brought home. We gave away 3 heads of lettuce to our neighbors right away, they loved it! I cleaned and washed the loose leaf lettuce and bagged up some of the cabbage. We had so much fun, we would do it again. We learned so much about how they grow and harvest the food we buy in the stores every week.
The turn around time of produce from the field to the shipping truck averaged 4 hours. The pickers dress in white clothes with a hair net and face mask. Most of the produce is picked, prepared and boxed in the field ready for the trucks to take it to market.