Candycot budded rootstock looks ok so far..

We budded more of the Lovell (peach) rootstock to candycot. If I didn't say this before:

 Budding is a technique of propagation where a vegetative bud removed with a bark is united with another plant (rootstock). It's an alternative to grafting. The following diagram helped me when I was first introduced to this concept by Lane.

It always helps to have good irrigation water. It's therapeutic to sit by the canal when you want a break from work!

California has a diverse geography and complex water usage situation. Depending on the region and irrigation district, the price of water for agriculture varies from a few tens of dollars to hundreds of dollars per acre-foot. We are blessed to be in the former category. 

We lost some of our beloved trees to the city..

May they rest in peace! The sewer project by the city at Carpenter is moving along and they are in the covering phase. So far they have managed to do the project while removing only a handful of trees.  The contractor doing the work has been a pleasure to work with and very accommodating. 

Some of the tree rows are really starting to close in, a real challenge for our tractor driver on the mower. But, I love seeing the dense foliage!!

Are you ready for budding?

Well, our baby candycot orchard is..

Budding is like grafting but we only attach a small baby branch to the plant in the ground so less invasive and more delicate.

The rootstock have been growing nicely (see pics). We should be able to bud over to the Candycots sometime in June. The trellis system installation is labor intensive but moving along. Lane hired a young man to do the installation and he seems to have taken an interest in doing a good job. Derk VanKonynenberg has provided the specialized tools we need and came out early on to give some instruction. Derk has been available to answer questions and has been very helpful.


BTW, The V-shaped trellis structure helps us to train the trees to grow in such a way that all parts of tree get plenty of sunlight so leading to better fruit yields.

Mother's Day canal blowout :o)

This falls into the "it's always something" category. Sunday morning I got a call from Lane who got a call from the Ditch Tender that the canal had collapsed and water had flooded into Carpenter.

Apparently the canal had a leak through a crack in the side wall. As water leaked into the soil it found a gopher burrow and began to flow through it. It slowly eroded the soil until the wall collapsed and the water gushed out. When a farmer down stream lost his water pressure due to the collapse, he investigated and called the ditch tender. Fortunately it happened during daylight and was caught very quickly. It flooded an area 25 rows by about a quarter of the length of the rows. No real harm was done and as of today there is very little standing water. Despite it being Mother's Day morning there was a great response from TID (as you can see by the trucks in the picture) and they got it repaired in a hurry. Thank you, Turlock Irrigation District!! And, Hope you had a great rest of Mothers Day, Lane!! :)

You can't burn it but you can sell it for firewood? Really?

So the tree chippers finished a few weeks ago and hauled off the chipped trees. Not a lot of them. A normal by-product of the process is pieces of wood and roots laying around that are too small for their equipment to capture.  We spent quite a bit of time collecting the wood and putting it in piles to burn.  When we contacted the Air Pollution Control District to add the property to our burn permit, they said that type of burn is no longer allowed on sites larger than 20 acres.  

When we asked about alternatives, their suggestion was to sell it for firewood!  Can you imagine, we can't burn it but we can burn gas hauling it all over creation for other people to burn! So, we decided to hire a chipper and chip them into, well, chips! I know this costs us money but we think this is the best option.

It's always better to have someone live at the farm than have the security people patrol.

The mobile home is coming along nicely and I think we will end up with a decent place for some good tenants. Once we pick up the wood left behind and we are ready to disk the ground to clean up the weeds when it is dry enough.