winter scenes of the valley
A view of an older almond orchard in San Joaquin county. Note the drip system for irrigation. You can also note the strips of vegetation between the rows. 30 years ago a "well farmed almond orchard" would have been bare except for the almond trees. Eventually people noted that farmers that had weeds and vegetation at the edges of the orchard had a slower re-infestation of insect pests near the weeds. This was because of the predators that hid in the weeds. Now this is the norm to have mown vegetation between the rows of trees.
Bee keepers are an important part of almonds farming. because they bloom so early the bees aren't very active and to get the best crop it takes a lot of bees.
Even with the right amount of bees if the weather is too cold or wet it can affect the amount of pollinating they do. Bees don't like cold wet weather.I can remember smelling the sour smell of silage as it was delivered to the dairies when I was a kid. Now days most dairy farmers produce their own silage. What they do is anaerobic fermentation of alfalfa under the tarps. And then then they feed it to the cattle all winter and spring long. You see these mounds of silage at every dairy in the valley.
These next pictures were taken on a different saturday. After the Vietnam war ended there was an influx of southeast Asian immigrants in the valley. Many ofd them came from a village or agriculturaL life.
THE University of California helped many of them start strawberry farming. Pieces of open land on the edge of town were turned into strawberry plots. This is one near Modestothis is a new planting of almonds east of Modesto. when I was growing up this area would have been planted with canning peaches. No more.
Canning peaches are becoming less and less common near Modesto. A combination of changes in eating habits and the availibility of fruit almost year round has reduced the sales of canned fruit.This is a young almond orchard with a wind machine in the background. The wind machine is used when we get cold weather during the first few weeks of nut development.
Usually there is a cold layer with a warmer layer just above the trees.
The wind machines stir the air and mix the warm air with the cold air to keep the fragile nuts from freezing.