winter scenes of the valley

I decided to take a foggy Saturday and go take pictures. This barn and oak was just East of Modesto.

This is a close up of the same set of barns with an oak tree and I just noticed a hawk? or ?

You don't envy the dairy cattle in this kind of weather!

This a field with the winter crop making a green carpet looking toward a dairy ranch. The fog was still down and creates an ethereal look to the scene.

A closer look to the same scene. As you can tell I love the foggy look in the morning in the valley.

Most of the dairy country near Modesto tends to be on shallow ground with a lot of low spots that turn into tule marshes in the winter. This is a common scene in the winter here.

I didn't get close enough to ID the tree but it is growing on the edge of a residence. Deciduous trees against the fog is a typical winter scene here.

Almond trees along a road east of Modesto. 30 years ago this was dairy country until the price of almonds made the cost of preparing the dairy land for almonds profitable. At a guess this is about 5 or 6 years old and just becoming full producing.

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.

Another young Almond orchard north of Escalon.

By the way for those of you that don't live near almond producing regions.

If you talk to farmers and people in the know we pronounce almond ah-mond.

The reason is we know to harvest almonds the farmers have to knock the "L" of the trees.

I saw this interesting tree driving along Mariposa Road north of Escalon. It looks like an old broken down Poplar tree. This might be the remains of an old residence site.

Another view.

Dairies have changed. This is what it takes to survive nowadays. And even this is probably on the small side. The old hundred cow dairies are gone.

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.

The bee keepers are getting ready to move the bee hives into the orchards. this scene was along the road and you don't often see hives stored near a road. Too many people want to steal them and the bees in warm weather and a road don't mix.

Things have change in the friendly country side. With people with atv and jeep type cars that want to have fun

this is an old almond orchard whth prunings on the ground. Many years ago almons were hardly pruned at all. Now they do enough pruning to continually renew the flowering spurs. This increases production.

A poplar growing along the road .

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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.

Alfalfa field with irrigation lines set out. The stand pipe is to hold the water head when using irrigation.

As you dirve around you can see several methods of training grapes. This is cordon pruning. Note the arms on the wires and the secondary canes coming off the cordons..

Another cordon trained orchard with Valley Oaks in the distance. The irrigation that farming brought created more growth to the native oaks. The only problem is they are generally allowed to grow only along the edges the fields.

It does make of spectacular photos though.

This is a two year old walnut orchard. Note the whitewashed trunkes to protect the english walnut from sunburn.

I noticed this valley oak along the side of the road near this young walnut orchard. I appreciate the willingness of the farmer to allow the oak to continue even though you can see that it is impacting the close walnuts.

An alfalfa field in the dairy area.

Another view of the field just starting to come up.

I was showing this picture to a friend and she commented that it looked like a mother sheltering the small children trees around it. If so it has to be like the chickens that hatch pheasant or goose eggs. These baby trees aren't even the same species.

I wonder if she knows it?

This is a juvenile walnut orchard probably in the five year range. A nice orchard coming on strong.

Here is an oak allowed to grow in the middle of the field. Still a young tree.

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This is a stump pruned grape vineyard near Lockford east of Lodi. This is probably Tokay grapes. Near Lodi is where Tokay grapes do their best. The new vineyards are often wine grapes but this is probably 20+ years old when Tokay was the dominant variety here.

Another cordon vineyard. This is probably one of the newer wine varieties from this region.

Here is another style of stump pruned grape. The front grapes are pruned and show the typical pruning style. Last years growth is pruned to short spurs to control the amount of fruiting wood so the vine can properly develop the fruit to size.

A young cordon trained vineyard. Most of the new vineyards are trained this way. Depending on the variety the growth is pruned to short spurs or longer canes. Some varieties tend to produce fruiting wood at different spots on the vine. A mistake pruning can be disastrous for the yield.

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 Modesto

In the beginning they were open fields. i guess there was too much midnight strawberry picking so fences became the norm.

this is where they sell them from the farm. You also see them at street corners selling them by the flat.

this 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.

Another view of new almonds. The sleeves around the trunks are to protect from sun burn and rodent damage to the tender trunks.

These trees were watered when they were planted, except for rain they won't be watered untill they leaf out..

As I drove around I was looking for some old style peach plantings. There aren't many peaches left here. The planting is much closer than what we saw in the 50's and 60's.

This is one of the few younger orchards I saw. If you compare the previous picture with this one you can see the amount of pruning that peaches take.

this to show the tie to help hold the tree together. In older trees often they use heavy wire. Peaches are very heavy and if you aren't careful the tree can fall apart.

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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.

This is anothner young orchard with the drip system showing.

this is a small sprinkler in an alm ond orchard.

earlier I showed some bee keepers. This shows bee hives placed in an almond orchard.