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Harvest

I am pleased to report that both the sweet potato harvest from a backyard garden in Woodland, California and the rice harvest on Pleasant Grove Farms have both reached their successful conclusion. The latter involved over a month of four combines working into the night 7 days a week cutting over a thousand acres of rice. The former entailed three people digging through 12 ft garden beds for a hour in search of delicious sweet potato tubers. Both mark the end of two very different agricultural adventures (described in previous posts). I walk away from this harvest with the satisfaction of having been part of the production of food: a milk crate's worth of sweet potatoes and well over fifty 55,000 lb truck loads of rice.

Sweet potato patch before harvest


The fruits of our labor


Peppers still going strong

With harvest completed, my farming job will begin to look more like a regular 8-hour office job. I have rice samples to sort, weigh and analyze, data to enter, yield monitor maps to manipulate. It will mean lots of time in front of the computer and less time driving around South Sutter County in a white Ford Ranger pickup listening to 97.9 lunes sin commerciales. If the weather permits, I may spend a few more afternoons working with the crew removing roots from the almond orchard, as I did this past Friday afternoon. At Pleasant Grove there are few times when numbers of people work together and I really appreciated the camaraderie, the conversation and the delicious snack of boiled peanuts soaked in hot sauce. I am lucky to work with such great people on the farm, and to find beauty in the changing of seasons in the Valley.
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Comments

Sacha said…
This is great, Reed. I love how you weave together your rice and sweet potato experiences! I hope you don't mind that I shared your blog on my facebook page... Sacha
PS we ate a meal of sweet potatoes from our earlier test harvest and they were the sweetest and most delicious I have ever tasted!
November 21, 2011 at 7:53 PM
Reed said…
Sacha,

Thanks, I was hoping you and Maris and Sasha wouldn't mind being included in the blog. Glad to hear the sweet potatoes turned out well, I am going to cook some for Thanksgiving.

-Reed
November 22, 2011 at 6:18 AM
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