When the Almond Tree Blooms

Towards the end of last week, strong gusts of wind began to pummel the Sacramento Valle, clearing out the dense fog and the most of the leaves clinging to the trees on the farm.  The mulberries, willows, black walnuts, figs and the majestic valley oaks that dot the landscape of rice country are transforming into their skeletal winter forms.  The wind blew the thin white chaff off the corn being moved around the mill and it drifted like snow throughout the farm.  Like flakes that never melt it even settled on the dusty break table inside the machine shop.  I spent most of the past few days in the unheated shop, where I counted weeds in the rice samples I took from each field before harvest.  The work revealed striking differences in the weed populations of the fields, but grew tedious and made me realize that I wouldn't want to do this all the time, say, as a PhD student in an agriculture-related discipline.  Luckily, as the light faded over the Great Valle...

Ready for another day of field work Spending long days in the cab of a John Deere 8410 belted tractor gives me a lot of alone time. When I'm not staring at the sheaths of earth left tossed up by the powerful steel disks in tow behind the tractor, I watch the rice trucks on Highway 99, which runs next to the field, or I observe the chickens, cranes and the crows as they feast on insects unearthed by cultivation. And I wonder how of all things I ended up driving a tractor on a farm in South Sutter County. It is because I spent these recent days alone on the tractor--and because Fall is the season for remembering and for contemplation of life and death-- that I have resurrected up this blog yet again. Sutter County Mornings I could go back years, trying to figure out how I ended up where I am, but a good starting point would be the Summer of 2009, when I began my fourth year as the Nutrition Education Site Coordinator, aka 'Garden Teacher' at Park Elementary...