When the Almond Tree Blooms

I want to share some news with those of you still read this long-neglected blog: I got a job.   After I finish my Master of Professional Accountancy at UC Davis this June, I’ll be working full time for the California State Auditor in Sacramento.   I received the job offer and accepted it back in February; I meant to share this sooner but was deeply involved in my classes until I finished finals last week.     UC Davis Sunset When I took my first accounting course over two years ago, this isn’t where I imagined I’d end up.   I became interested in accounting through agriculture.   At first I knew little about what a CPA does and whether or not that’s what I wanted to become.   I figured I could take a couple more accounting classes and find a job at some farm business in the area, where hopefully I’d get a little hands-on accounting experience.   At the beginning of 2012 I realized I needed to leave the farm.   I’d had enough...

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, ...

Sacramento Valley Summer Garden A major motivation behind my somewhat bizarre and masochistic decision to stick it out in the Central Valley is that I was really excited about the summertime abundance that flourishes in the intense heat. The previous summer I had spent at the UCSC Farm and Garden Apprenticeship Program in Santa Cruz, where an especially fog-cloaked, gloomy July stunted the warm weather crops, spread disease and kept us from harvesting much besides kale, carrots and lettuce. Those three vegetables are delicious in their own right, but in the summer, I want to eat summer stuff, like peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, watermelon and even some okra. Save the greens for the rest of the year, when I gladly will cook up kale, collards, broccoli raab or any other leafy vegetable and eat it with much gusto. In Santa Cruz, the problem we faced in enjoying the bounty of summer was a lack of heat and an overabundance of cool, damp weather. Out here in the Valley, what I lacke...

It's summer time but the livin' ain't so easy when you're at a year round school and have to go back in mid-July. There's much to gripe about at the beginning of the new school year, but the garden is looking great. Check out the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/rfadam/SummerTimeInTheParkGarden# As usual, there is a lot on my mind, but for now, if you're checking out my blog, why don't you check out the photos and enjoy something nice?

As I spend a quiet Saturday reading, writing and cooking beans, my mind drifts back to the month I spent in Nicaragua. I've lost track of how much time it's been since I returned from Central America, but I know I've been back for well over a month. At work, people are counting down the weeks before our spring break--four more to go. I am thinking ahead of projects to do in the school garden where I work once spring arrives, which here in the Bay Area will be soon. I am also thinking of another school garden project--the one in Lagartillo, the community in Nicaragua where I spent a month studying Spanish this past winter vacation. When I was in Lagartillo, some of the community elders spoke of starting a garden project at the school. A nonprofit organization that supports initiatives for women and children in Nicaragua, Project Sonrisas (http://www.projectsonrisas.org/) is working with the community in Lagartillo to help make the project a reality. To quote the Pro...