STRAIGHT FROM THE FARM

There is a lot of conversation in the news media these days about having schools provide fruit and vegetables in the meals served daily by our area schools. I certainly am in favor of serving local fruit and vegetables for a variety of reasons; however, the schools, businesses, farms, citizens should not be required by the government to do anything good sense tells you to do anyway.

The schools are already required to do a great many things that parents have done in years past and should be doing now, including eating healthy food. No one wants to hear how it was in “the old days” but there is a lot of good to be said about what and how parents raised their children and fed them in the era when I was under my parents’ roof. I never knew how poor we were when I was growing up but we never missed a meal and we took our sack lunch to school.

Anyway, I digress. The 35 or so local farmers in our CSA, Family Farm Fresh, will be ready, willing and able to supply fruit and vegetables to one or more schools in our area if and when called upon to do so. And, we are already supplying local, wholesome, delicious fruit and vegetables to a couple-of-hundred parents here in Tulare and Kings counties who do care about what they eat.Thanks for being interested in what we are doing here on the farm. Come and see us. God Bless. Farmer Bob

Taking your morning walk (required of this 80-plus farmer) just as the sun comes up in the orange orchards: there is nothing like it anywhere! And, our weather guy calls these days “California Classics”. Yes they are! Birds sing, roosters crow, the hen clucks and her chicks come running. Jim, Cirilo and Tim show up to do whatever it takes to keep this place running and shining. Our guests in the Hummingbird Cottage and the Bunk House enjoy. And, so do I. Farms are also places to face reality from birth to death. We have had two deaths this week, one duck and one pheasant hen. On the other hand, baby cottontail rabbits abound and quail are hatching. The bloom on the citrus trees is about done and, in its place are tiny oranges and mandarins which will now grow, God willing, into next year’s harvest. Spring is also when thrips attack our new little oranges and mites will be a problem along with red scale. But the biggest problem of all, these days, is government over-regulation. We will talk about that soon. In the meantime, if you want to share our central California fruits and vegetables in a gift basket for your Mother, just give us a call. Our Family Farm Fresh crew, Pam and the ladies, make them look real nice. Thanks for being interested. Come and see us. God Bless. Farmer Bob

Here at McKellar Agricultural Group, we are concerned about having “all our eggs in one basket” so we are working on ways to utilize our physical facilities in various ways. Farming is not easy work but we have found our garden weddings in the orchards of Historic Seven Sycamores Ranch to be a challenge as well.

We will talk about the challenges in a minute but, here is a no-brainer: this is wonderful time to have your wedding here. The sky is blue. The temperature is perfect. But, the icing on the cake is the spectacular bloom and aroma in the surrounding orange trees and the field of California Poppies. It takes your breath away.

The bride’s party decided to rent the adjacent Hummingbird Cottage for their rehearsal get-together and dressing for the wedding. All is going well until they discover there is no hot water where you would expect it to be. Beautiful bride is calm, cool and collected. She calls Mikka, our wedding coordinator. Mikka calls Jim our top-notch handyman. Jim doesn’t answer. Turned out his phone malfunctioned. Mikka calls me, who knows next to nothing about hot water heaters, and I rush over to fix the problem.

By now it is after 8 o’clock Friday night. A member of the groom’s party has plumbing experience but didn’t, of course, have his tools with him. After confirming that I did not know enough to fix the problem, I called our faithful plumber, Willie Treece, who lives in Three Rivers, 45 minutes away. Luck strikes at odd time but is much appreciated. Willie was in Visalia with his wife on a “date night”. Good guy that he is, he said he and his wife would come right out.The end of this tale is nearing. Willie didn’t know what was wrong so he called places where he could get parts he might need and all were closed. His wife, on a hunch, called Orchard Hardware even though they too were closed. They opened up for them. He purchased the parts that he needed and called me to say he was on the way. Now it is 10 o’clock.

He arrived and began to assess the problem which was that there was no electricity to the heater. Why? We asked ourselves. Out we go to the panel on the back of the house, opened the door and there it was. The power to the hot water heater was turned off. Willie turned it on and listened to the hot water heater and declared it working. Bride can now take a shower. She is a good sport. It is now 11 o’clock
Turned out Jim forgot to turn the hot water heater on and he was the only one who knew how he was doing it. We have changed that.

This same type of problem happens with the pumps in the orchards and, on cold nights, when a wind machine goes down but when the lives of folks are affected and they are there waiting for you to solve the problem, it is somehow different.

Farming gets more interesting each day. More interesting because you can’t do the same old thing like your Father did before you. To succeed today, it seems necessary to diversify…new crops…new varieties…new ventures. Those farmer friends who are diversified simply do better, meaning they are more profitable (or lose less which, unfortunately is sometimes the case).

Here at McKellar Agricultural Group, we have removed Valencias and planted two varieties of Mandarins. One variety was a home run and the other hasn’t rounded first base yet and is likely to get tagged out. We planted, this last summer, a variety of navel orange that has a pink flesh and some color in the peel. It is already popular and we are late- comers in this case. The variety is Cara Cara. We had a chance to get in on the ground floor, even went to a meeting or two, but chickened out. We are thinking differently these days.

We have really diversified. We now host beautiful outdoor weddings and lots of other events in what used to be my Folk’s nursery and garden. That part of our operation is still called Historic Seven Sycamores Ranch, just as it has been for 85 years. Brides are beautiful to behold and all have a “certain” wedding dream. We work hard to make their dreams come true.

We will share more diversification talk and thoughts with you next time. Please remember when you buy local fruit, vegetables and products from local farms, it can’t get any better than that.

Cirilo working hard

Here on the farm we are transitioning from summer to fall. August is the last month growers can hedge, top and skirt citrus trees and still have time for the trees to grow back some cover before the cold weather comes in November. So Jim and Cirilo are busy this week wrapping up our outside-grower work. It starts in February and ends about now.

We top trees to keep them at a decent height for picking, cultural practices and to open the
top up to get sunlight into the tree. We hedge trees, again to keep the rows open so sunlight can get to the trees. Skirting is different. We skirt to keep the snails out of the trees and the fruit out of the dirt.

How do weddings fit in? In our case, we invite brides to have their beautiful outdoor weddings here in our garden surrounded by orange trees. Scheduling for the fall is on top of Kelly’s list trying to fit our part-time employees’ schedules into their Tulare County Fair FFA and 4-H activities and school schedules.  And, the same men who do our topping etc. also maintain the wedding facilities, painting, repairs, and improvements. It is a busy time here on the farm as we move into fall. Irrigating is important now to size the young fruit and keep them growing.

Our packinghouse, Sun Pacific, is estimating the number and size of the navel oranges on our trees, planning for picking, packing and selling the crop during the upcoming season. Their team of estimators has a system as they go into the orchard and randomly select trees and do a scientific  count  projection for not only our groves but for their other growers’ groves as well.

The State of California also does essentially the same thing for the entire California navel crop and issues their official projection about the third week in September. This number is the one the entire industry including buyers works from in their planning for the season which starts in late October and runs until late spring.

It is about 99 degrees right now here in rural Tulare County, just the way we like it–good for the crops.

Tractor