This blog entry is actually about FARMING this time…how
about that?!? Usually “Farmer Tony” here goes on and on about something that
generally isn’t always related to farming, but rather something that probably has
bigger and more “worldly” implications, such as the recent blog about 2012 and
the “end of the world”, or about electing our next president. But this time, so much has gone on this past
month that I just had to share it with everyone. In case you haven’t been following along on
the ol’ facebook, you missed that recently our orange trees were in bloom,
producing this coming winter’s crop of navel oranges. And even if you saw the pictures up on our
facebook page, it could never capture the aroma of millions of orange blossoms
in our area, releasing their “gardenia-like” scent into the air…it was at times
intoxicating. And with the bloom came
the bees…the buzz of thousands of bees in the orange groves, working the blooms
for nectar to take back to the hives that were put out in order to produce our delicious
orange blossom honey. There really is
nothing like it! After that we began our
annual ritual of irrigating once a week to keep all the thirsty orange trees
happy. We usually irrigate for 24 hours
at a time until the weather really starts to heat up. Once the daytime highs reach the high 90’s
and into the 100’s then we bump it up to 48 hours every week. We are still harvesting our late season navel
oranges, and boy this year they are really sweet! Not sure if it was due to the freezing
temperatures we had in early January, or if “Mother Nature” was just especially
generous with the sugar this year, but if you have recently ordered any of our
“late season” navels, you know what I am talking about! You know, it’s always a challenge being a farmer, each
year, season to season it seems like everything changes! The weather, the trees, the amount of fruit
you have, the pests you have to deal with…every year it’s always a big “grab
bag” of situations that keeps you guessing.
In the near future will be topping and hedging the trees to keep the
sizes of the trees more uniform. In order to understand what that means (in case you have never
seen nor heard of this practice), pictures of this will be posted on facebook as soon as we get the rigs
in the field. So stay
tuned.
A big “thank you” to our
Pearson Ranch wholesale customers who continue to keep the orders rolling in,
you are a big part of our success! But
of course the biggest “thank you” is to YOU, all of our retail customers who
have found us on the internet and continue to shop with us. As a small family farm we can’t tell you
enough how much we value your support of the small farms in America! So until next time, this is “Farmer Tony”
saying…”see you in groves,” and remember to have your Orange a Day.
Cheers!
