Reprinted fron Good Food World:
Yakima county in Washington is the state's leading agricultural county and is nicknamed "The Fruit Bowl of the Nation." Apples, cherries, pears, grapes and many other fruits plus a wide variety of seeds, vegetables, field crops, and cereal grains make the Yakima Valley one of the top agricultural producers in the nation. What better place to hold the 2011 annual conference of the Tilth Producers of Washington?
Miguel Altieri
A major highlight of the conference was the keynote delivered by professor Miguel Altieri of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, at the University of California. His specialty - agroecology - combines agriculture, thescience of cultivating the land and raising livestock; with the principles of ecology, the study of the relationship between living organisms and their environments.
Altieri began with a series of startling statistics proving that when measured in total output, small scale indigenous agriculture is actually more productive than industrialized agribusiness. "There is a huge myth that big industrial farms produce more food than small farmers," he said. Read more in Plumbing the Agroecology Zeitgeist, contributed by Cate Gable.
Cradling the next generation
One question that continued to haunt the occasion was: Where have all the farmers gone? We've got young people who want to farm, but they can't. When the New York Times recognizes that an industry is in trouble, it is time to correct the problem - fast! We've got a cadre of tough, energetic, smart, and dedicated young people who want to farm.
They're ready! All we need to do now is give them the financial support they needto do the job.
There's more, keep reading! Get a cup of coffee and join us at GoodFood World,where we get to the source by talking to the people who produce, process, and delivergood food.
Take care, eat well, and be well!
It is once again winter time and the apple and cherry trees have dropped their leaves and have settled gracefully into a well deserved dormant slumber. This is the time when the Middleton crew busily prepares for the next three months of pruning. The pruning of the fruit trees begin once the trees have reached dormancy. This period usually begins in early November. Dormancy marks the time when the leaves fall off of the tree and the sap returns to the roots of the tree. Pruning serves many purposes and must be done consistently in order to promote fruit size, quantity and quality. Additional reasons for pruning are to:
- Shape the tree in a pyramid form to allow life sustaining sunlight into all parts of the tree.
- To renew the fruiting spurs to allow newer and more robust spurs that produce larger quality fruit.
- The selection of branches that will bear new fruit into the future.
- To remove branches that have become too large in the tree structure which depletes too much of the energy of the tree, is obstructing the sunlight or competing with the central leader.
Each and every tree is unique to itself. Each tree is analyzed to determine what type of pruning is needed based on what you are trying to accomplish with that specific tree.
Too many spurs or too many fruiting buds will diminish the fruit quality, size and color. Their needs to be a balance between the leaves and the source of energy, inceptor branches, spur and fruiting buds. Depending on the size and structure of the tree (root stock) this will enable you to leave only the desired amount of apples per tree of quality fruit. By counting the fruiting buds and determining the amount of fruit per tree you desire you can then be assured of larger quality fruit with correct background color.
The day I met Gary Wayne is the day I forever changed the way that I look at food.
Today every time that I look at a beautiful head of green leaf lettuce or a vibrant orange or tomato or a sumptuous piece of beef I think of the farmer or rancher and all of the work that they and their teams had to go through to get the food to the stores or preferably to the farmers market. I, like so many others have on an occasion or two taken for granted the abundance of food that is available to us in this great country. We have so much and far too often people unknowingly and unintentionally believe that our food comes from the back room of oh, yes... a supermarket.
It is my intention and hope to both share and enlighten others with a glimpse of what our farmers go through and the distance that they travel in heart and mind to bring us the fresh, healthy organic foods that we are so privileged to enjoy. Since we are preparing for the upcoming cherry season I thought that it would be most appropriate to share what occurs during Frost Control and the protective measures that are taken to ensure that the precious buds are shielded from the bittersweet frost. In order to be understand exactly what Frost Control is I thought I would first share with you information provided by *WSU Extension and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"The temperature at which the fruit buds are injured depends primarily on their stage of development. Buds are most hardy during the winter when they are fully dormant. As they begin to swell and expand into blossoms, they become less resistant to freeze injury.
Not all blossom buds are equally tender. Resistance to freeze injury varies within trees as it does among orchards, varieties and crops. Buds whom develop slowly tend to be more resistant. As a result, some buds usually are killed at higher temperatures, while others are resistant at much lower temperatures."