Farm Smart Tour

Touring the fields

We've generally been loafing here in the Yuha Desert in Southern California. Yeah, we've done a few things to maintain the motorhome, kept up our 2-mile-per-day walking average, and Consuelo has knitted up a bunch of slippers for friends and to sell (about 15 pair). As a diversion, we signed up for a farm tour at the University of California Experimental Farm in El Centro.

California has a dozen or so experimental farms throughout the state. Most are in the central valley, an area that produces most of the 350 commodities in the state. Agricultural researchers offer up projects to develop strains of plants, test theories on controlling insects, or to study beneficial catalysts like nematodes. The university reviews the projects, selects appropriate ones for study, and provides infrastructure to implement them.

Siphoning lessons

El Centro is the desert farm, offering the dry hot environment and flood irrigation to each plot to grow plants and run tests. Most studies take place in 4-5 months, after which the ground is plowed under and made ready for the next crop.

Irrigation is an important factor in growing, and since El Centro receives less than 3 inches of rain every year, this farm is a good environment to study effects of varying water on the crop. In the Imperial Valley, irrigation water flows from the Colorado River via the All-American Canal which starts in Yuma, AZ. Farmers place water orders in the morning, and the next day the watermaster delivers the water via gates and locks and a few reservoirs to the little canal on the southwest corner of the farmer's land. The farmer opens his gate and manages it on his farm, routing it through his fields and starting siphon tubes to run it to specific rows. Every irrigated field in the Imperial Valley has drain tile installed under it at 10 foot intervals, which helps collect the runoff that seeps into the field and diverts it to the waste canals, which carry it away to the Alamo River and on to the Salton Sea.

Art picking, Sharon watching

We got a 10 minute overview, then split up into two groups of about 40 people. Our group went off to see the fields, hear about some of the specific experiments, see the weather station that feeds info to the world (changing weather in the Imperial Valley is a concern to the commodities markets in New York), and learn how siphon tubes are started and managed. We then stopped at the farm's vegetable plot, where we picked beets, carrots, and radishes. They took us back, where we had a chef salad for lunch and then switched with the other group. As they left for the fields, we went to the lecture hall where we heard about some of the specifics of agriculture in the valley. We also saw a movie about the management of water in the Colorado River, now a more valuable resource than ever. After that, they drew tickets for door prizes and we went home.

Consuelo picks Dikon Radishes

We ended up with two cabbages, two heads of cauliflower and lettuce, small bunches of carrots and radishes, and a good bunch of beets. We'll be hard pressed to eat it all, but we had fun, learned some things, and are really enjoying the salads and meals we're making from it. It is further inspiration to plant a garden in Maine when we get back there in the spring.