Fresh Veggies

We try to find something of interest to do each week. This week we attended a University of California Extension program called FARM SMART. As you may know, we are in the Imperial Valley of California which is sometimes called the salad bowl of the nation. Agriculture is big business here. It's amazing how well things grow in the desert - if they have water. And they do have water, brought here from the Colorado River by a canal system.

The UC Center is located about 7 miles east of El Centro CA on 255 acres of level desert.

Workamper volunteers live on-site and help with the program activities. They have three wagons pulled by tractors to take the participants from the Center to the fields. Straw bales on the wagon are the seats.

Dave with a daikon radish. We got to pick a variety of vegetable crops to take home. Each of us got a sack (like the orange one on the right) to fill and take home. We brought home cabbage, lettuce, daikon radish, beet greens, broccoli, and cauliflower.

Pat picking cabbage. The guy with the trim knife is one of the Workamper volunteers. He also drove the tractor for our wagon.

Dave doing the siphon tube thing. It's not as easy as they make it look, but Dave was successful in getting a tube to flow. In some types of irrigation the siphon tubes are used to transfer water from the canals to the fields.

Provided lunch was a large plate of chef-type salad that we munched in the shade of a large pine tree while some of the staff provided lunch hour entertainment. The lady with the guitar is Nancy Robertson, Extension director of the FARM SMART program.

Dave holding his "Siphon Hose" award and gift cup with ice cream at the conclusion of the day's event. There were about 200 people, mostly senior citizens, in our tour group.

The next morning was taken up, in large part, by the processing of some of the veggies for freezing. For sure, this week we're having a lot more salad and fresh veggies than we usually do. And since our micro garden is now producing red, ripe tomatoes at the rate of about 2 per day along with zucchini our salads have definitely improved.

We'll let you know what happens next week.

Winter is almost over

Today is February 17, and we're feeling like "winter" is nearly over. I put " around winter because we have a hard time realizing that we really are in the winter months. The California low desert is perhaps the finest climate zone we have ever lived in, at least the winter part of it.

Last week we took a tour of a new, almost completed, solar energy farm near Niland. The farm has been under construction for about a year. Some of the workers, and the supervisor, live in our RV park and they provided some of our senior citizen residents with the tour. Within sight of where we are for the season we can see geothermal power plants, natural gas power plants, and solar power systems. To the north of us is the largest assemblage of wind turbines we have ever seen. Lot of alternative energy here.

This was the first time we've ever been so up close and personal with a solar energy farm. Very impressive, and if it performs like the owners are hoping it will be a showcase of how to make electricity where the sun shines. And it does shine here! We've been getting some return from our garden since January, but the tomatoes are now turning red.

Here is part of our group waiting to be escorted through the solar panel array. This farm is about 140 acres and contains about 100,000 panel assemblies.

A view of some of the solar panels, all of which, they apologized, were made in China

Guard shack at the gate to Five Star Electric.

Pat with some of our garden produce on Feb 17.

Our garden is not covered in any way (it almost never freezes here), but we do have drip irrigation installed throughout. 80+ is typical daytime temp for Jan/Feb.

This is Presidents' Day weekend, one of the busiest for our campground. I think we are pretty much filled to capacity for the next three days. Pat is working in the office and restaurant. I have the day off, but am on-call. So far, just enjoying the day and getting some personal chores done.  Stay tuned. More next week.