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- February 26, 2025
- From the Fields: Jon Reelhorn, Fresno County nursery grower
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By Jon Reelhorn, Fresno County nursery grower
We grow ornamental trees, shrubs and perennial flowers. We service the garden center market and municipalities, some landscape businesses and homeowners. We have a retail store.
As we get 70-degree days, homeowners get the itch and want to come out and shop, so we’re seeing an influx of homeowners. We’re seeing the landscape business pick up, and we’re seeing garden centers order to restock. We ship between Bakersfield and areas in Northern California, and we’ll ship up into Washington and Oregon when rose season starts.
We are seasonal. We’re crazy busy in the spring. We do half of our business for the year in March, April and May. But unlike other parts of the country, our business continues through the summer and winter. From Thanksgiving until beginning of March, we’re crazy busy planting. In springtime, we’re harvesting and selling. Summertime is slower, but because of our heat here, we’re having to nurture the plants. Then it starts over in the fall, which is the best time to plant your yard and garden, so it picks up again.
We had a mild winter, so we didn’t have any frost damage here. I’m always concerned about the lack of rain because if we don’t get the water we need, then the municipalities will tell homeowners they can’t water as often. We have been able to get through previous droughts because homeowners were taking out their thirsty lawns and installing drought-tolerant landscapes, so we focus more on low water-use plants now than we used to.
This winter, we’ve been very fortunate to not have any hard frost and enough cold weather to where the plants have gone dormant. I’m hoping and praying we’re not done with rain. We need more and obviously snowpack. But I’m not a fan of rainy weekends because that’s when customers come out and shop. As long as it rains on weekday evenings, that’s great. That’s obviously a joke, but we do need more rain.
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- February 26, 2025
- From the Fields: By Brandon Fawaz, Siskiyou County hay farmer
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By Brandon Fawaz
Siskiyou County hay farmerWe are primarily alfalfa and orchard grass farmers with grain on rotation. I also operate an ag services and agronomy business providing seed, pesticides, fertilizer and supplies to the local hay farmers of our area.
In the Scott Valley, we are very wet despite being in a declared state of emergency for drought. We have been underwater and flooded, or we have been wet and soggy, and we have little springs of water developing out of hillsides draining into our fields that we don’t normally see. We had around a foot of snow a little over a week ago, which is uncharacteristic but not unheard of for this time of year. Normally, we get about 20 inches of rain a year, and right now we’re at about 21 inches.
That’s going to impact spring work. On a typical year, we might have 30%, 40% of our spring grain planted by now, with the next 25% of it to be planted in the next few days or week. So far, we haven’t been able to do anything. There hasn’t been a tractor in the field in our area yet because it’s just been so wet. We’re sitting around doing shop work, maintenance, agronomy work, office work and things inside.
Last year we had some of the best yields of my career. I have over 25 to 30 hay seasons under my belt, and we started earlier than I’ve ever started. We started cutting hay around May 20, and that’s at least a week earlier than normal.
The hay market was down compared to other years. With the yield being really good, it took some of the sting out of the bad prices. We’re heavily reliant on export trade. China did not purchase a lot of hay from the 2024 crop. What they decide to purchase of the 2025 crop with new trade negotiations remains to be seen. We, unfortunately, have a lot of eggs in that basket.
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- February 26, 2025
- From the Fields: John Tenerelli, Los Angeles County tree fruit grower
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By John Tenerelli
Los Angeles County tree fruit growerWe finished pruning all the trees. There are no blooms yet. The cherries won’t blossom till the end of March. Mostly everything else will start blossoming in about the middle of March. We’re going to spray copper for disease, and we’ve cleared out some orchards that were old. We’re picking up the firewood and stacking it.
Blooms need a bit of moisture in the ground, so we’re starting to irrigate. We normally get about 5 inches of rain a year because we’re in the high desert, but we haven’t even had an inch this year. LA normally gets 16 inches a year, and it got an inch the other day. Normally, we put water on in late March, but this year we’re having to do it now.
We sell most of our fruit at farmers markets. We farm at high elevation, and we had frost damage last year. We lost some late season fruit, but we still did really good. We lost all the apricots because they bloom first and they’re a little more susceptible to frost than other varieties. But that just gave us more space on our tables to sell cherries.
This will be the third year for our U-pick, which did really well last year. We don’t do that much from the U-pick orchard yet. It’s still expanding. Hopefully, it gets a little bit bigger. The neighbor brings over a big pen of chickens and little baby chicks. We don’t have pony rides like some of them do.
People come from all around, and they love it. Some come all the way from Laguna Beach and San Diego. We keep the U-pick kind of small. We don’t mass advertise. We try to get high-end clientele for it. We get a lot of actors and high-income people to come. It’s fun for me, and I really like it. I like talking to the people that come out. Everybody’s so appreciative.
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- February 26, 2025
- From the Fields: By Tony Vaught, Butte County aquaculture producer and consultant
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Many growers have just completed a busy season. Aquaculture has two holidays: One is the traditional year-end holiday season when people have lots of events and parties. Farm-raised seafood—freshwater and marine, plus products such as shellfish, abalone and seaweed—are popular during the holiday season.
The second holiday is Chinese New Year, which came in January this year. We sell a lot of fish during this holiday, which is a significant marketing period for the live fish market in urban areas, and this year’s market was particularly strong. Supply has been a little low because the market has been very strong for some time. That’s a good position for farmers to be in—to have a strong market and be able to provide fish for that strong market.
Caviar is harvested during December and January, and the spawning of sturgeon is just around the corner. Sales were very strong during the Christmas holiday. Caviar is aged and stored for sales throughout the year, including the next Christmas season. At the same time, we’re harvesting caviar for next year.
Live trout sales are particularly strong in Southern California during the winter months, supplying large fishing lakes for recreational fishing. Trout are also processed for direct sales to consumers and for the restaurant trade.
Several fish crops in California are awaiting the spring season. The fish species—including sturgeon, channel catfish, largemouth bass and hybrid carp—undergo a cooling period in the winter. As temperatures rise, they begin to develop eggs. Warmer temperatures are needed after the eggs hatch and the small fish are set out to grow.
The areas where fish are raised go from the Oregon border to the Mexican border, with different climates, temperatures and water supply. California has the most variety of aquaculture products in the U.S. because of our climate, water and market. We raise a lot of fish here, and we want to be the leader in aquaculture.
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