From the Fields - August 17, 2022

By Dave Van Ommering, San Diego County agritourism operator


Dave Van Ommering. Photo/Paul Savage

This year as far as COVID is concerned, we had a lot less issues. The biggest thing is we were able to do our farm tours, and we were able to show the kids from schools in San Diego County. A gentleman that is renting ground from us is growing different fruits and vegetables, so we’re able to tour that. We also have a few cows left, so we can show a cow being milked.

Our business name is Oma’s Family Farm, and this year we did what we call Recess at Oma’s. Once a month, we do a three-day period where moms and kids come out and visit our farm. We also did a couple of what we call food-truck Fridays. Once a month, we would do food trucks and people could come and eat and play with their kids here.

We had a unique situation where a church called Turning Point Ministries spent about six weeks here filming a docudrama, so we were able to use our farm for eating, dressing and getting ready for the different shots that they make each day. They used about an acre of our property to build the sets. The docudrama is supposed to come out during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season.

We’re getting ready for the pumpkin patch, which happens the last week of September; that’s when we open. That’s what we’re building toward right now. We also converted one of our barns into a wedding venue, so we’re hoping to have weddings at our farm in the future.

The gentleman who’s renting a piece of our ground is going to start growing landscaping plants because he has an issue with trying to get landscaping plants from nurseries, so he wants to grow his own products on our farm. He’s going to start doing that here in a couple of months.
 

By Karin Sinclair, Placer County rancher


Karin Sinclair. Photo/Ching Lee

Our cattle numbers are probably about the same. We run cattle on most of our pastures that are irrigated, and then we have a 20-acre pasture that we run the sheep and goats on. We cut back our sheep and goats due to feed prices and lack of pasture. Placer County Water Agency supplies our irrigation water through canals, and we have gravity flow. It’s hand lines, so we’re moving pipe as often as we can, but we couldn’t move the water fast enough to keep the pastures growing. That’s why we took a bunch of the sheep and goats to the auction.

Normally, we start feeding the cattle hay in November, and we’ll certainly have to start feeding them at least two months earlier. The grass growth this past year hasn’t been all that great. A lot of it is because we’re not able to get out there and move the water as often as we should due to lack of help.

Hay is really tough. I totally depleted my hay barn this last year. I ended up buying it from a broker in Nevada because my California broker wasn’t able to find any. The price has certainly gone up. A bale of grass hay is about $30, and last year it was about $16 to $18.

There’s also processing issues. We were trying to get the USDA processing facility done. That has not gone through. We’ve got a handful of people that have been really noisy as far as not wanting it in their backyard. The facility we have is having issues getting help and getting product done. We’re scheduled to have some hogs processed next week, and we’re not sure if we’re able to have that done because of lack of people at the facility and getting on the schedule. With the pigs, it’s not like you can hold them for very long. Our options are certainly being limited.
 

By Matt Stayer, Shasta County queen bee producer


Matt Stayer. Photo/Lori Eanes

We wrapped up our queen season around July 1. Since then, we’ve moved the bees north into Siskiyou County for their summer locations. We’re letting our bees recover from our clean-up season, so that they’re strong enough to go into the winter. The forage is definitely down after three years of drought. We’re making a little honey on what little alfalfa that’s been planted. I would guess there’s 10% (alfalfa) of what’s usually up there in a normal year because of a lack of water.

In some areas we’re supplement-feeding a little more than we’d like, but we are still getting a consistent pollen flow. We’re probably going to start feeding pollen very soon because next month is when we get the hives ready to start raising their winter bees, so we push feed and supplement on them as much as we can through the last half of August all the way through the end of October. We’ll start feeding and monitoring them for mites in the next couple weeks.

Queen season was very good for us. We had good mating days. We did get some rain during it, which can slow us down a little bit, but we gladly take the rain over missing a few days of catching queens. The market was very strong this year. We sold all our queens. We’re getting good feedback from all our customers all over the U.S.

The price of honey has come up quite a bit. There’s been some issues with honey being dumped into the U.S. from China and other countries and flooding the market. The antidumping campaign has finally come through. They now have tariffs on certain countries. It’s helping the U.S. beekeeper quite a bit. The price of honey went from $1.20 a pound to $3 a pound. That’s a strong price. With the economy we’re in right now, that’s a big help for the industry.
 

By Derrick Lum, Solano County farmer


Derrick Lum. Photo/Ching Lee

We’re about halfway through the growing season. The persimmons look good. Luckily, my district has a full water allotment to irrigate the crops. In a year in which drought has affected a lot of districts, my district is very fortunate to have its water allotment.

Persimmons don’t need a lot of sprays. Generally, they will grow better when it’s cooler, and it’s been up and down with the warm weather. That being said, the persimmons are growing quite well and very clean. It looks like a heavy yield. They kind of bloomed behind the freeze, so it is a nice crop coming in.

With olives, we’re very fortunate. There are some districts in olives that got affected by the freeze. When my crop bloomed this year, it was after the freeze. I have a medium crop, which is good. It looked like a heavy bloom at the beginning, but then after the bloom season, it’s a moderate crop with good sizing. There’s a little touch of the olive fruit fly. I’m on top of it with the GF 20 spinosad spray. I’m hearing others that haven’t been as fortunate, that have an infestation of olive fruit fly, and they’re trying to get that under wraps.

I’m about midway through the growing season on olives, so we’ll see how everything goes. The olives look good. I hope I get good yield and size at the end. The olive harvest season comes in about November. The persimmon is going to be harvested probably about late October. Both are winter crops.