From the Fields: Wayne Bishop

By Wayne Bishop, Yuba County agritourism operator and farmer

We had a good year in agritourism. In late September, early October, we were above average temperatures, and people don’t come out as much in that kind of heat. But as soon as the heat lifted, we got busy, so we ended up with a good year.

The pumpkin crop was not the best we ever had, but it was good. The heat in July was a factor. It was a record number of hundred-degree days in July, and that was prime growing season. Generally, pollination is late July all the way through August. Pumpkins will not set fruit when it’s that hot, so we had a bit of a late set. 

We’ve had that happen in mid-August before. I think the overall stress on the plants contributed to maybe a little more mortality than we normally see in the plants and less sizing in the pumpkins. But we ended up with a good crop—not a record bumper crop, but good enough. 

After pumpkin harvest is over, we plant wheat (in fields that had) pumpkins, and we sell that as forage to a local dairy. In fields that are going to go into pumpkins the following year, we put a cover crop mix in that. We also sell that as feed to Tollcrest Dairy. We like that rotation of a cover crop, then pumpkins, and then wheat after that. We also grow corn for Tollcrest. That harvest happened in October along with our walnut harvest. 

Like everybody else, our walnut crop was off a little bit, but we are hoping for better pricing this year. Harvest is done. We’ll take a little break. When we come back, we’ll spray the wheat for weeds. We also put a cover crop in the walnuts, which has reduced our need for fertilizer. That’s done. We’ll come back and prune the walnuts, but most of the farming activity will be quiet the next couple of months.