From the Fields: Dan Errotabere

We’re into our almond harvest. Yields look a little off, more so in some areas than others. We’re preparing to harvest our pistachios. We think we’re going to be harvesting our winegrapes next week, possibly the week after, depending on sugar. The pima cotton looks good, and it’s starting to finish out as well. Tomato harvest is now completed, but it is off as well. We’re hoping to harvest garlic in about another 10 days.

We had a little bit of a heat spell earlier that probably didn’t do us any favors. But also too, with continuing dry years that we have, where I farm, applications have been next to zero, if not zero. That means we put a lot of well water on those crops, and that’s not as good as canal water. That’s the stress we’re going through when we go to some of these crops, is that we’re putting an awful lot of well water on.

I’m hoping (this week’s heat wave doesn’t affect the crops), but it will, because the nighttimes get so hot that the plant doesn’t have a chance to rest overnight, and that’s what really hammers them. We’re hopeful that we don’t see much impact, but not much we can do.

Moving forward, the big challenges will be obviously water and availability of it. We’ll be probably fallowing more than we are now, and things will be much more expensive for both the farming and the consumers, because we just don’t have a water supply. Challenges will be how to manage going into next year if it’s another dry year, which there’s some indication it might be.