{"id":5119,"date":"2015-09-28T13:26:32","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T13:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/?p=5119"},"modified":"2016-04-07T13:28:18","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T13:28:18","slug":"a-note-from-farmer-al-sept-28th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/a-note-from-farmer-al-sept-28th\/","title":{"rendered":"A note from farmer Al: Sept 28th"},"content":{"rendered":"Dear CSA Members,\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s always difficult to make the decision to pull out an orchard, or even part of\u00a0one. There are two parts to this kind of decision:\r\n\r\n1. There must be something you really want to plant but don\u2019t have any open\u00a0ground available.\r\n\r\n2. There has to be at least one or more good reasons guiding you in exactly\u00a0which orchard to be removed.\r\n\r\nThis year the choices were easy. Today we\u2019re starting the process of removing\u00a0cherries to make way for mulberries. You all know by now that climate change\u00a0is impacting our cherry production in a BIG WAY. Warm winters impact the\u00a0cherry tree\u2019s ability to set fruit. Those flower buds must have at least 900 hours\u00a0of winter chill (45 degrees Fahrenheit or lower, accumulated between 11\/1\u00a0and 2\/28). So far the past 3 years in a row we haven\u2019t been getting that. It\u2019s\u00a0time to begin thinking about new crops which are better suited, climate-wise,\u00a0to our changing environment. So, I\u2019ve been researching mulberries. I actually\u00a0planted about 4 \u201cPersian\u201d mulberries over 10 years ago and LOVE the fruit.\r\n\r\nHowever, Persians are impossible to handle, (although maybe I should travel\u00a0to Persia to see how it\u2019s done!). The fruit, while incredibly sweet and delicious\u00a0are just too soft when they get ripe. They will stain everything they touch dark\u00a0purple!\u00a0However, last May I visited a friend in Fremont who has a \u201cPakistani\u201d mulberry tree. We went into his garden and he showed me the tree \u2014 tall, lush\u00a0green leaves \u2014 it was beautiful!\r\n\r\nWe picked fruit. It was really good. Not quite as sweet as the Persian Mulberry but still very good. No stains and its larger fruit was easy to pick. Mulberries have all kinds of great nutritional value such as vitamin C, fiber and\u00a0iron. So I brought home a basket of these and found that they also store well.\r\n\r\nWe should be picking them in May, before we get super busy with apricots.\u00a0So, here goes! Today I\u2019ve got 10 men out in the orchard removing the cherry\u00a0trees to make way for mulberries. Some are coiling up all the drip tubing and\u00a0removing above ground parts of the irrigation system. Two men are working\u00a0with chainsaws to cut branches all the way down to a stump in the ground.\r\n\r\nThen four guys are dragging the long branches over to the \u201cchipper\u201d to be\u00a0shredded into small chips of wood suitable for composting. Next week, the\u00a0backhoe will come to dig out the posts, the Ripper will come to Rip the soil\u00a0\u2014 which essentially breaks it up to a depth of 3 feet to improve soil aeration,\u00a0water storage and root penetration. More later... Gotta go for now!\r\n\r\n\"Signature\r\n\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear CSA Members, It\u2019s always difficult to make the decision to pull out an orchard, or even part of\u00a0one. There are two parts to this kind of decision: 1. There must be something you really want to plant but don\u2019t have any open\u00a0ground available. 2. There has to be at least one or more good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-note-from-farmer-al"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1kz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5121,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions\/5121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}