{"id":5375,"date":"2014-03-24T06:29:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T06:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/?p=5375"},"modified":"2016-04-11T06:31:37","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T06:31:37","slug":"a-note-from-farmer-al-march-24th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/a-note-from-farmer-al-march-24th\/","title":{"rendered":"A note from farmer Al : March 24th"},"content":{"rendered":"Well! We dodged the Bullet! The \u201cBrown Rot Blossom Blight\u201d bullet, that is! It was the classic convergence of rain on the blossoms combined with warm temperatures. The same weather conditions occurred recently in two consecu- tive years, 2010 and 2011, causing total crop failures in our apricots for both of those years.\r\n\r\nThis year we have a full crop of \u201ccots\u201d in all varieties, with only minor infec- tions of the feared fungal pathogens widely scattered in the Goldensweet variety. The reason for this good outcome......compost! Over the past two years we\u2019ve been applying about 10 ton per acre per year to the apricots. This has changed the biology of the soil ecosphere, and improved the structure of the soil as well, enabling the trees' immune system to resist infection.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s still too early to assess other crops but each day we see more fruit on the branches of plums, nectarines, and pears, as the tiny fruits are shedding their blossom jackets and growing a little each day.\r\n\r\nFarmers up and down the state are all doing the same thing, and we\u2019re all wor- ried because of the extremely unusual winter weather we\u2019ve just experienced. No one can remember another winter like it, with warm balmy days of tem- peratures in the 60\u2019s even in December and January.\r\n\r\nEven farmers, most of whom are ultra-conservatives, are now realizing that global warming is real... facing the double threats of severe drought along with the \u201ctoo warm\u201d temperatures of last winter. We\u2019re facing more uncertainty than ever before.\r\n\r\n2014 will be a pivotal year for us, and we will appreciate the support of our CSA members more than ever before.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Signature of Farmer Al\" src=\"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/assets\/FarmerAlSig.gif\" width=\"250\" \/>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well! We dodged the Bullet! The \u201cBrown Rot Blossom Blight\u201d bullet, that is! It was the classic convergence of rain on the blossoms combined with warm temperatures. The same weather conditions occurred recently in two consecu- tive years, 2010 and 2011, causing total crop failures in our apricots for both of those years. This year [&hellip;]<\/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-5375","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-1oH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375","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=5375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5377,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375\/revisions\/5377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}