Will Work For Food

Went to work up north today. Earned mostly credit for fruit. Spent most of my day getting ladders up trees to get the fruits weighing down the branches and in some cases snapping the branch/ trunk. Lots of pruning to be done, and thinning of fruit was never done so these trees are loaded. The benefit to not thinning is the variety of ripeness and sizes. Most commercial orchard operators will thin fruit in the spring so everything is uniform later for harvest. There is some good stuff going on in this great state agriculturally speaking and after being invited up to many many people's farms I have finally made the time to do so. Brought home 8 Lbs plums and 4 lbs white peaches.

Summer Time

dehydrating mini apricots from a friend's tree downtown:

thank you rain:

New Chicken Tractor

A side:

Garden Growth

3 Sisters:



Winter Squash:

Sunset

A Scrap of Shade...

...is all you need here in the high desert to cool off.



the chickens hang out under their shade structure in the late afternoon:

the australorp breed is black, so naturally they seek out any scrap of shade.

Garlic, Old & New

• Last season's old, dried garlic:

Pumping Rain Water

here is rain water being pumped from a barrel to a squash plant:

The Three Sisters

Monsoons

rained hard last night. the landscape in the desert changes with a single summer monsoon.

more rains to come in a few hours. sleeping in the camper tonight for the first time.