Tuesday, May 24, 2011

California friends & agriculture

After leaving Sacramento Thursday afternoon (with no bags) we drove north only 25 miles to Zamora where my K-State grad school friend, Janet, grew up and lives!

She and her sister live in this awesome over 120-year-old house that has been in their family, with amazingly rustic, yet fashionable wood floors, cute little rooms and a great porch.

The agriculture around there is so diverse and interesting. Ronny and I kept asking her, “what is that crop?”, 2 minutes later, “what is that crop?!” We probably were starting to get annoying – but it was just so cool to see so many different varieties of crops in a close area!

On one side of her house was the great field of tomatoes. This is in the valley, can you see the mountains in the horizon?DSC_0074DSC_0076DSC_0077

On the other side is a wheat field that is near harvest time.DSC_0123

Near her parent’s house, they just planted an almond grove (pronounce ahmen because when they harvest them with shell attached, they knock the ‘ell out of ‘em!"). They used GPS to plant the trees and Ronny and I thought it looked like Arlington.DSC_0084DSC_0085DSC_0087DSC_0088

Janet was a great tour guide as you can notice from the picture above!

We drove around the area, looking at olive tree groves, pasture, cattle, sheep, onion seed fields, sunflowers and bees. It was so pretty to see how close the valley, rolling foothills and mountains really are – in Colorado they seem so much more spread out.

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Ronny took these next two pictures early Friday morning, and I’m pretty impressed!DSC_0128DSC_0184

Probably the best part of Janet’s weekend though, was getting engaged on Friday! Congrats Janet and Jeff! Thanks again for the great tour and great visit!!DSC_0466

1 comment:

Home on the Range Exchange said...

I really like the wheat field and barn picture, worthy of being framed if you ask me!