Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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is on minisprinklers, so it is not so critical on irrigation timing as, say, a
vegetable crop.” But water conservation is definitely a concern. “Especially
during the summer we have to be careful on howmuchwe are doing because
we can only cover so much with the water we have.”
Land prices vary depending on the quality and exact location, but even
agricultural land sells for $15,000 to $20,000 an acre in this area. “What we
are faced with here is a lot of influence from development. We are close
to San Jose. We do have a moratorium in our county that will slow things
down a little bit, but I do think the long-term speculation on land value
is really pushing land costs up. On rent, the twenty acres that we rent here
we pay $600 an acre. Which for our area is a good fair rent, maybe a little
on the high side, but it is adjacent to our thirty acres, so it is well worth
it. The other ranch we pay $200 an acre. It is not in a farming area. It is
more of cattle rangeland area. It is good bottom ground, it is good soil,
but it isn't a ranch with a lot of water.” These numbers seem phenomenally
high, especially to those of us not accustomed to California land prices, and
it makes one wonder how organic farmers can survive in this climate of
high land costs and low crop prices. The answer is diversity - an incredible
diversity of crops.
“We have six acres of walnuts, three acres of cherries (and this is not
going to be exact as we go along because I won't remember them all exactly).
Peppers are a big part of our operation. We do a lot of them wholesale, and
we are mostly doing colored peppers, red and yellow. This is a good area for
growing colored peppers because it is warm enough where we can get good
production, but it is not that hot where we have to worry about sunburn
problems. We are doing about fifteen to eighteen acres of peppers a year.
Those are at staggered plantings, so we have peppers from August until
Thanksgiving. It just depends when the frost hits us and knocks us out.
Onions are key to our operation. We are on a five-year rotation on alliums.
So onions, garlic, shallots, and leeks will adhere to a five-year rotation. I'm
not too sure about the leeks, but the dried alliums will stay on a five-year
rotation or as close to that as we can. We do between garlic and onions and
shallots, about thirty-two to thirty-five acres a year. We do a few acres of
early onions to get our season started. Those are generally sweet onions that
don't store that well. The bigger acreage we usually do twenty-two to twenty
five of reds, yellows, and whites. The yellow and red on an equal percentage
and the whites a smaller percentage. Those onions we can store. They are
varieties we can go into cold storage with them or store on the ranch up
until Christmas. Then the ones in cold storage we can come out with until
April. And come out with good quality and not a lot of loss. Garlic we are
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