"One good rain makes up for 1000 sprinklings"

Dry Dry Dry

Our pecan orchard has had a hard life. Originally planted as a project for a youth farming group by the previous owner when she was very young, I'm told that there was some sixty trees at one time. 

Sadly, the project ended and over the years the trees were neglected and about 30 have been removed.  The family did not care about the pecans that were produced and allowed the neighbors to come in and pick their fill.

I talked with the former renter and he did not irrigate the trees at all during the driest year on record last year. 

As I said about 30 trees still remain. With a lot of work, my son and I have repairs the old PVC pipe buries about 24 inches under the dry desert soil and most of the trees leafed up to show that they were still alive. Even the grass was very sparse.

But no amount of irrigation was going to bring them all back. Welcome June and July. By my measurement (using a Walmart rain gauge) we received about 5 1/4 inches of rain. Nearly 2 inches of that was during a single storm.

As the photo below illustrates, the trees and the grass are now thriving. I'm planning to discourage any fruit (nuts) this season and perhaps the next. The trees need to get hearty before we can expect a harvest. Even a small one.

 

 

 

Orchard in the rain

 

But everything is growing. So much so we had no choice but to go out and buy a riding lawn mower. Trimming weeds and grass which had previously taken me just an hour or two with a weed wacker before, now takes 2-3 hours with a 46 inch riding mower.  But now we are cutting about 4 acres in the orchard and around the house keeping the desert at bay.  A full 50 feet away from any structures.

 We know that this rain will eventually come to an end, and all that green will turn brown.  We are in the desert after all, and in the late summer and fall deserts tend to dry and burn. Keeping all that green in check will keep the house, workshops, and orchard safe.

As for the rest of the 22 acres, that is a different story.

Be Well.

Pecans by the bushel, some day...

 

 

  When we bought our property, now referred to as Windsock Ranch Arizona ( I actually had to register the name) it came with a little orchard.  28 trees are standing, but they have not all produced leaves as yet.

Pecan trees.

I was never much for Pecans. Not on cakes or in candy, and in very rare situations pie. Pecan pie.  A southern dish as sweet as any candy I have ever tasted. 

How do you care for 28 pecan trees? I don't know.  

How much water? Not a clue. 

How much and what kind of fertilizer? At a complete loss. 

How do you keep bugs off organically, birds away, keep the gophers out? I don't know.. shotguns?

As a farmer with an orchard, I'm a good woodworker.

I can tell you that they don't even bud leaves without water much less nuts.  So the orchard needs irrigation of some kind. The orchard came with no instructions. None for the care of the trees, and none for the plumbing.  

 Little things like: Where are the pipes? How do they work? How old are they? 

These things are important to the operation of an orchard, I would guess. I don't see myself watering an orchard, even one with only 28 trees, with a garden hose.

Up until 3 weeks ago, the orchard lay bare. not a leaf nor even a bud to be found. We've had no appreciable rain in the four months that we have lived here.  Snow? Yup, about a 1/8th of an inch. Hail? Lots of that too, but you would be surprised at how little water there is in a coating of hail. Rain? Officially about .04 of an inch.

Now there is one other pecan tree that is the last of an orchard that was on the other side of the house. Its current neighbors are some version of mulberry trees. The mulberry trees, I was used too as I had four of a slightly different variety in Phoenix, needed water. So I bought a couple hundred feet of drip hose and gave them a soaking. The pecan tree, as well as two other mystery trees nearby got watered by virtue of their close proximity to the mulberry trees.

A week after the first water application, everything had leaves and buds. Including the pecan tree. This worried me for the still naked orchard. So I took what I thought would be an afternoon and seriously investigated the orchard irrigation system. I found the main valve in the orchard and two branch valves. One had froze the past winter and shattered. The other seemed to be working.

So I turned on the main.  The broken valve sprayed all over bu I managed to get it under control temporarily. The secondary valve to the east trees opened and sent water to the two eastern rows of trees.  

As I walked the rows I found that there was a 3/4 inch feed line that led to a "bubbler" head at the base of each tree.  About half worked, some of the rest did not until I messed with them a bit.  Two others were small geyzers shooting water up a for or so. The water ran about an hour while I took stock of the parts I thought I needed. But after that first water run, those first two rows were budding.

All toll, the four rows of trees cost about $300 in 3/4 and 1/2 inch PVC parts and almost week with me digging up burst pipes and replacing "bubbler" heads. The earth in the orchard, like most of the ranch, is very clay heavy. Muddy and sticky to dig once wet. Tools and parts are quickly caked in clay slowing daily progress and as the pressure increased from repaired pipes, new leaks appeared. But except for the last leak, its done. Late in the season, now all four rows have leaves.  Not all the trees, but most.

I know the system I fixed is wrong for trees. I know I'll have to make changes this fall when the trees go dormant again. And I'm pretty sure that there will be few if any pecans this fall due to the late start.

But next year we're going to have to have a plan for a couple of bushels of pecans.

Be well.

 

Not the weather I was expecting

 

 

When we moved from Phoenix to southern Arizona, we knew that there was a difference in elevation of a couple of thousand feet but it was southern Arizona, not Nevada.

The video above is of the THIRD hail storm in one day, each larger stones than the one before and thunder to boot.

No Sir, not what I expected.

Be Well

They don't go "Meep!, Meep!"

Elmer

 After we arrived at Windsock Ranch, that first day with our dreams and our trucks full of stuff packed over the course of two years or more, we dismounted and had a look around.

I soon realized that this was the first time I was really looking at the property. The trip from Phoenix was all of five hours. If you believe the computer driven maps of any brand, you will note, that depending on the time of day they report any where from 3 hours and 15 minutes to 3 hours and 45 minutes trip time.

I am here to tell you that the machine making such a prediction is not driving a bouncy 26 foot truck and is not controlled by a 66 year old set of kidneys and bladder.  

Its five hours. Trust me.

The trips we made down here prior to our purchase were pretty rushed on the ranch. We came with lists of things to ask about, see, test, photograph, and measure. But more than 2-1/2 hours on the ground and it quickly became a test of mine and my wife's driving fortitude with a 15+ hour round trip day.

So this was my first time with less pressure. The sun was going down soon and we would spend our first night in a relatively empty house, unpack the truck in the morning, and head back for another load tomorrow.

I was walking about the main house when I spotted this fellow. This is Elmer. He is , based on distant observation, a grown roadrunner. A Greater Road Runner, specifically. I assumed a male as I believe no self respecting female would choose such a ridiculous perch. He is actually perched five feet off the ground with his butt pressed up to the glass window, tail pointing to the sky.

My son, my wife and I found this a curious, but fascinating posture and let him be for the night. He seemed to take no notice of us what so ever.

The previous owner, nor the tenant had any knowledge of the bird and he was gone by daylight.

We continued our trips north and south several more times and each time, just before sundown our little roadrunner would be on the window ledge. Always the same window and never seen coming or going. He never so much as turned his head to watch us scurrying about with armloads of boxes and bags in the dwindling sunlight.

And so it went on. Weeks into months, sundown until sunup, our little good luck omen (as my son called him) stood his nightly vigil at our window. 

Even though no one observed his arrival nor departure, I began to admire his choice of windows. That particular window is exposed to sunlight from dawn to dusk. It is completely surrounded by burnt adobe brick, warmed all day by his arrival, and his corner is most often on the lee side of the wind. The glass on the exterior is perforated with a hole the size of a BB and so the double pane insulation has escaped allowing the heat from the house to warm the outer glass. I don't know how he discovered this particular spot, but as window seats go; this was a gem.

I came to calling him Elmer, much to my wife's amusement, for no particular reason. I would pass him with armloads of trash headed for the dumpster nearly every sundown. And I became accustomed to addressing him, "Hello Elmer" As I passed. He remained as stoic as ever, never acknowledging my greeting nor my passing.  He never even blinked when one night I pulled out my phone and snapped this picture of him crouching against the wind.

One of the chores remaining for the previous owner was to replace the septic drainage field. The work was to be completed before we moved in, but was delayed due to weather. I didn't mind much because that put me here to observe the project.

For Elmer on the other hand, it was the last straw.  One evening it would have been time for him to arrive and the driveway was filled with pump trucks, crews milling around, and a backhoe still digging noisily in the yard until dark. This was obviously too much. After months of putting up with our comings and goings at all hours of the day and night, he did not occupy his spot at the window that night.

Nor has he returned. If I would have guessed my time with him was limited, I would have put more effort into acquiring a professional like portrait of our first boarder.

The ranch has many such daily and nightly guests. We're getting to know them all. The two pair of jack rabbits, two pair of white winged doves, several pairs of cactus wrens, a complete city of gophers, loggerhead strikes, an owl or two that hoot all night long, and a hive of honey bees under one of the storage sheds- which have been very passive, but have to go. 

All of these and more greet me in the morning and evening coming oddly close at times for wild critters.

But I miss Elmer and his aloof but watchful eye outside my window as I slept at night.

Goodnight Elmer

Be Well.

My World is Changing

 

 

This last year, 2020, has been a rampage of changes for everyone on the planet. But mine has also changed in a different way.

 It all started two years ago September, or three years ago this coming September, if you prefer. I was standing in the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport awaiting the arrival of my high school sweetheart. My palms were sweaty, I had infringed on a stranger to use my phone to video the meeting with my phone, and I stood at the top of the landing with a cup of her favorite coffee, and a tiny ring.

Then, forty-eight years after we met, the following March we made it official

Now it's a year and a half later (give or take) and we're making another big move.

We've sold our house in Phoenix and bought a 22 acre ranch in Southern Arizona.

 

 

Together, my wife Sue, myself, my eldest son, resident deer, road runners, and javelina - soon to be joined by an unknown commodity of dogs, cats, chickens, milking goats, honey bees and perhaps a donkey named "Kevin", will share this little property in southern Arizona to be known, from this day forward, as 

'Windsock Ranch." 

This will also change this Blog to "Tales from Windsock Ranch."