Field Trip with Justin

Stop #1: Justin's favorite coffee place in Marysville.

We arrived a bit early and discovered a cow being butchered in the back.

The hide is almost off. The slice mark in the side of the carcass splits one half into quarters.

The saw goes down the center of the backbone.

One more to be butchered.

George and Polly Harriger.

Beef age for 14-21 days before being cut according to the customers instructions.

Justin picked up 1 1/2 (of 3) pigs,

and left instructions for how to cut one beef.

A tour of Yuba City's old downtown and where the new shopping areas are, then on to a

tour of local cropland, with a focus on orchards and this nursery:

Top quality fruit and nut trees, 55 years in business, Certified Nursery Stock,
and say their trees are "handmade in Sutter County."

http://www.sierragoldtrees.com/home.html

Almond budwood: These saplings are planted inches apart.
They'll be pulled from the ground and bundled into groups of 10,


laid horizontally onto racks like this,

and put into cold-storage warehouses to be picked up by customers in the spring for planting.

All walnut varieties are grafted onto Black Walnut rootstock.

The almonds have been shaken from these trees and swept into rows.

Many of the nursery properties are lined with fruitless plum trees.

Crop rotation: after a crop of trees has been harvested,
the field is fallowed for two years by growing grains.

The bulge is where the graft is located.

These short squat trees can produce 300 branches which are harvested for propagation.

Olive trees are grown in hedgerows and are harvested by a machine
that travels down the rows and over the tops of the plants.

Loaded with olives!

Sierra Gold is located on the Garden Highway next to a memorial to Sutter's Hock Farm, established in 1841, and constructed with iron from the original building.

Feather River: we're up on a levee at Boyd's Pump Boat Ramp.

Looking the other direction.

Sacramento Ave off Hwy 99 will take you the shortest path to Woodland, but not in winter.

It crosses the Sutter Bypass and floods.

Gravel part of the way, it becomes Kirkville Rd and runs into Road 113.

There was a heavy early winter storm a week or so ago.

This rice wasn't harvested in time and has "lodged."
20-30% of the crop can be lost when this happens.

The End:
the teacher and her tour guide are leaving the building.