Blooming Orchard

The cherry orchard is starting to bloom!

It's so beautiful in there.

Quail are hiding in the trees.

The bees are busy buzzing around.

The bee guy comes every Spring with his hives.

Without bees to pollinate we wouldn't have a very good crop.

They don't sting you... they've got too much work to do.

(The guy gives us jugs of the honey from our orchard, too. It's pretty much amazing.)

But this is also a very scary time of the year.

This is a wind machine. You pray you never have to use them. If the temperature gets too low...

It will freeze and kill these.

No blossoms, no cherries... no livelihood... no food... it's bad. Well... something like that anyway.

The wind machines can raise the temperature a few degrees. The difference between 31 degrees and 33 degrees could make or break a whole harvest, and our whole financial outlook for the year... and possibly whether or not we keep the farm in the family.

So pray we don't have to use the wind machines this year!

Anyway, it's a great time of year to go for a 4-wheeler ride through the orchard.

The neighbor farm grows nectarines.

But apparently they're not going to harvest this year (if he were, these buds would be thinned). The price just isn't good enough, and he'd lose money if he harvested.

But the bees don't care about that. They'll continue working anyway.

It's pretty sad, really. He's selling his whole farm.

People would rather eat cheap imported flavorless nectarines than pay a few extra cents for produce from the USA. And it's putting farmers out of a livelihood, and in some cases, their family heritage.

This is getting depressing. Sorry...

Here's something you don't see every day! A tumbleweed in a cherry tree. We farm in the desert.

The farmers are pretty busy this time of year, too.

I love this man!