Prime Time

Last Friday, when Heather was visiting, we went down to Coachella Valley on a bus tour designed primarily to raise awareness about Hidden Harvest. It was largely about massive farming practice in Coachell Vally and, while a lot to absorb, very, very interesting.

The host of the event was Mark Nickerson the owner of Prime Time that cultivates approximately 15,000 acres - mostly located here but also in Mexico and northern California in vegetables.

I am going to post more pictures and information about this tour. For now, however, here is an example of hot house peppers that are grown in soil. They are hand tended and have a heated underground watering system that also fertilizes the plants. They are trained up vertical wires, hand attached. At a certain height the wires are placed at a 30 degree ( more or less) angle because they would be too difficult to harvest if they continued growing straight up.

Nickerson has huge "houses" for these peppers but the vegetables can still be wiped out by weather. This past October a toronado came through and knocked down all of these highly sophisticated houses. ( picture of houses to follow later ).

A fact that was more or less casually passed onto us is the one explaining why the rows are so straight as pictured here. GPS. The driver isnt driving the tractor either. That is all computerized movement based on GPS. I asked our host what percent of large farming is using GPS. His answer:80%!