Summer Weather

     Weather, it affects us all. But those whose lives and jobs are outdoors are particularly effected by it. Weather generally comes in from the west, here in Owyhee County. But apart from the standard fronts coming in from the ocean and over the mountains, we have another phenomenon.
      To the west of Owyhee County seems to be a fairly dry place, the hot days of early summer can cook up some pretty fierce weather. Turning these...

     Into these...

     Thunder storms, cloud bursts, squalls, gully washers, we have many names for them. They're all the same thing though: concentrated weather. For all their lack of size (as far as weather goes) they're quite potent. Along with potentially damaging and dangerous amounts of rain, they also can carry hail and almost always cause a bit of lightning. Flash floods are mostly a danger up in the hills (primarily to ranchers), while hail can destroy crops and lightning will start fires in the rangelands and is just dangerous in general. These little storms can become especially powerful when they combine or join with a weather front.
     Owyhee County's farmers and ranchers work around their storms as best they can, just as the farmers and ranchers of other regions do the same with their natural phenomena. It's part of the job, but often times it means losing money. Next time you're having inclement weather you should ask yourself: "Wouldn't it be much worse if this were costing me money?"

Forming Seeds

     Wheat. By now you know this on sight, I'm sure. (My regulars, anyhow) It's beginning to change. Day by day, ever so slightly it gets a little less green. It's drying, and using a great deal of it's resources to form it's seeds.

     Here, I have dissected several kernels of wheat that were forming. The outer shell, which you can see in various stages on the left, forms first. This fills with a liquid that looks like, and mostly is, water. The fluid takes on more and more color (white) until it forms a sort of goo, like you can see (kind of) on the end of the knife there. It gets more and more solid, forming into the shape of the seed like gelatin in a mold. Though the seed will be much smaller than the shell at first, it will continue to grow until it fills the shell. On the top, second from the right is a fully formed but as of yet immature kernel. Just to the right of that is an anther. I'm not sure why I put it there, maybe for scale. Why not.

     With increased development comes increased food value. This fact is not lost on nature. As you can see above, critters will pluck the forming (and formed seeds) out of the heads. Birds, ants, rodents, pretty much everything likes to eat wheat kernels.
     As the seeds develop and dry, the wheat fields change from green to a sort of yellowish. I find is somewhat strange that there really isn't a common word for it. Anyhow, I'll show you later on. The important thing is the change in color signals that the first of the harvests is rapidly approaching. And while a year long cycle may seem like a long one, it's already half over. (In respects to timeline, anyhow.)

More Bees

     I like leafcutter bees. I think they're neat. You've probably all figured that out already. I don't really have anything new to say about them, but I got some great pictures of them the other day that I just have to share. I hope you enjoy them.

     Each bee house will have hundreds of bees. This picture does little to justify just how busy a place this is. Click the picture for a larger view with better details. Try and count all the bees!

     While almost constantly in motion, there will be a certain amount of bees at any time resting. After a few seconds they'll head back out to the flowers. Speaking of which...

     Alfalfa flowers start blooming from the top up. The middle one in the bottom is 'sprung' while the others are not.

     The reason that leafcutter bees are such good pollinators of alfalfa is that they really dig into the flower. Right after I snapped this picture the spring loaded flower popped the bee right in it's little bee face.

     This honey bee, in contrast, has a long tongue and can lick all the way down to the nectar.

     I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I do. It's hard to overstress the importance of these bees to the alfalfa industry. Either way, though, I think they're very photogenic little insects.

Sweeping

     In the alfalfa fields of Owyhee County (and most everywhere else) the farmers are spending a lot of time sweeping. No, not with a broom, with a net. The farmer goes out into the field and runs the net through the alfalfa in a 180 degree arc. By doing this, the farmer can get an idea on the ecosystem therein. Here are a few things that can be found.

     A penny! Just kidding, the penny was added for scale. It's the insect on Abe's ear that you'll find a lot of.
It's a Pea Aphid. Pea aphids are sap suckers. That's like a mosquito, but for plants. As you can guess, they're bad, as are their offspring.

     They're quite a bit smaller than the adult stages, but just as bad. Fortunately there are not enough to be a problem. Once their numbers reach a certain threshold (as dictated by the IPM) they will need to be dealt with.

     This picture contains all kinds of stuff. Starting from the top left, there is a housefly, who just happened to land there as I was taking the picture. Houseflys have very little effect on alfalfa. Just to the right of the housefly is a Lygus Nymph. A lygus nymph is the same size as the small aphids, but much more energetic. When the net is opened up, they run for cover. Below the nymph is an alfalfa flower and in the bottom corner is another aphid.

     Field sweeping is not just a census of harmful insects. This is a Minute Pirate Bug, (Yarr) and it enjoys sucking the tasty juices out of small insects such as the aphids and lygus nymphs. The strings of the net should indicate to you that he's a very small bug and won't harm anything of any size.

     Also a beneficial insect is this Damsel Bug. Not the dainty kind of damsel, this bug likes to spring on its victims and tear them all to bits. A fitting end to a pest if you ask any farmer.
     Keeping an eye on the ecosystem in the fields allows a farmer to most efficiently decide where and when to interfere. This is a major part of the IPM. (remember the IPM?) It is more cost effective to leave a certain amount of pests. The beneficial insects curb their growth, but when the pests get too numerous, the farmer can then take action. Sweeping keeps the farmers informed and helps them to decide when that action should be.

Moss

     Here is a row of syphon tubes. You may notice (despite the rather poor lighting) that the front one isn't running. The culprit here, is moss.

     I'm not sure what this kind of moss is called, all I know is that the ditches have been full of it and it's quite effective for plugging tubes. It's kind of like a very fine yet slimy wad of hair.

     These long, hot, sunny days makes the moss thrive. It grows in every canal and feeder ditch. The kind of moss that is the issue grows in great big long strands. The ends break off or sometimes the whole plant gets swept away. And then down the ditches the chunks come, eager to put a damper on irrigation.

     Farmers have many methods of dealing with floating debris. Screens (like the one above) and other filtration methods can catch a lot. But they require some maintenance because, as you can see, the moss will fill the screen and make it overflow. And the moss keeps coming. The best tool in this fight is vigilance and hands. Tubes need unplugged and reset. The water must keep flowing.
     As the ditch company takes steps to reduce the moss it will become less of a problem. But, as always, in nature where there is opportunity there will be life. So there will always be moss. Oh well, there are worse jobs than being out in the fields checking tubes.

Predatory Pests

     Being a leafcutter bee is dangerous business. Now that they're out in their new real estate, the danger really begins.

     Life is hard when you're a rather small insect. It seems like everything that comes along wants to eat you. When you're a bee, birds are a scary thing. Especially this one:

     This bird is called a Western Kingbird, but many locals call it a Bee Martin. They're tremendously agile fliers. They use this agility to catch insects on the wing. Bad news if you're a bee that's not a particularly tricky target and lives in large concentrations in conspicuous trailers. Left unchecked, these birds can damage a bee population significantly. The fields draw in lots more then just bees. Farmland is an endless buffet for a kingbird, and they thrive out here.

     This tiny wasp is a somewhat more surprising predator of the bees. They're called Pteromalus. Being only about a millimeter long they don't seem very threatening, but they're quite insidious. They break into the cells that the leafcutter bees have lain their eggs in and then lay their own eggs in there. The Pteromalus larvae hatch first and then eat the pupating bee. Nature is a rough place.

     This is a Sapygid Wasp. They're much the same as their tiny cousin above. They're roughly the same length as the leafcutter bee (just under a centimeter) but they're much thinner and lighter. Their larva eat the eggs of the leafcutter bee.
     When the farmers bring in large amounts of helpers, all nature can see is a large amount of food. Despite an impressive mandible strength (they'll pinch you good) and a stinger, leafcutter bees are mostly defenseless. Their strategy in life is to work real hard and hopefully make enough cells and lay enough eggs that the predators can't get them all. Farmers do their best to protect their little helpers. Ultimately, though, its just a rough life for little bees.

Potatoes

     I finally found some potatoes. (Actually, my brother found them for me.) Potato fields are surprisingly scarce in Owyhee County this year, at least on this end of the county. As you probably know, Idaho is known for its potatoes. As part of Idaho, Owyhee County grows its share of them, but it it would seem not so many this year.

     A potato is a tuber that grows on the root of this plant which is also called a potato or potato plant. The edible parts of the plant are underground right now, growing. It would be rude to yank them up at this point so you'll just have to wait to see them till they're ready.

     Some of the potato plants are blooming. This will create fruit, but don't eat them! They're toxic. Pretty much every part of the potato plant, except for the tuber itself, contain toxins (called glycoalkaloids if you were wondering) that can make you pretty sick. Don't worry, though, you'd have to eat a lot of those things first, and I doubt I'll see any of you grazing out in the potato fields any time soon.
    

     For now they're pretty much just growing. As far as action goes potatoes get most interesting around harvest time. Hopefully I'll be able to get an article about that. Until then, I suppose you could study the pictures so you can identify the potato fields that are found just about anywhere in the world.

Side Dresser

     Agriculture is all about growing the most amount of food or product in a space as possible. Modern practices and varieties allow farmers to do this quite effectively. But soil can only naturally hold a certain amount of nutrients. Any extra nutrients have to be added. This is where the Side Dresser comes in.

  

     We call this a "Side Dresser." In other places the term is used for a different but similar implement, but this website isn't about those places.

     It's another bar implement, as you can see. As for unique features, the side dresser has a few. First off, is the tank, that's filled with fertilizer. The wheel behind measures your speed so that the implement spreads the same amount of fertilizer no matter what speed you go at. Most importantly, though, are these.

     These knives cut the way for a tube on their following edge. (The shovels on the right are to keep the corrugates clear.)

  

     That's looking at the knife from the bottom, if you couldn't tell. These knives inject fertilizer along the sides of the plants (in this case, corn) so that the roots nearby can directly access it. High concentrations of fertilizer can be a bit caustic. By injecting directly in the ground, rather then spraying, you avoid causing harm to the leaves.
     Crops like corn thrive on a lot of fertilizer, especially when grown at a high density. By coaxing plant densities beyond what nature could sustain, farmers are able to support many more people than they would otherwise. More and more all the time there are less farmers and more eaters. So more food is a very important issue.

Flowers

     You all know what a flower is, right? Well here's a brief reminder.

     Here are some Alfalfa flowers. Flowers, are the reproductive bodies of many plants. For farmers, they are very important. If reproduction is a foreign concept to you, I suggest you ask your mother about it. For the rest of you, know that no reproduction means no seeds and no fruit.

     Here are a couple of Morning Glory flowers. It's much easier to see the various parts of the flower of this invasive, yet pretty, weed. In the very middle you'll see a white "U" shaped part. That's the pistil. A pistil is the lady part of a flower where the seeds will form. The purple parts ringing the pistil are called stamens, and they're the gentleman parts of the flower. Stamens have pollen on them, which is full of genetic information. The idea, is to get the pollen from one plant to the pistil of another (of the same species, of course).
     Different plants have differing methods of pollination. Many rely on pollinators, (insects, birds, or bats) while others have pollen that is carried by natural phenomena such as the wind or sometimes even water. This gives you all kinds of shapes of flowers.
     Have you ever seen asparagus flowers?

     Well you have now! These flowers are too small for even a leafcutter bee to fit inside, and many insects (butterflies and honey bees) have long tongues that will keep them from even getting pollen on them. So, I would suppose that these flowers are meant to be pollinated by some sort of little insect, but I have no proof of that.
     A side note: When alfalfa flowers first bloom they look like this...

     Notice how you can't see any of the pollinating parts? They're encased in those two petals in the middle. They need to be sprung, like a trap. A small bee, such as the leafcutter comes along and roughs the flower up a bit while looking for nectar and pow! The alfalfa's reproductive parts are spring-loaded. It pops out of the encasing petals and "punches" the little bee, scattering pollen all over it. Honey bees can use their long tongue to avoid this forced pollination entirely. That's why farmers need to import the leafcutter bees.
     Bumble bees are also good pollinators of alfalfa. Due to their size, they can spring a whole bunch of flowers by just bumbling over them. Unfortunately, bumble bees are difficult to domesticate. And while someone claims to have done just that, they are a subspecies that is not native to this part of the country, so they cannot be sold here. Everything in it's time.

     Flowers are pretty. This is well known. But in nature, there is nothing that doesn't serve a purpose. Flowers generally exist to entice in pollinators. It's a fascinating subject, but far too extensive to get very deeply into here. The important point here, is that to all farmers, in Owyhee County and beyond, they're a very important thing to keep track of. And a lot of time and effort will go into making sure that they fulfill their purpose.

Fruit, Seeds, And Other Foods

     Did you have breakfast this morning? Planning on having lunch or dinner? Yes I know, I say this pretty much every day, but what you eat started out on a farm. For starters, pretty much everything you eat has wheat in it.

     Breakfast cereals, pastas, and breads all have wheat flour in them. Wheat flour is made from the seeds of wheat grass.
     Want sugar on that breakfast cereal?

     Sugar Beets are the source of about 30% of the worlds sugar. The best part about them is that they don't require a tropical climate to grow, like that other sugar producer: sugar cane. For better or worse, everything has sugar in it nowadays. All the sugar is contained in the root, underground.

They improve everything, pork chops to soup,
And not only that but each onion's a group.

Peel back the skin, delve into tissue
And see how an onion has been blessed with issue.

     That's a little bit of a poem by Roy Blount Jr. A small ode to the splendidness of the onion. As well as tasting good, they're good for you too.

     This hay may not look all that delicious to you, but were you a cow, you'd be salivating right now. After all, good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow. It's all part of the process.

     Last but not least is the fruit. Some of the early ones are starting to turn, like these sour cherries. Sour cherries are great in pies and jams.
     Harvest time is rapidly approaching. Feeding folks is a continuous cycle, and harvest replenishes the stockpiles. So, point made, I'm sure. Enjoy some delicious food today!

IPM, Part 2 (Application)

     After all of yesterday's talk, I'm sure you're ready for a bit of action. Unfortunately, the only way I can describe to you what is happening is by more talk. It's a somewhat limited medium... Oh well, moving on.
     If you haven't read yesterday's post yet, you should do that now, otherwise this one won't make sense. Putting an IPM into practice can consume much of a farmer's time. Here in Owyhee County there isn't much we can do to prevent pests. The food is there, so they're going to come to eat it. So I'm going to skip strait to Observation.
     No matter what your job is, one of the primary rules is: Know Your Workspace. The same is true for farmers, although their workspace is spread over a very large area.  The trick is to see and identify. I'll start out easy.

     These little piles of dirt seems pretty harmless, but every farmer can identify them on sight. They're gopher mounds, and gophers are trouble. They like to eat roots and bulbs. Things that the farmers would rather stay on their plants and out of gopher bellies.

     Weeds are easy to see, but the trick is knowing which weed is which. If you don't know which weed is which, then you can't properly deal with them.

     Insects tend to be a bit more difficult to see. A net can help to scoop them out, like these two Lygus.
     Once a pest has been identified, something has to be done about it. But, a major part of an IPM is cost/benefit analysis. Each problem has a solution, and part of the farmers skill set is knowing solutions and being able to create more. Being able to afford it is a different matter. This site will mostly be dealing with affordable solutions.

     Most pests are very prolific, and will spread rapidly without intervention. Such is the gopher. Traps like the one above take care of the problem.
     As for the insects (and arachnids) and weeds, the most effective and efficient methods are spraying and cultivation. I've written about that quite a bit already, and will probably again. For now I wish to impress upon you the amount of information a farmer must know to get to the point where he can do those.

Each one of these little booklets is information on a single chemical. Inside is information on what the chemical is used for, the application rates, what you can and cannot mix it with, and where not to use it. (and more) This drawer is packed with them, so there are quite a few here.
     Much of this blogs archives are descriptions of the application of IPM, so I won't go any farther today. My hope with this two day series is to share with you the amount of information a farmer must know and the amount of work involved in an Integrated Pest Management. It's a lot of work, but it ultimately allows more food and goods to be brought to the marketplace.

IPM, Part 1 (Theory)

     IPM stands for Integrated Pest Management. What is it? Well, it's a systematic approach to Agriculture. Basically, a way to get the most out of your fields. If you want a lot more pontification you can check out the wikipedia IPM page and if you really want to get into the blah-blah, head over to the EPA site. I'm here to talk about how all of this impacts Owyhee County, so I'm just going to describe those parts.

     First off, you need to know what a pest is in this whole analysis. A pest is anything that harms a crop. Weeds, (like those thistles up there) certain insects, that Striped Rust I was posting about, are all examples of pests. A harmed crop produces less, which raises your costs and the farmer's income.
     People who deal with theory a lot have a great love of stages. They have given IPM three: prevention, observation, and intervention. (Not necessarily in that order.)
     Here in Owyhee County the most obvious form of prevention is crop rotation. Crop rotation's primary motivation is soil health but it helps a bit with any pests that my be in the ground. Anything that preys on crop A will have nothing to eat in the next year when crop B is grown.

Pictured Above: Crop Rotation

     There's only so much prevention that can be done. Because there will always be a great source of food for these pests, there will always be a multitude of them.
     Observation; it's the reason farmers drive slowly sometimes, much to the despair of impatient motorists. A farmer must know his or her fields. Simple as that. It takes a great deal of knowledge and experience to know what is being observed, and a farmer will spend a lifetime learning as much as he or she can.
     There is much to be observed out in the fields. Fortunately we have special tools and people for that. The seed companies employ the "Field Men" (or Field Women, as the case may warrant) who are payed to observe. They have all kinds of tools to analyze and such. The most important observation tool (at least on the little critter front) for a farmer is a simple bug net. Swept through a crop, it can tell you just about every kind of insect, arachnid, etc that has a significant impact there. (The rope is for slightly larger pests...)

     The most labor intensive step is Intervention. This is the solution step. It's more or less strait forward. Many of the solutions are made possible or easier by the use of chemistry and technology. Not all that long ago, our Striped Rust problem would have been much bigger. Imagine the wonder of our ancestors at us using a flying machine to spread a liquid that combats fungus.
     The Intervention stage is full of special tools, but that's more of an Application deal than a Theory one, and that's what tomorrow will be about. I'm sure you're just as tired of reading for today as I am of writing. Come back tomorrow to see how this IPM stuff is actually done.