From the Fields

Doug McGeoghegan
Colusa County

It's the holiday season and there is, as usual, much to be thankful for. Imagine: great yields and quality and improving commodity prices all in the same year. Veterans around the rice industry will no doubt have gotten a kick out of the junior members noting that they have "never seen a fall harvest like this one." To be sure, things have changed around the rice industry in the last couple decades. We've been blessed with many warm and dry Indian summers that have resulted in a relatively leisurely harvest and post-harvest period. We've been able to harvest the grain, deal with the crop residue in various ways and even get a good bit of groundwork done. Not so in 2007.

The cool weather and rain events we experienced this growing season and at the outset of harvest (which were pretty much a regular occurrence in the '70s and '80s) not only delayed the maturity of the rice crop but sidelined a number of the new generation of monster combines, which despite their huge grain-eating appetites, were shod with rubber and not steel. In our operations, we were grateful to be all on tracks, which allowed us to comply with Dad's advice to "make hay while the sun shines."