From the Fields - Paul Sanguinetti

By Paul Sanguinetti, San Joaquin County farmer 

I grow trees and row crops. I’ve got walnuts, and my kids have almonds. Overall, we farm about 2,000 acres. We’re not doing a whole lot right now because everything is wet from the rain. The weather stayed dry for so long, we pretty much got everything done.

We’ve got the trees all strip-sprayed, and we’ve got all the open ground all worked and ready for next year. The tomato ground is ready to be planted. I planted some barley this year because the way the water situation is, I can probably get away with not having to irrigate it. We got all that planted. We’ve got everything in pretty good shape.

We’re working on a little bit of equipment, fixing leaks and fixing stuff that got broken and bent. I’ve got a guy baiting some squirrels. We have pruning to do. We haven’t started any of that yet because the ground is too wet. I’ve got some dead trees still to cut. As soon as it gets dry enough, we’re going to cut those out. Otherwise, we’re just trying to stay warm.

We didn’t have any problem with almond harvesting. Some of the almonds got hurt from the frost, so the crop wasn’t too good, and the price isn’t too good. With the walnut crop, I had a normal year, good quality. The price is not very good, though. That’s the bad part. Expenses are high. It costs a lot of money to do anything nowadays.

Our crew is pretty much steady. We’ve got the same guys working for me for a long time. When my kids plant the tomatoes, they use them, and then we have the trees to take care of. Then, we have to plant the corn, and then we’ll harvest the barley. As soon as we chop the corn, then they have to harvest the tomatoes. There’s always something to do.