The olive harvest was today, and the last of the greenhouse plants came in yesterday! We do a Tuscan blend comprised primarily of four different species of olives. Pulled in probably 1,200-1,500 lbs I would guess. It will get pressed tonight and be bottled in a week. Looking forward to some delicious olivo nuevo, yum!




The cannabis may had hated it, but all the mushrooms sure have been loving all this wet weather, I found this gorgeous chicken of the woods today. A wild mushroom feast this weekend will be in order.



We have probably one more round on the pomegranates before they are all in as well. I just love fresh pomegranate juice, the flavor and color are so much more intense than the store bought stuff. Next up will be the persimmons and pineapple guava and then all our fruit trees will be done for the year.

That juice has a crazy color. Way different then the stores.
I don't know about you but that rain in October kinda screwed me up. Not sure if I just got used to the two drought years we had recently or what. It's pretty wet in our area and we did fine, just was really hoping for a little more sunshine. :)

The last few years of drought made the fall harvests here easy, we have been spoiled, at least in that regard. The rain screwed up things for almost everyone in NorCal this year to some extent. Wettest October in 60 years - so basically one of the worst fall anyone's ever seen since cannabis has been cultivated in the Emerald Triangle.

We definitely lost quite a a few tops off the latest outdoor plants due to botrytis mold. Tends to happen when the sun doesn't come out for two weeks straight. I fucking hate botrytis, when conditions are right it spreads faster than any other pest, and does more damage than anything else. It can literally eat your garden alive if you are not vigilant. We still did well this year but I have already head some terrible stories from other growers in the area.

Blaze said:

The last few years of drought made the fall harvests here easy, we have been spoiled, at least in that regard. The rain screwed up things for almost everyone in NorCal this year to some extent. Wettest October in 60 years - so basically one of the worst fall anyone's ever seen since cannabis has been cultivated in the Emerald Triangle.

We definitely lost quite a a few tops off the latest outdoor plants due to botrytis mold. Tends to happen when the sun doesn't come out for two weeks straight. I fucking hate botrytis, when conditions are right it spreads faster than any other pest, and does more damage than anything else. It can literally eat your garden alive if you are not vigilant. We still did well this year but I have already head some terrible stories from other growers in the area.

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Down south here in LA area the molds are bad to.

Guess I grew healthier plants this year. My AOG got around 6" of rain in Oct, and very very little pm. I still have all my smalls maturing still, never ending harvest this year. Very little of those have started to rot either. Rosin nugs.

Guess that means I weathered the worst month of Oct in 50 years, and have almost zero damage to show. Gives me much more confidence next year to not pull some plants early, let them ride.

Had a great time at the Farmer's Showcase yesterday. This is the first time I have seen something like the wine tasting model for cannabis, and it was awesome. They had all 28 different strains set out for people to sample. Each booth had 5 or 6 strains, with a "bud sommelier" that would answer questions and pack you bowls. All entries were sun grown by small farmers in either Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity or Sonoma.


The two favorites of the event were obviously our Watermelon Rancher, and the Lemon Garlic OG from Marley Farms. We actually had no idea that the tasters would be voting on their favorites. At the time I left the event, the Watermelon Rancher was just a little ahead in votes, but I would be pretty stoked even for a second place.



Here is a shot of the finished "Best of Harvest" box, I got a complementary one for being one of the selected farms. Each jar contains 1 gram - so 28 grams from 28 different farms. I have a lot of sampling to catch up on this weekend!

Super cool

Meanwhile we are waiting for the results of our local initiatives. A amazing 75% of registered voters in Mendocino County voted in this last election, which is huge!

Unfortunately our county clerk recorder is an incredibly lazy, incompetent, corrupt and all around worthless excuse for a civil servant. Earlier in the year she took quite a bit of heat for refusing to let observers watch the election and the votes being counted (which is HIGHLY illegal). The day after the election they announced that measure AF, the local ordinance which would have been a huge benefit to the growers in the county did not pass, and the two measures to tax cannabis did pass.

Well it came out today that 70% of the ballots have not actually been counted and no one has any idea what the results really are. Meanwhile the county clerk is claiming it will take a month for her office count the ballots, which is absolutely pathetic.



http://www.mendovoice.com/2016/11/t...remain-to-uncounted-according-to-new-numbers/

@Blaze -- was this tasting thing and sample box from the Emerald Cup, or another event?

Another event, the California Farmers Showcase "Best of Harvest" that was put on by the Natural Cannabis Company.

Emerald Cup isn't for another month.

Working on entry #3 right now. Can't wait for the cup.

That county clerk has a real fire under the booty going. I mean, calm down, your going to hurt yourself moving that fast.

The 2016 outdoor harvest is finally officially over! Everything is dried, cured, and stashed - now we just need to trim it all. The plants have been ripped up and piled in a burn pile and the gardens are totally cleaned up and ready for winter. I can finally leave the property for more than a few hours at a time and life can start to get back to normal again.

All the outdoor raised beds and new smart pots were seeded with a cover crop and had composted dairy cow manure layered on top. We use the Organic Soil Builder Mix from Peacefull Valley Organics. It contains a blend of Bell Beans, Biomaster or 4010 Peas, Purple Vetch, Hairy Vetch, Common Vetch and Cayuse or Monida Oats. It has proven to be a very effective cool season weed suppression mix and adds both nitrogen and organic matter to the soil. Just for the heck of it I mixed in additional Fava Beans (Bell Beans), and Biomaster Peas, plus Yellow Peas, and Sugar Snap Peas to see if we couldn't get some food out of the cover crop this year as well.

I replanted the 'whale powered' cold frame with 5 different types of kale, purple broccoli, two types of cauliflower, elephant garlic, California garlic, red onions, yellow onions, leeks, and two types of cabbages for some winter edibles. I am hoping to have time this winter to covert the spot where the cold frame is into a full functional veggie garden by spring so we can finally have a good spot to grow annual edibles all year long again.

Even though we just finished the 2016 harvest we are already working on prep for next year. I had someone up from a third party forestry company yesterday to take a look at the ranch so we can get going on our water resource management plan which will be a requirement next year to get a cultivation permit. Over all he said our place looks really good - there are two things I need to fix near the greenhouse, and a few of our culverts may be undersized, but we will have 5 years to replace them once we file our plan with the North Coast Regional Water Board. I will need to adjust and move some of my fences as well to get the proper set backs from the creeks and to shrink the 'cultivated space' down to as small as possible so we are not paying taxes and fees on garden space that is not being used. Apparently we are the first cannabis farm the company has seen in the entire emerald triangle that actually got permits for our ponds, which is going to prove to be really, really important. No permit for the pond = no legal use for that water for cannabis cultivation. Having to rely strictly on well and spring water would definitely make things more difficult.

We started getting an additional 5,000 square foot garden ready at the top of the hill we are on for next year. The plan is that it will have fifty 4'x4'x1.5' raised beds terraced into the hillside plus a 500-700 square foot nursery greenhouse. We will be running 100% seeds at that spot. The new greenhouse still needs a ton of work too. The cooling wall and radiant heat systems need to be completed and the auto-dep system needs to be installed. If figure we have about 3 months before we want to start growing in it again for an early summer/late spring harvest.

That is awesome man congrats on the harvest of the year

Thank you! Despite all the additional hurdles and unexpected changes that happened this year it looks to be our biggest and best harvest to date.

Managed to get the prep done for the new site just before this big storm hit. Rows are all tilled to knock the weeds back, and we got the pad for the nursery greenhouse built. The beds can be built over the winter in our workshop and placed once we get a break in the weather.

Congrats on the harvest!

Blaze said:

Managed to get the prep done for the new site just before this big storm hit. Rows are all tilled to knock the weeds back, and we got the pad for the nursery greenhouse built. The beds can be built over the winter in our workshop and placed once we get a break in the weather.
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Nice work, very professional. The PVC coming out of the ground is for irrigation?

Excellent work man!

Still working on the trimming part myself, took down about another 10 lbs of small yesterday. Little jealous of your progress, great work!

Savage Henry said:

Congrats on the harvest!



Nice work, very professional. The PVC coming out of the ground is for irrigation?

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Yep there used to be a veggie garden and smaller grow here. Still undecided if we want to try to fix and reuse the old system or start fresh.

Headed off to Santa Rosa tomorrow for the Emerald Cup. Looks like it is going to be bigger than ever this year, attendance is expected to be around 30,000 people. I had some shirts and hoodies printed up with the new logo and they got here just in time for us sport them at the cup:

Glad we got to meet at the cup.

No poop, you had some of the best herb I found at the cup. Top tier talent.