The Farm

[Tad]

we are spraying herbicide to keep the never ending supply of weeds at bay, with all of this years rain we have been doing a whole lot of spraying !!

[Tad]

Roberto sprying weeds and not palms....I HOPE!!!!

[Tad]

mule palm, planted these about 2 or 3 months ago and looks like they are starting to push new growth, bismarckia behind it.

[Tad]

caryotas , a couple of these may get moved over to the propagation house

[Tad]

copernicia sp?

[Tad]

next years gallons, waitng to go in the field

[feef706]

Great action shots you've got there. Its amazing to see all the processes from start to finish, thats some operation you have there. I'd love to deal with plants all day every day! keep up the good work..

[Tad]

Thank you james.

I enjoy doing it, even the bad days are still pretty good!!

[Zac in NC]

I heard about the  olives yesterday when Ricardo was in town. I'm about to go off to the Wheatsville Co-op( JK). It all looks very nice.

Zac

[Tad]

the wheats ville coop, 8 pieces of meat and 42 varietys of organic rice!!!

all the chicks have hairy pits...skaggsville hippy types, bio degradable everything and a fresh copy of mother earth news to go along with it!!!

[Tad]

was out and about today going over the terrain of a highway job we are working on, and lo and behold I saw somthing I couldnt resist!!

[Tad]

big and full and just dirty loaded down with little agaves

[Tad]

tequila on the hoof!!

[Tad]

get them home and sort them out!!

[Tad]

5 heads yielded two   95  gallon containers and one  65gallon container.

enough to plant my fence line along the back of the farm!!! and about a zillion to spare!!

I am going back to get another load friday morning!!

[Tad]

average of sizes of lil bulbs

[Tad]

size reference.... and in case anybody is wondering, these were not stolen, taken with out permission etc.

[Xavierdlc61887]

hey palmo thinking of making your own tequila hahaha "Tads Tequila"

[Tad]

here is where the mother plants came from an agave farm in tamaulipas.

[Tad]

Tequila Chinaco is the brand name of the distillery that purchases the agaves from the farm.

I have already sold most of the agave plants that were harvested in the pics above, so looks like we are going to make another run this week.

I kept about a 1000 and will stick them in the field at one of the other farms.

[Tad]

6000 one gallons going into the fieldthis week.

[Tad]

washies, there also meds,reclinatas,dacts,sylvesters, and some queens!

[Tad]

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[Tad]

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[Tad]

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[Tad]

the haze is from burning sugar cane fields

[Tad]

another burning field off in the distance.

[Tad]

spraying pre emergent herbicide on newly planted field.

[Tad]

time to get it wet, this is the irrigation bonnet which is attached to what we call poly pipe, a big plastic tube, thin wall kinda flexible

[Tad]

runs down the length of the field.

[Tad]

tie the end of in a knot and pop holes according to which furrows you want to irrigate.

[Tad]

and here is a view looking down the row

[Tad]

this is the hole popper, lo tech but it works like a champ

[Tad]

a set of rows being irrigated, these wiill finish about 12 hours from the time they are started

[Tad]

this tractor is using a push, or ditch blade to mound up soil next to the poly pipe.

[Tad]

getting it all squared away.I hope this helps those of you who asked earlier to get an idea of how we irrigate our fields.

[Tad]

floating a section of field after all the old washingtonias have been removed. we use the float to level out all the holes, hills and craters left by the digging crews.

the 2 big doubles in the pic are 6 going on 7 years from big 1 gallons!  hybrid vigor of the washingtonia palms!

[Tad]

it takes several passes to get 6 years of craters under control, we mounded up several small piles of fronds and debris and I composted them with a match

[Tad]

a texas native in the background, the wild ollive also known as the mexican olive , cordia boissieri, or the white geiger tree.

[Tad]

this is one of my favorite pieces of equipment, its like a box blade but a little different, and it can be pulled by smaller equipment as well.