California’s vast Central Valley is known for it’s fresh fruits, nuts, and vegetables.  They literally are farm fresh to your table out here.  But we have another harvest that is not as well known; the California dust harvest.

Fruits are still hand picked for the most part but nuts are harvested in two phases.  First the shaker comes along and shakes the tree causing all the nuts to fall on the ground, then the sweeper will come along and sweep the nuts up then dump them into waiting trucks.  Above we see sweepers in the orchard.  Sweepers are the prime cause of poor air quality in the Valley during the late Summer and early Autmn months.  However, when a farmer looks at this picture do you know what he sees?  Money! 🙂  Hey everyone’s got to eat.

I think you should know that to get this photo I had to go flying in my PPG (heh, ‘had to’ go flying.)  And to get airborne it took me 4 tries.  This intermediate wing is just so maneuverable that I have trouble getting it stable in the air so I can take off.  I think I’m gong to have to go back to my kindergarten wing for a while.

Here’s the steely-eyed airman flinging his eager craft through footless halls of air…

In other news this weekend is my daughter’s 19th birthday.  One of the things she wanted to do was learn how to fire my gun.  I happily obliged and took her down to the shooting range.

Did she enjoy herself?

Yeah, I think so. 🙂