[AT] Heirlooms, Tomatoes and Farmalls???

[Grant Brians]

Last week I was a speaker and exhibitor at the first National Heirloom
Vegetable Exposition which was held in Santa Rosa, California. It was really
interesting and I enjoyed educating lots of people. The focus was more on
gardens than farms (unsurprisingly), but I felt that I helped both other
farmers (advising on certain practices people from Virginia, New York and
the midwest) and definitely volumes of gardeners. Talking to the Heirloom
Rose Gardener ladies and Iris Society people was pretty cool....
     In the process of dealing with this (and handling sales and other
matters for my own farm remotely - the joy of cell phones LOL) I also
checked out the area my family is from around Sonoma County and saw some
farm machinery. In the process of preparing for my talks we pulled out
pictures of when my father and his uncle worked on in the hop harvesting
when he was a teenager in the 1940's. The McCormick-Deering T-20 and
Caterpillar 22 that they used to pull the hop harvesters (that was what my
dad was driving at the time - he was 17 and 18 in the 1946 and 1947 seasons)
I immediately recognized because they are common today here. I was able to
share some local history with people at the show even though I have never
lived there....
     Our Heirloom Tomato harvest finally started! Yes indeed and so did the
Cherry Tomatoes and the Shady Lady Tomatoes. So, tomorrow or Friday we will
be using the Farmall 100 cultivator tractor to cultivate the last planting
of squash, we used the vintage 1930 Ventura Bean Planter to plant Sugar Snap
peas today and the 1949 Oliver 77 cultivating tractor this week along with
the 2008 John Deere 6430 (105HP) to plant vegetables with and the 1990's Hew
Holland, Massey Ferguson and Ford tractors. We keep the heirlooms going!
LOL.
          Grant Brians
          Hollister,California vegetable, nuts and Fruit farmer