Wink’s Blog

Last Tuesday was the day the Earth’s population reached 7 billion.  I paused long enough to recall that the year 1999 was dubbed “The Year of Six Billion”.  Is Earth’s population exploding so fast that a milestone which warranted a year’s attention was dealt with in a day, or at most a week, this time around?  Or have we become so desensitized?  Or have religio-social taboos captured the media?

Our friend, filmmaker Dave Gardner, is still sensitive to the limits of the Earth’s carrying capacity and is never reluctant to confront the growth-pushers.  His new film, GrowthBusters (www.growthbusters.org) is just released and will be premiering in Colorado Springs on Wednesday, 11/9.  Max and I will be there.

Colorado Springs is Dave’s home-town and what an appropriate place for his odyssey to begin!  Concern for his children’s future encouraged him to set-aside a successful business as a commercial filmmaker and to focus on sustainability.  His city’s addiction to “growth everlasting” inspired his decade-long effort to engage the city’s leadership in a dialog about the limits to growth.  This film is the result of his frustration in being disregarded and marginalized as an extremist.  Now the town fathers may have to take the issue more seriously.

But Dave’s journey doesn’t end at city hall.  He speaks to reasonable people around the globe who know that the longer we delay grappling with this issue, the more disruptive the readjustment may be.  People who are not afraid to be educated and who want to participate in crafting solutions; solutions that respect and enhance life and lives around the Globe.

When called-upon to consider the question, most of us are willing to acknowledge that resources are, by definition, limited but then we go about our day-to-day lives as if it were not our concern.  But with the projected addition of yet another billion people in just 12 years or so, and with so many of Earth’s life-support systems already reaching capacity, we must make it our concern.  Too many people lack access to clean water to drink or to water crops.  Famine and malnutrition are widespread.  We have passed the “peak oil” milestone.  Extreme weather events remind us of the warnings explicated in “An Inconvenient Truth”.  But unlike Al Gore’s didactic, Dave is a master story-teller who relates his journey an an engaging and entertaining manner.

With the help of us all, GrowthBusters will be coming soon to a theatre near you — or to a living room and a clutch of friends, at least.  I strongly urge us all to see the film, tell our friends and neighbors about it, and press the debate wherever we see the growth “solution” being propounded.

The orchards are a-buzz with the industry of bees and the fragrance of the blooms is captivating.  Summer seems suddenly upon us after two days of temps in the 80s.  Notwithstanding yesterday’s winds, today’s threatened thunderstorms, and the prediction of yet another frost tomorrow morning, the farm is popping with renewed life.  We’ve been feasting on asparagus, our first crop, which is making a comeback after being frozen-back last week.  The sheep are grazing on tender new grass in the vineyard and orchards.  It is a good time to look up from our work, inhale deeply the perfume on the breeze, observe the pollinators at work delving into barely-open blooms, and revel in the wonders of nature providing for our sustenance and our livelihood.

Our gratitude has been mixed, this Spring, with concern and disappointment.  Last week seemed more like winter with several over-night lows in the mid 20s and the neighborhood a-throb with the roar of wind machines for frost control.  This, at a time when the swelling fruit buds were most vulnerable.  My neighbor avers that we were within a couple degrees of being wiped-out for the season.  The jury’s still out on the damage to our orchard, and there’s still the possibility of more frost, but the preliminary report is that we will have peaches, apples, and grapes, though I can say with certainty there’ll not be many.  Making what remains all the more dear.

We are also grateful for the willingness of our loyal CSA members to share, with us, the risks inherent in growing nutritious, local fruit.  We trust that they feel satisfaction in this.  Their reward will include having priority for the quantity and quality of fruit we will be able to bring to market.  Thank you!

This week in the field, we are completing the commissioning of the micro-sprinkler irrigation and beginning the process of re-charging the water table; completing the removal of pruning from the orchards in preparation for mowing and spraying; and continuing to prune the grapes.  Max is preparing to bottle last fall’s chambourcin rose wine — which promises to be a refreshing summer wine.  And today we bid farewell to Bob and Sharon who brought three border collies to compete in the Hotchkiss Sheep Camp Dog Trials this weekend and stayed in one of our farm-stay apartment.  We enjoyed having them.

I have taken refuge this afternoon in the office as a cold, blustery squall moved in from the West and am using this opportunity to catch up at my desk. The first order of business is the renewal of our organic certification which I am right now emailing to our certifier, Stellar Certification Services. Stellar is part of Demeter, which certifies biodynamic growers; that paperwork is next — organic is a step toward BD. (www.demeter-usa.org)

We are currently preparing our Northeast field for planting to pasture and hay which, at this point, involves endless rock-picking. When the previous owner removed the 4.5 acres of apples from the field, she had the it ripped — the customary practice — which brought-up zillions of rocks from the size of a Volkswagen to that of a sugar beet. Unfortunately that’s as far as she went with it, so it has been fallow ever since, a sea of holes, impossible to irrigate or mow. Now the task of clearing all those rocks falls to us. Neighbor Don generously brought over his backhoe and extracted the really big, partially buried rocks while I scooped as many as I could haul in the bucket of the John Deere. The big ones John Deere and I pushed into Don’s much larger bucket. It seemed an endless task at first, but the end of this phase is in sight.

Next, a custom farmer will chisel-plow the field which will, no doubt, bring up more rocks, which we’ll pick, then he’ll disc it, and finally land-plane it smooth enough to irrigate by furrows. Weeds will be our first crop and we’ll endeavor to graze and disc the weeds before they go to seed — all in an effort to deplete the weed seed bank. The weeds slow down in late summer, so we’ll disc it again and seed it to a pasture mix in August — in time for the seedlings to get well established before winter dormancy. The theory is that come next spring the grass will have sufficient head start to out-compete the weeds. Stay tuned…

No sooner did the Vernal Equinox herald spring on Sunday than winter decided to reassert herself. The 60-degree days had been enjoying have given way to a colder, stormy, windy pattern. I imagine that today’s winds are part of the storm system that uprooted mature almond groves in California a couple of days ago. And there’s more on the way — tornadoes in the Central Valley yesterday. Snow and rain are in our forecast through the weekend. Two days ago the mountains were obscured by airborne dust (read “topsoil”) from the farmers’ fields down-valley. I’m glad we haven’t yet plowed the Northeast field or our topsoil would be airborne too.

We have 3 newborn lambs on the farm! The first was born 2 weeks ago as a single and we call her “Newby”; twins followed 10 days ago. Two more ewes appear ready to birth in the next few days. Newby, unfortunately, is rejected by her mom, so we have to restrain the mom so Newby can nurse. This we have to do every 4 hours, so Max and I take turns with the midnight feeding. We are very grateful for the sheep barn that Steph and Ben completed in January!

Snowy, our 5-month-old Great Pyrenees guard dog is already enormous! She wants to play at all times and doesn’t know her size and strength, so we are no longer keeping her with the sheep during lambing. Undaunted, she stands guard at a strategic vantage point on the dam and warns intruders with her characteristic deep bark. A few mornings ago I awakened to hear a coyote cry nearby, bolted out of bed and into clothes, and by the time I was out the door, Snowy was on the job barking and patrolling. It is said that the sheer magnitude of these majestic beasts is enough to dissuade any nosey predator and it seems to be working out that way.

Snowy is also very adept at finding goose eggs — which they will lay at any convenient sheltered outdoor spot.  So we have to be quick to beat her to them as she finds them fun to throw and pounce upon and delicious eating once she manages to break the tough shell.

With the organic certification, biodynamic record-keeping, lambing, and rock picking behind us, we will finally turn our attention to CSA recruiting. The apples are recently pruned and the peaches and grapes appear to have fared the cold winter better than expected (so far!). So, dear customers, don’t loose hope: there will be fruit and there will be ample opportunity to reserve your fruit-share. We’re just a little behind, as usual.

(Cancun, 7 December 2010) Thousands of people affected by and concerned for the destruction of the environment, farmers, landless peasants, indigenous people and activists of all social sectors will take to the streets in Cancun as well as in other parts of the world as part of La Via Campesina’s Global Day of Action for Climate Justice on December 7.

This march which will take place in the backdrop of the Forum for Life, Social and Environmental Justice in Cancun, Mexico and has as its main slogan “Peasants cool the planet”. This message summarizes the peoples’ proposal to solve the climate crisis and is also reflected in the resolutions that emerged from the peoples’ summit held in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
With colorful flags, hats, signs, posters, and lots of music the protesters will announce their opposition to the mechanisms being imposed in COP 16 such as the false solutions of carbon markets, REDD, agrofuels and geoengineering being imposed on the peoples of the world.

The march will leave at 9:00 am from the Jacinto Canek Sports Center (Unidad Deportiva Jacinto Canek) where roughly 10,000 people are expected to march across the main streets of downtown Cancun. This action is part of the thousands of activities to be performed worldwide as La Via Campesina’s “thousands of Cancun’s.” Actions will happen in Latin America, Asia, Europe, Africa and in the United States and Canada. The actions include public meetings, forums and sit-in’s in Korea, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, Nepal, Turkey, and mass actions in India, Argentina, Indonesia, El Salvador, the Philippines and Mexico. It is estimated that these actions and events will bring together more than 1 million people.

The popular power generated through these actions is aimed at bringing sustainable and just solutions to solve the climate crisis. In this context, the negotiations of COP 16 can be seen in their true perspective: sand throwing in our eyes for corporate profit rather than the hard decision making needed for social and environmental justice.

Communication team CLOC/Via Campesina
Contacts
Alfredo Acedo
Cel. 52 1 55 3943 0712
alfredo_acedo@hotmail.com

By Dave Murphy

After nearly two years of heated debate and countless food related illnesses, the Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510) passed in the Senate on Tuesday morning by a wide bipartisan margin of 73 to 25, including 15 Republicans.

It was a remarkable victory for American consumers and the growing local, sustainable food movement.

Despite partisan gridlock, intense industry opposition, and a Tea Party campaign of misinformation, the Senate appeared to have done the right thing for both consumer protection and family size farms in passing a bill that included a few modest exemptions for small-scale farmers engaged in direct sales of local foods won in a series of last minute amendments.

As per usual when legislation is made in Congress, industrial agriculture sets the rules and these minor protections are the only thing standing between the smallest family farmers and expensive new regulations that could drive them out of business.

But now a minor parliamentary mistake threatens this important victory for consumers and family farmers. The Senate’s violation of an overlooked constitutional provision requiring that taxes originate in the House of Representatives has stalled the legislation in the House.

Industrial agriculture lobbyists and front groups funded by agribusiness are now using this procedural error to try to kill the new food safety bill or, even worse, to strip the hard-won farmer protection provisions from the bill entirely.

Almost as soon as an anonymous Republican Senate staffers tipped off Roll Call late Tuesday evening about the gaffe, Big Ag flacks and their supporters in Congress have been tripping over themselves to once more make their failed and dangerous case for why a common sense amendment sponsored by Senator John Tester (D-MT), the only organic farmer in the U.S. Senate, must be killed.

Even after the Peanut Corporation of America fiasco of last year and the massive egg recall from this past summer, members of Congress and the elite class of agribusiness lobbyists continue to ignore the elephant in the room regarding food safety and agricultural production, which as most informed citizens know is concentration.

It would be laughable if it weren’t so shameful to watch members of the Democratic Party like Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) and Jim Costa (D-CA) gush at the chance to take advantage of this parliamentary mistake to trample the opportunities for true family farmers into the ground.

Yesterday, Rep. Cardoza, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee and represents California’s farm-rich San Joaquin Valley could barely contain his glee over the opportunity to strip the Tester amendment from the bill.

Cardoza went as far as calling the Tester amendment an “abomination” (very strong word folks for something that protects family farmers) and continued saying, “A small farm can devastate the industry as easily as a big farm.”

It’s hard to tell if Rep. Cardoza is just stupid or corrupt.

Fortunately, a quick look at political donations at Opensecrets.org offers some insight. During the 2010 election cycle, three of the top five industries donating to Rep Cardoza’s campaign were from the agricultural sector, including more than $103,000 from the “Crop Production & Basic Processing” industry - the number one industry paying for his re-election and the very people who are now demanding that Tester’s modest farmer protection provisions be killed.

This fact should not be lost on anyone, because this is how industrial agriculture has not only taken over food production in the U.S., driving farmers off the land, fattening Americans and contaminating our food, but it is also how corporate agribusiness has corrupted our democracy.

And if there’s one thing that Americans are rapidly becoming aware of, it is the fact that family farmers don’t kill people, but greed, excessive corporate power, dangerous corporate concentration and corruption within federal agencies do.

Failure to pass the food safety bill without the Tester and Manager’s amendments, which are minor stopgap provisions to protect a tiny, but economically vibrant sector of the agricultural economy would be a travesty of both justice and democracy.

If House Democrats and Senate Republicans cannot put aside bitter partisan bickering to put health and safety of American citizens over giant corporate interests with the passage of this bill, then they deserve to reap the consequences at the ballot box.

It’s time for Democrats and Republicans to show America what they stand for – huge corporations or everyday Americans. The Food Safety Modernization Act with the Tester amendment included is a perfect litmus test to see if they will stand up for the hopes and dreams of the little guy in this country or if they will continue down the long road of rewarding concentrated wealth.

Millions of Americans are watching and they will be organized to vote in 2012.

(Dave Murphy is the founder and Executive Director of Food Democracy Now!, a grassroots community of over 150,000 Americans dedicated to building a sustainable food system that protects our natural environment, sustains farmers and nourishes families.)

On Thanksgiving morning I slipped out of bed at 5:00 to the sound of my neighbor’s wind machine firing-up — a serious frost protection measure seldom employed during the dormant season.  Big surprise:  the predicted low was around +2F.  I hustled over to the office where the wireless thermometer read -8F.  Whoa!  The recent Extension Service e-alert had rated -5F  as doing significant damage to dormant peach buds.  Needless to say, I added the din of our two machines and was relieved that by the time I returned to the office the thermometer read +1F, the previous temp at the top of the barn.  Or had the digital face previously read -0.8F? my doubting mind questioned.  And why weren’t there any others running in the neighborhood?  But why would Claudio run his?  (See my blog post from 5/7/2010 for further discussion on this topic.)  But anyway, the analog thermometer in the vineyard showed -4F — so no harm done in any event.

Our Thanksgiving guests, Aniela and Joe, having arrived the night before, were unprepared to have their morning rest so rudely interrupted.  But they were game and Joe, who in addition to braving I-70 from Denver on T-giving eve had driven down from Jackson Hole on Tuesday over sketchy roads, so he managed to sleep-in.  After this nerve-wracking start, our turkey day unfolded in a lovely, laid-back sorta way.  Joe had brought with him his state-of-the-art Fiscars splitting axe so he split logs as I bucked them into stove lengths and before lunch we had 1/4 cord stacked beside the office door.

Max and Aniela, meanwhile, roasted peppers on the grill, filling the chill air with delicious autumn fragrances.  Some of the peppers found their way into a delicious squash soup for a light lunch before we turned to preparations for the feast:  The turkey, with quinoa stuffing, had, of course, gone into the oven first thing in the morning.  It was a fresh, never-frozen bird, raised across the valley on The Living Farm, that our friend Karla had “processed” on Monday.  To this we added an acorn squash casserole; mashed purple viking potatoes, grilled root vegetables, green beans with almonds; salad; and cranberry relish.  OK, not everything was local (cranberries and almonds don’t grow here) but most food was from the farm or our Valley and almost entirely organic.

We capped the evening with a game of Trivial Pursuit in which Aniela and Joe were off to an early start and looked sure to whoop Max and Wink.  But a learning curve, fate, and the throw of the die came down for the underdogs and when we finally went to bed it was tied with both of us crisscrossing the winner’s circle.  The game refused to be decided even with the renewed energies of the AM so we finally settled on a draw so we could get on with the day.  Getting on with the day included work on the new sheep barn below the dam.  Under Aniela’s supervision and Joe’s expert tractor skills, much was accomplished and Wink is greatly encouraged.  Since then we have raised two of the three lintel beams and the barn is taking shape.

La Via Campesinas message to the CFS:

Sustainable peasant and family farm agriculture can feed the world!
(Rome, October 11, 2010) With the number of hungry people in the world at almost 1 billion, it is clear that the current food system blatantly fails in providing healthy and adequate food for all. The recent increase in land grabbing is an integral part of the dominant corporate agribusiness model with large-scale industrial monocultures. This system has caused climate change and allows speculation on food for the benefit of a small minority.

Today the plenary session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) of the United Nations started in Rome. La Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, wants to take advantage of this occasion to reiterate that sustainable peasant and family farm agriculture can feed the world, as mentioned in our newest publication.
This also means that the solutions reside in changing our food system to a system within the framework of food sovereignty that has sustaibable family farming at its centre.
Small food producers are already feeding a huge amount of people, using smaller plots of land and working in a sustainable way.
More and more actors, such as stated in the IAASTD report recognise that small-scale sustainable farming is the way to find sustainable solutions to this terrible violation of the human right to food.
The CFS should put the right to food at the heart of the global food and agricultural governance and international institutions and governments should be made accountable regarding their efforts to implement this right. The points of view of civil society organisations directly affected by the food crisis should constitute the basis for the development of solutions. La Via Campesina will be present at the CFS to provide a follow-up to the discussions and propose real solutions.

July 2, 2010. Yesterday was a milestone for Mesa Winds Farm. Our diligent and hard-working “Young Farmers” Becky, Lindsay, and Trevor, completed the first-pass pruning of our vineyards. This is the first year that we didn’t have to resort to contract workers to get the job done. They proved, “Yes, we can”. We celebrated their hard work with a mostly-local, all-organic barbeque of ribs, potatoes au gratin, baked beans, salad, and rhubarb cherry crisp.

On the web site, Max has introduced you to our Babydoll Southdown sheep. In addition to cute, and their traditional roles as wool and meat providers, they will also play an important role in maintaining soil fertility and controlling weeds and cover crops in our vineyards. But why won’t they eat the grape leaves, we ask? So, while our young farmers sweated-out the last rows in the Pinot Gris, Max and I have been working with our CSU Extension Agent, Robbie Baird Levalley, to train the sheep what NOT to eat.

The protocol for this training was developed by Dr Fred Provenza of Utah State University and has been applied in vineyards on the West coast. Robbie has successfully applied it to a flock of Babydolls on a vineyard in Palisade, CO. So we are not exactly pioneers in this: We hold the ewes off feed overnight and then present them with fresh grape leaves, which they are happy to eat. We then give them a pill of lithium chloride that gives them a stomachache – which they associate with having eaten the grape leaves. On the second morning of this regime, most of them declined the grape leaves; those who ate were treated again. Later we turned them out into a vineyard. Those who ate grapes were removed for further conditioning; it is important that they not teach the others that its OK to eat leaves.

Yesterday we had remarkable success: only the ram, Louie, continued to eat leaves in the corral. He was left behind when we turned the others out to the vineyard. Most of the sheep ate grass and weeds around the grape plants without bothering the leaves; a few tested the grapes but went back to the grasses. Only two ewes and a lamb required further conditioning. Today we’ll do it again.

A “heritage breed”, Babydoll Southdowns are the breed of choice for this work because of their diminutive size which allows them to move about between rows and under the trellis wires. They seem intelligent enough to readily grasp this training and, in addition, they are known for their excellent quality fleece, comparable to Merino, and for delicious meat. We are very excited by this addition to our agro-ecology.

Friday, May 7, 2:00 AM.  The alarm thermometer roused me half-an-hour ago at 30 degrees. The temp at the top of the barn was 35. No need to belabor the decision this morning. Critical temp is 29 for the fruit that remains after last week’s freeze. Five degrees of inversion, sky is clear, no wind, neighbors’ machines already roaring.

Now I’m back in the cabin, listening to my machines chop the air, sipping tea, and watching the thermometer continue to fall. Some more data: the thermometers at the CSU Ag Experiment Station (accessed by phone, about a mile away and several hundred feet lower) are a couple degrees warmer and showing the same spread. The humidity is 33% which sets the dew point at 4 degrees (see www.dpcalc.org) — I already knew we weren’t close to the dew point as my shoes came back dry from the walk to the wind machines. No future in relying on this heat source.

Last Friday night’s freeze was the coldest it has been since then. But Saturday and Sunday nights were similar nail-biters: Saturday went down to 30 and Sunday to 32. Both nights my neighbors (or some of them) ran their wind machines and both nights I restrained myself from the temptation to follow the crowd. I sat awake by the wood stove in the wee hours, charting the mercuries (actually digitals), studying the skies for portents, and in the end resolved to stick to the data.At times like these I like to remind myself of the time that, on our first spring on Mesa Winds, I let the propane supply in one machine run low. Too late to order a delivery I realized we were in for another cold night and I would be unable to run our frost protection. Max was furious. I lay awake that night listening to every wind machine in Delta County chop the air and feeling the chill from the other side of the bed. I still can’t explain why we were spared the severity of the freeze that hit our neighbors that night. Was it the dew point, the wind chill, or beginner’s blind luck? Anyway, I was redeemed and grateful.

So, the observation that the mercury seemed to rise after I turned off the machines on Friday night doesn’t come as a total surprise. And such events make for more complicated judgements and less sleep. On Saturday and Sunday nights my data was easier to trust: on neither night did we reach the critical temperature, on both nights I couldn’t discern an inversion, one night there was a bit too much wind, and another an ample cloud cover.

Be that as it may, the proof is in the pudding: Jack Frost did a pretty aggressive job of thinning for us. But we DO still have a crop. We’re still not out of the woods, though, and tonight’s low is forecast at 26. The Crest Haven peaches fared better than the Red Globes, likely because they mature later and were, therefore, at an earlier, less vulnerable stage. There are more viable buds up high in the trees than low, reflecting the colder temps near the ground (an inversion).

The Golden Delicious apples fared better than the Galas both because they are a later variety and because they are a taller tree.  On the Galas that we sampled, about 40% of the clusters (a normal cluster has 5 or 6 blossoms, each with the capacity to become an apple) has only one or two viable buds.  Only the buds that hadn’t yet opened were still viable. This is more or less the rate we’d want to thin-to; the difficulty being that Jack Frost doesn’t necessarily distribute his handiwork evenly in the tree. We’ll still be hand-thinning to even-out the crop-load but will not be chemical thinning this year — an eventuality that I find most agreeable.

I will conclude by saying that I hope this is the last you’ll have to endure my spring frost stories this year and I trust, with the help of the wind machines, that we’ll have a crop. We can tell that our customers are beginning to look forward to local fruit season as each mail brings more CSA member sign-ups. Thank you! We look forward to seeing you at the market and in the mean time, keep in touch through the web site and this blog. Thanks for paying attention!

May Day, 2010.  Last night (Friday) was the second in what is forecast to be a series of four nights in which sub-freezing temperatures threaten our nascent fruit buds, potentially reducing our harvest. This is a strong possibility every spring as our peaches, apples, and grapes mature from bud-swell through full bloom to fruit set. Our two OrchardRite wind machines are our only defense against this threat. The closer a particular bud is to bloom, the more vulnerable it is to freezing. The critical temperature for both apples and peaches at the present stage is about 27 degrees. On Thursday night the thermometer went down to 25 and stayed there for several hours. I reproduce below my decision-process from April 30. Next I’ll reproduce my story from last night. Suffice to say I’ve not been getting much sleep recently.

April 30, 2010, 11:30 PM.  I’m awake, sitting by the warm wood stove, listening to my neighbors’ wind machines flog the air, struggling to find a modicum of warm air to stir into the frigid air mass that envelops Rogers Mesa. Why don’t I just turn mine on instead of belaboring this dilemma as I do every year at about this time.  I review the considerations:
1.  At each stage of development the fruit buds have “critical temperatures” at which 10% of buds will be killed (thinning the crop) and a lower temperature at which 90% will be killed (a disaster).  The further along they are, the less cold they will tolerate.  For our peaches in full bloom these temperatures are 27oF and 24oF, respectively.  My wireless thermometer stands at 27.3.  It will not be likely to rise again until 8 AM — this is a long period of cold.
2.  These values are gross generalizations.  Buds will withstand lower temps for shorter duration and vice versa.  Also, only some of our buds are at Stage 6, full bloom.  Other buds on the same tree which are at lower stages are good to lower temps: 26/21 or even 25/15.
3.  The wind machine is a giant fan on a tower which spins and rotates at the same time.  During spring frost events there is often a temperature inversion (warmer air above).  By stirring the air it is possible to warm the air at fruit level a couple of degrees.  Sometimes this is all it takes to save the crop.  Sometimes it is “fruitless.”  I have a wireless thermometer at crop height and one at the top of the barn in an effort to measure the amount of inversion.  Right now the spread is 26.4 x 27.8.  I’m looking for at least a 2 degree spread.
4.  Inversions occur under clear skies.  Cloud-cover acts as a blanket, preventing the relatively warm air from escaping.  Just when my neighbors turned on their machines a high cloud-cover moved in and the temperatures stabilized at 27 x 28.  Now the cloud has moved off and the temp is again falling — faster at fruit level than above.  This is an indication that radiational cooling is in effect.  The 2 degree spread will likely soon be reached.
5.  Absolute temperature is not the only effect.  When the dew point is reached, water vapor turns to liquid and gives off heat.  When the liquid freezes it gives off more heat.  When the dew point is close to the critical temperature, it is authoritatively said that there is nothing we can do that will be as effective at saving the fruit.  Dew point is calculated from humidity and temperature.  Tonight it is 25 oF.  Right now the temp spread is 25.5 x 27.3.   Would the wind machine simply dissipate this ephemeral heat?  How long does the heat last without wind?
6.  If the cold is the result of a cold-air-mass rather than radiational cooling under clear skies, there is no point in stirring the air around.  Tonight’s cold is on the heals of a cold front, but is there also radiational cooling taking place?
7.  So what’s the hesitation?  Cost vs effectiveness.  I’ve just outlined the effectiveness issues.  As for cost, the machine is driven by a propane-fired 440 cu in Chevy V-8, industrial engine.  It operates at full throttle and guzzles fuel.  It is not to be run unnecessarily.
8.  There is no point in running the machine if there is any wind: the wind is doing the stirring and, since the fan is a giant gyroscope that is constantly reorienting itself relative to the wind, it could blow apart under the stress of moving through too strong a wind with catastrophic results to the $20K machine and the farmer.  At the first hint of wind — indicated by intensification of the helicopter-throb of the rotor — I should hurry out and turn it off.

It’s 12:10 AM.  Spread is 25.2 x 27.1.  Sky is clear and calm.  I still have my doubts but I’m heading out to do my part to stir the air.  Call it giving-in to peer pressure.

Forty-five minutes, 2 wind machine start-ups, and a snow-sparkling walk under the full moon later and I’m back at the fire.  Dew point has certainly been reached as the towers and blades are coated in frost which blows off when spinning begins.  Checking the sky I see that another bank of high clouds is moving-in from the west.  The temp spread is now 25.3 x 26.2.  Is the narrower spread the result of the cloud cover or the wind machine?  I hear the rotors throbbing as they chop their way through the wind.  I’m surrounded by noise.  The cabin shakes in time to the throb.  The pitch changes with the orientation to the wind and the wind velocity.  Is there wind with the cloud bank?  Or is it the wind we are generating?  Should I contemplate turning off the machine?  Can I go to sleep with these questions on my mind?  Spread is now 25.5 x 26.6.  It’s warming-up?

Later.  The cloud cover is not unbroken.  In the West it seems clearer despite the forecast that calls for 60% chance of snow.  Precip would obviate the wind machine.  Dilemma.  I think I’ll crawl my weary body and mind into the warm bed and try to forget that there are no certain answers.  Any major change will likely wake me — that is if am able to sleep at all in this racket… and with all these questions…

Morning after.  I managed four hours sleep.  In the dreary dawn there is an unbroken thin overcast blanket.  The temp spread has all but disappeared and stands at 25.5.  There’s no reason to keep the machines sucking down fuel.  At 6:15 I begin the process of turning them off.  By the time I get back to the cabin half-an-hour later the thermometer is at 27 and trending upward.  This raises the question: Did the wind machines, in the absence of a temperature gradient, actually suppress the temp?  Worse than for naught, actually counter-productive.