Fresh from the tree and ready for a blast of hot air.

     Does it take as much water to peel a peach as it does to grow it? Seems that way to me. But that may be about to change. Gour Choudhury, a specialist in food processing systems, is a professor at California State University, Fresno. He and his students developed a system that could reduce water used in processing by 80 percent for some fruits. The Wawona Frozen Foods plant in nearby Clovis, Calif., cut its water use for peeling peaches from 240 gallons an hour to 48 gallons with a prototype of Chodhury's system. His system uses a blast of moist air rather than a stream of water to remove skin from the fruit. The system could be adapted for other soft fruits, he believes, and he is currently working on a way to skin tomatoes. Fresno Bee reporter Robert Rodriguez looked into Chodhury's work and wrote a report, which you can read here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/08/16/2043782/fresno-state-profs-idea-saves.html

Doug Tomlinson cranks out a bale of hay
from his baler while his great-grandchildren
(from right) Kylie Barber, Anthony Barber
 and family friend Becca Boshart look on.

     At an age when many people are, quite frankly, dead, Doug Tomlinson is still riding his 1949 Massey-Ferguson into hayfields and putting up as many as 700 bales a day. Cheryll Borgaard, a reporter for the Longview, Washington, Daily News, took a ride out to see Tomlinson and to watch him at work. She watched him crank at least one bale out of his baler with a hand crank, but didn't ask him what kind of baler it was, nor she she ask if he cranked them all out by hand. My guess is probably not. It's a nice little story, though, on page A24 of our current issue, or you can read it on our new and very dandy website, here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/ Just click on the e-edition button and navigate to page A24.
Doug Tomlinson cranks out a bale of hay from his baler while his great-grandchildren (from right) Kylie Barber, Anthony Barber and family friend Becca Boshart look on.


     I think I'd need an aspirin, like, every 10 minutes. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/worlds-most-massive-horns/p739nt6