What’s water use efficiency to you? Is it buying a new “efficient” dishwasher or washing machine? Taking showers with a low flow shower head? Setting your sprinklers to run at times when your lawn will drink it verses evaporating in the hot air?

I often get asked, “How long does it take to grow a rice crop?” Some rice varieties take 125 days to grow – others can take up to 170 days from seed to harvest. However, just because rice isn’t growing in the fields, doesn’t mean the rice fields are working. The truth is that rice … Continue reading “Rice: 24/7 – 365; The Fields Are Always Open”

“Rain, Rain, go away. Come again some other day” The words from this childhood rhyme are not the words that go through a water manager’s mind when the winter rains come. Winter rains bring the replenishment of supplies that will be needed to meet both irrigation and drinking water demands next summer in California. Without … Continue reading “Dry Year Thoughts”

Sustainability: It comes in many flavors: economic, social, cultural, environmental, and many other permeations. We work hard to be exceptional stewards of the natural resources which we have been blessed-the soil, the water, the geography, the wildlife-it is essential to our sense of place. In the small farming communities of the Sacramento Valley we live … Continue reading “Sustainability”