- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Twenty years ago, UC Cooperative Extension 4-H advisor Carla Sousa, working with retired kindergarten teacher Denise Nelson, launched the first teen survival conference in Visalia.
Even as its first participants are pushing middle age, the program continues to gather local teenagers to face the challenges of youth in the rural San Joaquin Valley community, according to a story in today's Visalia Times-Delta. The 2008 event takes place Oct. 14.
"When we started off, we had no idea," Sousa was quoted. "Was this going to last one year? Two years? Five years? Because of the reception, it makes you want to...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The UC Riverside faculty and staff newsletter Inside UCR includes a feature in the current issue about a long-standing ANR program housed at the Southern California campus, News and Information Outreach in Spanish (NOS).
The article traces the program's journey from its inception in 1981, when radio news stories were sent to California radio stations on gigantic reel-to-reel tapes, through a 27-year-long uninturrupted stream of information from the University to the Spanish-speaking public. The stories are still mailed directly to radio stations, but are also available for
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Fresno Bee food writer Joan Obra doesn't stop with klatch in the kitchen, but scours research fields and neighborhood shops for her comprehensive culinary news. Her story this week focuses on a Sichuan pepper, a spice so hot it numbs the tongue. The pepper is part of an observational trial conducted by UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Richard Molinar at the UC Kearney Research and Education Center near Parlier.
Typically, Sichuan pepper is imported from China. Molinar sees it as a potential crop for Valley small-scale farmers.
Nine years ago, he planted two Zanthoxylum armatum trees, a species of Sichuan pepper grown in...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
An agritourism story that first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News last month is continuing to make the rounds in U.S. media outlets, most recently in the San Diego Union Tribune and the Yankton Press-Dakotan.
The first paragraph sets the stage with sun gilded grass, a rickety rocking chair and a herd of angus cattle. The ranch where reporter Leslie Harlib did her research doesn't have a theme; said the owner, "We just are what we are and have been since the 1930s: a working...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
California's approximately 6,000 almond growers are expected to harvest a record 1.5 billion pounds of the healthful tree nuts in 2008, according to a Bakersfield Californian article citing USDA statistics. It will be the third consecutive record crop.
The news comes even as almond farmers fret about colony collaspe disorder of bees and dwindling water supplies.
Reporter Jeff Nachtigal spoke to UC Cooperative Extension entomology farm advisor David Haviland, who speculated on possible causes of CCD, including bacterial infection, viruses or man-made problems.
“The bottom line is no one knows what’s causing it,”...
