Last May, a Turlock almond grower noticed nearly all the nuts on a row of trees in his orchard had fallen to the ground. It looked like we shook this row, he said. I was scared. I thought the whole orchard was going to go. He called UC Cooperative Extension.
Californians and California tourists love to get out of town to enjoy rural beauty and experience a taste of rural life. This often includes visiting California's many farms and ranches that offer farm tours, farm stays, workshops, festivals, dinners, fruit picking and even barn dances.
For millennia, fires periodically burned through California forests, thinning trees, reducing shrubbery and clearing out downed branches and debris. Without periodic fire, the forests became more dense, with spaces between large trees filling in with a thick carpet of duff, seedlings and shrubs.
The Camp Fire, the worst wildfire in California history, ravaged the bucolic communities in the Butte County foothills, including Paradise, Concow, Butte Creek Canyon, Cherokee, Yankee Hill and Magalia in November 2018.
