It's hard to find enough time these days to keep up on the essential things so some of you might be wondering how I justify taking time and incurring the expense to visit our facilities around the state. It's because I consider it essential to my role and one of my key responsibilities to convey the work going on. Seeing the work, as opposed to just hearing it, gives me context. I learn far more through the conversations than what might result from a meeting sitting in Davis or Oakland.

Kern County almonds Feb 2018

On Monday, Mark Bell and I spent the day with the group in Kern County. The day went far too quickly and we didn't have time for one-on-one conversations with all of the academics, much less the staff. Things are so different from where they were a year ago. Despite what seems to have been a warmer winter, the trees didn't seem to be as far in bloom as they were last year. And, of course, it is much drier. At this time last year, I recall driving back from World Ag Expo knowing that there were evacuations of dairy farms underway.

I learned a bunch of things while visiting the group in Kern County, from high tech approaches to mating disruption, to creative approaches to averting fumigant use, to UC ANR's impact on developing evapotranspiration models. All was impressive and fascinating. And clearly the group works with colleagues across the state on all of these efforts, despite being tucked away far from just about everywhere. David's mating disruption work involves a cadre of Advisors all the way up to Butte and Mohammed readily referred to Brent's orchard recycling efforts are the driver behind his own research. Blake talked at length about his collaborations with Allan Fulton.

Some of the Kern County Advisors

I was fascinated by the Giant cane plot we visited. While not your usual plot study, it's a crop that is really important to musicians that play woodwind reed instruments. Two of my sisters, including the fencer, played double reed instruments (oboe and bassoon) and another sister played clarinet and saxophone (single reed). I also played saxophone and I think the fencer played it as well. If you have played reed instruments you know how important a good reed is to sound quality. What I had managed to forget was how expensive reeds are - $12 and up for an oboe reed on Amazon! Brian shared that manufacturers employ the likes of Kenny G to test out reed quality. Imagine the opportunity we have to connect a new clientele group with importance of agriculture!

Brian's Giant Cane project with Blake providing scale

We ended our day at what David calls his happy place. It's a four corner intersection, still in the middle of nowhere, with a different crop on each corner. And each corner demonstrates the impact that the work of UC ANR has. One corner was a citrus orchard where glassy-winged sharpshooter control was deployed in order to spare the vineyard across the road from becoming infected with Pierce's Disease. Kiddy-corner to the vineyard were cherry trees demonstrating the gains made from all of the Spotted Wing Drosophila work that went on years ago. And opposite the cherry trees were high-bush blueberries, one of the highest value crops.

David's happy place

It made for a long night and I didn't catch up on emails until this evening but it was great to see just a small slice of what UCCE Kern County is up to. I can't wait to be invited back.

I don't get much time these days to connect back to my academic training. But next week I'm headed to Kern County and John Karlik has proposed that we spend some time talking about air quality. Now, given that this is California, I suspect John is thinking about particulate matter. Dust and particles are interesting but odor and olfaction are where the real excitement lie. Consider this:

• Olfaction (the science of smell) is the least understood of the five senses
• At the age of 20, the average person retains 80% of the olfactory acuity that they had at birth; at age 80, the average person has only 20% of the capacity they had at birth
  • Children under the age of 5 often rate the smell of feces as pleasant suggesting that they may detect compounds that adults may not or that the unpleasantness is learned
• Humans possess far less sense of smell than other mammals
• Odor is the response elicited from a mixture of compounds, each of which is an odorant
• The difference between the concentration below which an odorant can't be detected and the concentration above which an odorant is overwhelming to the senses such that it can no longer be detected may be as low as ten-fold, compared to other senses that have a ten thousand-fold or greater difference
• Women have a keener sense of smell than men
• Smoking dulls the sense of smell
• Odor fatigue refers to a temporary situation when a person can no longer distinguish a specific odor due to prolonged exposure (nose-blind)
• Anosmia refers to a condition where a person can't detect a particular smell (odorant) regardless of the concentration
  • One in one thousand people can't detect methyl mercaptan – the compound that is often used in propone tanks as an alert when the propane level is low
  • One in ten thousand people can't detect ethyl mercaptan, the primary odorant in the spray of skunks
• Odor is a conditioned response; in blind studies, panelists often rate the smell of chocolate as 'unpleasant' (I happen to be one of these people) but when told that the smell is chocolate they rate the odor as 'pleasant'
• How odorants interact to create odor is poorly understood thereby making odor and odor nuisance difficult to predict

I don't want to stir up too much excitement over the topic so I'll hold off sharing manure-specific facts until some other post. Needless to say, I welcome the chance to talk about air quality a bit. Occasionally I do have the opportunity to talk about air-related things. This morning started off with a conversation about enteric methane emissions. I'll be part of additional conversation on that topic and other greenhouse gas emissions in a couple of weeks in DC, if we can avoid further government shutdowns.

I ran into Yolva and Claudia on my way out of the Davis ANR building this evening. I didn't want to keep them too long because Russell, Steven, and others from the Latino Initiative were waiting but they updated me that Malena and her mom had a great time at the Regents meeting and Malena's club were excited to hear all about her big adventure. I also learned that Malena has always wanted to attend Berkeley so she was well-prepared for President Napolitano's question. Once Malena enrolls at UCB, we'll have to be sure to lure her towards a career with UC ANR!

I missed the Budweiser commercial with the Clydesdales. Was there one? I was busy doing other things, including enjoying the weather, and I forgot to stay on top of the commercials. I did like the one with Steven Tyler, a Yellow Tail commercial with a party kangaroo, and the Crocodile Dundee commercial. My favorite was the Jack in the Box commercial with Martha Stewart. I left for a bit during half time so I'm not sure if Pink stayed home with the flu or performed. Either way, the real highlight was the final score.

I'm in town all this week – Oakland and Davis, that is. It will be nice to not have to check into a hotel or remember where I am headed. Program Council is only meeting Tuesday afternoon so that frees up some time. And the California Farm Demonstration Network is having a partners meeting on Tuesday. Today and Wednesday I have some work to do to prepare for submitting budget requests that are due next week.

At the end of this week I start ‘annual review' meetings. Due to a couple vacancies, I will have far more meetings this year than what, I hope, will be customary. It's been difficult to schedule much else for the next month or so. Over the weekend I received a jury summons for the week of March 12. That entire week is booked with annual review meetings so I'm glad I was able to reschedule it to mid-April though it will mean needing to reschedule an all-day budget meeting. I'm surprised I have been summoned already – less than 8 months living in the county! Sadly, criminals are everywhere.

A couple weeks ago my flight was delayed because there were more passengers on the plane than there were checked in. As we waited, fully loaded, at the gate, we each had to show our ID. I've only recently heard about people sneaking onto planes but unfortunately, not everyone is trustworthy. It took a while to check everyone's ID and, as you can imagine, several people were concerned about their connections. One of the flight attendants was a former law enforcement officer so he was able to deploy his skills to calm passengers and diffuse the situation. Honing or building those skills seems like a good continuous improvement opportunity, even for those who consider themselves talented in that area.

About 2 months ago I shared with a colleague the personal statement I submitted when I applied for my current position. I read through it and recalled that as I was writing it I questioned whether it was the right place to address my personal core values. I'm fortunate that the three I shared in that personal statement happen to appear in the 2016 UC ANR Strategic Plan. What is unfortunate is that not everyone shares these values or behaves in a manner that is consistent with the values. Some choose to cheat, whether it be on their taxes or the football field, while others do unspeakable things to hundreds of kids, and yet others cover up poor or criminal behavior. As a result, we have jury duty and ID checks.

Here's hoping the Olympics reflect strong values, from the athletes, to the trainers and physicians, to the judges, and the fans as well.

Did you get up early to see the Super Blue Moon? I didn't have to get up any earlier than usual but I made a point to go outside and look up to see it. After all, it was one of those ‘once in a lifetime' things that seems to come around every couple of years. My first thought was that it was very foggy out and my drive was going to be miserably slow, wrought with accidents. So after staring at the moon for a few minutes, it was time to tackle Highway 99.

The drive wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, it was easier than I had expected. This reminded me that 1) I am behind on TED talks but I have a few lined up to view so perhaps I will get to them over the weekend, though I already have strategic plan homework in the queue, and 2) one particular TED talk, that I need to watch again, focused on the idea that often things are easier than you think and life begins at the end of your comfort zone. At the time that I first watched this one, I didn't think much about it; it didn't strike me as particularly impactful, much like the moon, but I find myself thinking about the speaker's story and her deliver style, over and over again. I need to go back and see what I missed then determine what it is that has that particular talk stuck in my head.

If I recall, the author of that particular TED talk shared her fear of public speaking. Clearly she has risen above that fear and conquered it. This reminded me of Malena and that congratulations are in order for Yolva Gil, Claudia Carrasco, and, of course, Malena for the amazing work they are doing down in Riverside County with the 4-H program. Malena is the Vice President of one of the clubs that Chris Greer and I visited last year. It was a year ago this week when Chris and I were in Riverside and we met Malena and her club. Recently, Malena talked about her 4-H experience with the UC Regents. One of the things Malena mentioned was that 4-H had helped her address her fear of public speaking. Based on her presentation to the UC Regents, I'd say that Malena is a TED presenter in the making! Congratulations to Malena and her mentors, Yolva and Claudia!

Yesterday I was down at the Lindcove REC. The Lindcove REC is a beautiful place though I was disappointed that there was not as much snow on the mountains as there was when I visited in February 2017. However, there is still time for a few more ‘snowmakers' though I don't see a need to name snow storms. We've completed the ‘deep dives' at 8 of the RECs with plans to hold off on Hansen until after a new director is in place.  The visits have been enlightening, for all, I think, and we need to pull together our thoughts to move towards budget targets. We will debrief a bit on Friday.

Lindcove REC Feb 2017

Also on Friday is the monthly County Director call where we will review the list of Advisor positions that County and REC Directors have developed. They've been hard at work already, despite the 2018 Position Call not released (yet) and while it's evident there's been lots of discussion, some of which I'm sure was difficult, I hope the group has concluded that the process hasn't been as hard as they might have first thought. There are many, many conversations yet to be had amongst the group and with others across UC ANR and external to UC ANR but I think this group of leaders has made an impressive start.

Gabriel Torres starts tomorrow as the Viticulture Advisor based out of Tulare County. This position represents a partnership between UC ANR and the California Table Grape Commission. Welcome Gabriel! And ‘thanks!' to the Commission for this valued partnership!

Largely this post has been a series of rambling comments without much purpose or direction. But perhaps 2 readers will contact Gabriel and welcome him to UC ANR, thus giving the post purpose!