Tour with Farm Smart

Hey, not everything is all fun and games...sometimes there are great learning experiences as well. As was the schedule for today. Bea and Ken Marler suggested we do something different and reserved our seats on the University of California Desert Research Smart Farm Tour. Ken drove the 5 of us 75 miles west to El Centro, CA to participate in this program for winter visitors, also known as the "Lettuce Bowl" of America.

It included a narrated farm tour via hay bale seats on a open air tram pulled by a John Deer tractor, educational presentation on how the farms vegetables are grown, harvested, shipped and food safety is handled. We were encouraged to pick the winter vegetables in the fields we stopped at, and to take the "fruits (or in our case veggies) of our labor" home in the ample bags they supplied.

We brought home brocolli, beets, lettuce, cabbage, radishes and other salad makings. On top of all of that we enjoyed live musical entertainment, snacks, taste-testing, lunch, ice cream sundies, a chance to win door prizes and giveaways. It was quite a learning experience and one we would recommend whole heartly for anyone in this area in January or February.