Its Friday, the first day of the weekend here and its been a hectic week. Did some touring this morning and early afternoon, but finally have a chance to get a few more posts in on what I have been seeing. Day two in the field was a good one as well. Started out in a peach nursery operation east of Sadat City where Nemaguard seed are planted out in a nursery row, budded, then forced to produce new peach and apricot trees for commercial fruit production.
Above is the nursery as its being budded. After fifteen days, the trees are topped to force the scion buds and create a budded tree. Trees to the right have just been budded, trees to the left have just been forced.
Budding is hard work, and while I was having tea with the nursery owner, the budding crew was taking a well deserved break with tea and the shisha.
On to other fields, the owners, brothers, nephews, uncles, there was quite the crowd. First class peach and grape operation. Well, that’s what I was shown and asked to help with, but there are mango, banana, apples, you name it grown all around. All with windbreak, superb weed control and insect and disease management, I mean these guys have their act together. All going for a specific window of marketing in the EU. Here I am with the managing nephew and his staff of engineers.
The professional field crew and the younger owners tend to prefer western dress. They are extremely bright, really know their pomology and viticulture and have a great sense of humor. I really enjoy these interactions personally and professionally. The older management crowd (uh, I guess that means my age) and many field workers still wear more traditional clothing. There is a mosque on most farms where workers and owners pray together. Here, another tea time with the big bosses.
You get a real sense of reality driving around. Where cultivation has been established, the growers and the land is very productive, in the western part of the delta, its ground water that tends to a bit saline, but in the eastern part, its water from a series of channels off of the Nile. Here is what it looks like where it is not cultivated. And, oh, yes the palm was planted.
