Anil Kanda

Ceres SDA Church

Who Knows If

It's very interesting, just sort of the way today's message really began to develop.

God had been leading and impressing upon my heart over the course of the last 2 weeks that a Sabbath like this was necessary.

And as I was talking with various people and going to different places to see our church members minister, there just seemed to be an affirmation that it was time.

In addition to the sermonette that I'm going to be giving today, we're going to be hearing various testimonies of church members, our church members, who are involved in the work of spreading the gospel.

And you're going to learn through the various experiences that there are many ways to share the love of God with this world, right?

I was looking at some numbers and I was looking at the average lifespan of a human being in America, a male American.

Do you know what the average lifespan is?

What is the average lifespan of an American male?

And I'm not sure where they're doing this kind of survey, but I checked multiple sources, and the average lifespan of an American male is 78 years old.

Now what is so interesting is if you just think about life in general, 78 years, We'll just round it off to 80 years.

80 years is the average lifespan of an American male.

For all the men here, 80 years is what's presented before you.

Now I know you're Adventists and some of you may live a little bit longer, but I want you to understand something.

Now if you were to take 80 years, how many days are in a year, ladies and gentlemen?

How many days would an average male have from the time he was born to the time he died?

Now let's take those days, let's compute them into hours.

How many hours would an average male American have in his entire existence?

Some of you just need to turn the iPhone app off and go to the calculator app, right?

If you've already lived half your life, say you're 40 years old, okay?

And if that was spent, if you were to even cut that in half, sleeping hours, How many hours would you actually have of consciousness?

When we think about life and we think about the measurement of life, We'll think about hours, days, minutes, years.

But ladies and gentlemen, the Bible is teaching us essentially a powerful principle that we're going to discover today, that life is not a measurement of minutes.

Moments are opportunities God is giving to us each and every day.

And in that short span of that, whatever that opportunity is, whether it's a few seconds, a few minutes, or a few hours, in those opportunities that are presented to us each and every day, there are decisive, I should say, decisions that are being made that will determine, oftentimes, whether you will be a hero or a villain, whether you will be rich or rather you will be poor.

Decisions that could potentially guide you in a completely different direction.

In a matter of seconds, people's eternity has been changed.

Their eternal destination has been changed.

So, when you think about life, life is a series of moments.

And in these moments, Every person is called to make decisions that are in accordance with God's will.

What we're going to discover from the scripture is that there was a young woman by the name of Esther and there was presented before Esther an opportunity.

And in this short opportunity that she had, the decision she would make would affect all of eternity.

Everybody take your Bible, let's go to Esther chapter 4.

Because the word God or Lord is not mentioned at all in the book of Esther.

In a book about God, you would think every book would be about God.

But what is so interesting is when you examine the book of Esther, the word God or the word Lord is not mentioned in there.

The Holy Spirit wants us to recognize that in what appears to be the ordinary occurrences and situations in the book of Esther, when you examine it closer, there are extraordinary things taking place, very extraordinary things.

I'm going to give you a phrase, and I want you to give me 1 word that describes that phrase.

Give me 1 word That describes that, that encapsulates that whole thought.

So when you read the book of Esther, do you know what you find in the book of Esther over and over and over and over and over again?

AdAgrA 2015: Restoring the Waste Places

Breakout Session 6

Brad Johnson

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Post Harvest Handling

So good afternoon My name is Brad Johnson and I with my wife Farm in Gridley, California with woolly Farms and I've lived there all my life.

I've been farming on my own of some type since about 1976 and Judy and I, my wife, farm organic walnuts, sugar plums, the prune plums, mixed vegetables, and we also farm conventional peaches with and sugar plums with my brother and sister-in-law in the same area.

So today I have a topic that I'm gonna talk to you about is post-harvest handling.

Every human being Created in the image of God is endowed with a power akin to the Creator, individuality, power to think and to do.

My point being, we can all figure out ways to do things.

My thought in this, just like make this thing work in the right way, my thinking about this is what happens to the fruit after it is separated from the plant or picked and how do you get it to the market in good condition or package the way it is wanted.

To clarify my qualifications on this topic I'm not an expert educated by the book as a produce handler.

There are books the internet and universities for that what I will be showing you is some of what we do and Our personal experience of how we handle our products primarily our vegetable crops We also harvest sugar plums dried prunes mechanically and outsource the drying and pitting as well as walnut harvest.

We outsource the hauling, drying and shelling.

But we hand pick, oh I'm sorry, we we hand pick or at times machine pick our peaches and Ship them to be canned at a commercial canner, but we are daily involved in harvesting cooling packing shipping our vegetables to wholesale markets Over the course of years we have grown for market many kinds of fruits and vegetables with many unique needs for handling.

The details are a bit numerous to cover in this bit of time we have here, but I'll try to answer your questions, whatever questions you may have as well.

Our operation is relatively homemade and much of it has been learn as we go.

We've been growing for market various vegetable crops with many varieties within these kinds.

Watermelon, melons, tomato, eggplant, squash, okra, peppers, beets, cabbage, kale, turnips, basil, and a few other miscellaneous types.

We have evolved in our knowledge and infrastructure from shade tree to current state.

Those of you who have a lot of money, I guess can build it by the book.

Ours is over time and as we can and still not right.

I'll be running through some photos and speaking to aspects of our operation pertaining to harvest slash post harvest both being related to this topic.

In other words what we do to pick the fruit, get it to market in good condition, then we'll have time for questions or show more pictures depending on the time.

Perhaps you can make some notes if you have questions so I can kind of manage my time for this.

Not really sure how this is gonna land time-wise, but I think we'll have some time for questions.

I don't know if you see, you don't see my mouse on there, do you?

Okay, so just a little thing in this picture about our packaging.

You can just quickly wrap it cinch it right on So we use those to hold these corner boards which we place corner boards on the corner of our pallets to kind of tie the whole package together and then We use new boxes and generally new pallets I'll talk about the brown paper later.

So 1 of my goals, 1 of my early goals was no carts in the field to increase speed and efficiency of Harvest and move product to be cooled and packed faster though there are systems for hand picking Fresh market tomatoes without carts.

We've not risen to that scale except when we grew Determinant varieties which we no longer grow This happens to be a squash field So don't don't be deceived.

You know these are not tomatoes But we pick squash Sometimes early on before we start our machine or with our mechanical system with carts just because there's not that much fruit to start with it's quicker to go through with carts.

So our plan instead is to continue to modify our carts for tomato picking with overhead shade covers for the fruit and people similar to our conveyors and conveyor wagons Meaning adding a top shade cover to the carts for the afternoon Sun.

These are a few of our cart styles We've kind of various types we've used over the years So What I'm talking about is adding extensions up on these carts and putting an overhead shade canopy So when we go down through these rows in the heat of the day overhead all of our fruit is covered With from the Sun because We get very hot days in the summer and it'll scald that fruit even the short time.

It's in the picking box This is just an intermediate shade area we put together If we have the wagons not there We're using boxes to kind of shade stuff So for our homemade conveyor harvest system We've designed our field layout with 9 row sections about 50 feet across so from here to here Planting to bed plant and cultivate 3 rows at a time and put our roads between sections allowing our conveyors to reach halfway across for picking.

Here you can see our roadways between, so This would be a road and this would be a road.

Now currently we're using, we're putting in 1 bed at a time.

But the reason I did it with 9 rows is because my long term is bedding and cultivating and putting up 3 rows at a time just for speed.

So this allows us to move product from the field to shade quickly and gives the added benefit to shade workers and conveyor with umbrellas or such things.

So we made this conveyor out of scaffolding from Lowe's.

We've made other ones from aluminum ladders and another from scrap electrical wire scaffolding.

So it's powered by hydraulics from the tractor and we use TechShield plywood and regular comp roofing cuts the heat that covers the trailer.

The conveyor can swing back parallel on the trailer for roading.

So this has a pivot point right here, and we can swing this whole thing back against the trailer So this is more pictures of how this works, so we're picking with no carts putting the product on the belt The the product comes in to the pack shed Or to the pack trailer, and then we're in this case.

We're doing cucumbers here So we feel pack at this point and then the boxes go into a bin right on the on the Picking wagon and then we can handle that with either a bin carrier or a forklift To get it off or we can just haul it right in with the trailer to the pack shed that way and unload it Without handling the boxes again It works well for eggplant watermelon zucchini ambrosia melons and short steak tomatoes or whatever else you want to imagine you can do with that.

We use moist burlap on top to keep the produce covered and hydrated during transport.

So this is the moist burlap I just pulled it off here so I could get a good picture of the eggplant In the bins so you could see see what fruit we had in there So we modified these trailers from obsolete tomato wagons when sauce tomatoes were hand harvested in bins they have roller conveyors right along underneath or with this bin skid slides and work well for bins and forklift handling.

We added the top and the sidewalk along the edge and even though it's not pertaining to harvest these wagons may provide a very good way to stake our tomatoes efficiently because we can put all our stakes on here, we can pound our stakes downhill without any lifting you know when the stakes will be this level rather than this level to put your stake pounder in or whatever however you're putting them in.

So here's another style we use it's a low profile which we really like this trailer easy to get on and off we're adding collapsible extensions this year so this this little extension right here we're putting on another 1 on the other side and We use this mostly to field pack our zucchini and this is incredibly helpful on hot days.

I mean If you're looking for Some shade this is in the field this has been phenomenally just phenomenally good job It also works well for hay rides.

So here's a group of friends that we, you know, we'll take people on a trip around the farm and this is just a good way we'll throw some bales of hay on there and it's just a fun way to do it.

So 1 of our coolers here is a diesel engine truck cooler and we use this for volume overflow and because we don't have enough electricity.

But it can be difficult in and out because first in is last out.

And on very hot days, it seems like it needs more airflow to keep the engine running.

This other 1 here is a 40-foot reefer box, very thick insulation.

And we put this little, we don't use this big unit here.

We just put this little Ac window cooler in here And you can I've heard you can modify the thermostat on those things and get them to draw down more.

But we just, we use it for like dried fruit or wax boxes in the summertime.

So we don't use it as our main cooling, but it does keep the wax boxes from melting and sticking together, or the dried fruit doesn't need as much cooling.

So we can keep it about say 50, 55, 60 degrees in there kind of keep the door shut we aren't in and out of that very much.

This 1 here is an earlier box we used when we started with a little milk truck and now we just use that for storage.

So you know we're like I say we've just kind of tried to pull things together over time as we could.

And for example, these cooler panels, we bought this whole stack and all the hardware to go with it for about $500.

And these are 18 to 20 feet long and this is 1 of the coolers we made out of it.

So I just, we put this up kind of like an erector set and we used the, I just consulted with a compressor and condenser manufacturer and built it with what we could.

We use the same panels for the roof and the doors.

So mathematically, We do not have enough electricity to build a to build coolers with all the cooling capacity We need so in order to expand and even do as much we need to do with these we need more power So lack of electricity limits our growth It's maybe not the only thing but it's definitely a factor.

I don't know if you've ever consulted with a reefer, somebody who does refrigeration.

How much heat you're coming in with, how much you want to cool it to how much time you want to spend on it and It's all tied to the amount of electricity you want to run and how big your compressor is So we consulted with them.

They say you make some machines from this end it's feeding that wash line and dumpers onto the belt going this direction and then this is you know going down the same way and then it circles back around and makes a continuous flow just like a circle so it just handles multiple products you know here you can see we're doing watermelons here down here we're doing apricots and then there's a takeaway line takeaway belt right here that just float runs so when you're packing You can put your number 2 or your discards onto this exit line And it'll go down to this little tub down here And then we do another pack down there for number twos or discards That kind of helps you just sort stuff out as you're packing because that's always a dilemma what do you do with all this stuff when it's coming through you know and then it's a way to organize our boxes so our boxes have a Rolling conveyor up top here, so we can put all of our empties Accessible to when you when you fill a box You can just grab another 1 and then this roller conveyor then moves the boxes The other direction same direction out to the to be palletized So basically our fruit comes in from 1 direction the package head gets packed and moves out the other side Breaks down into normal compounds So we use that for a zucchini Normally we feel Packer zucchini and this year we brought them all in and we in the box just like this We just dip them in the tank box and all and just dip them and pull them out and then palletize them.

They like, you know, we'll use them, we'll wash them, we wet them down.

I mean, you know, I think you could overdo it.

I think we normally overdoing that we run into is If we wet them too much and our boxes aren't a high wax content, they'll, or if they haven't sealed off the flutes or whatever you call them, those holes, there's a way they dip those boxes.

And if they're not dipped the right way where they close Off all those holes on the box the water will get inside and collapse the box So if you want a really good wax box that's what you want you need to close all those holes off And then you won't get any saturation in your box because when you stack those pallets up your bottom ones start collapsing And you can't use cardboard At all I mean we use wax for all those.

He's just we're not washing them We're working on that.

We started doing that normally we feel pack We come bring them in the pack shed We'll open every box Because there we weigh them in the field we pack and weigh in the field and the only thing we do in the packs yet Is we will add do we add the PLU stickers and the pack packs yet?

We don't stick every fruit we peel off just like you saw there.

We peel off a little strip Throw it in the box Spray it with water We put wet paper these wet paper on top and bottom and then we seal it up that kind of holds a little bit of Humidity keeps from drying out because they will dry out in the cooler if you don't you know if you hold them very long And so we try to keep those more humidified than than dry So anyway, that's kind of what that is So I know this is kind of a busy slide here, but I threw it in because You know I I know we're relatively.

I mean not everybody's doing large volume agriculture And we aren't either necessarily, but we have at times.

We've been we've used so this is a high-capacity machine when we were doing a lot of produce and we picked this up from another grower and It's an optical sizer, so it's computerized It's originally made for potatoes, and we used it for eggplant squash cucumbers, but it can be adapted to other things So it has optics that sees all sides of the fruit and tells it where to go and get off the belt onto another conveyor and be packed.

You know, 1 another aspect I really like about this machine, because this isn't, this is also a married machine.

Is the the pre-sorter helps organize and grade the fruit and we've not, we haven't used it for a number of years so it just takes up space right now so we're gonna put up, put on the market.

Larry Lesher

Alan Seiler

Growing Transplants

I'm from Better Together Farm in South Central Oklahoma.

We do about one-sixth of an acre in production.

So I'm really excited about this class because this is the linchpin of small system agriculture.

If you don't have transplanting down it's going to make it a lot more difficult for you.

So this is extremely important and this and let me just put a caveat in here we're not going to be really talking about timing succession planting or anything like that.

We're talking here strictly about method, okay.

Pot size, what type of pot, soil blocks, what are the differences.

We're going to be talking about where we get our seeds from.

We're going to be talking about if you're gonna make your own mix, how would you do that?

And if you're not making your own mix, where would be the best place to buy it?

We're also gonna be presenting a little bit about what's called a paper pot planter, which some of you might have heard about.

It's really a little bit more for maybe larger scale productions, but we just want to introduce you to some of the methods out there so that you can make intelligent decisions on how you're going to choose what you're going to use on your particular application.

I farm in southern Indiana at Eastward Gardens.

Eastward, like the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden.

And So that's all there is to know about me.

Now, if you can, I would encourage you to kneel with me and we will start with a prayer?

Heavenly Father, as we come together and look into what it takes to start plants, to look at all the different methodologies and the ways that we can do that, Lord, we ask for your spirit to guide and direct us and lead us.

Father, each person here, I pray your spirit is speaking to them and talking to them, even in this, which seems maybe unremoved from your work.

We know that All these things are all bound up together, and if we can't see you in it, then there's no value in it, really.

So help us to see you even in this process, and to know that you care about all these little details, and that we need to pay close attention to how we do these things.

Ellen White says that not 1 fiber, 1 hair of the root should be misplaced.

And so Lord I pray that when we contemplate how we start our starts and we endeavor into this that you would be the teacher and you would guide and direct us according to your will and purposes.

Okay, so this is how we're going to address this topic.

First we're going to start talking about environment.

Now when you're starting seeds, environment is very key to get maximum germination on the plants that you're planting.

So Larry, when we're talking about environment, what would be a few things that we really need to be thinking about before we even start as far as what do we have in place like, you know, greenhouses, moisture, what are some of these things that we need to really pay attention to when we think about starting seeds.

What are the environmental factors that are going to make our seeds germinate the best?

The first place that I would encourage you to start is you need to know where you're at in the world.

Your geographical location is going to be different from 1 another and so how you're gonna go about this is probably gonna really, that can have a key factor in how you even begin to think about doing it.

For instance, I used to start starts in South Dakota.

That is not in any sense, well I shouldn't say in any sense, it is radically different than southern Indiana.

We would hit on a regular basis every winter near negative 30.

If we hit negative 0, we're pretty cold in southern Indiana.

And so the timing changes dramatically of when I start and what I start based on just that simple geographical issue.

And so where you're at in the world is going to have a play on how you go about thinking about how you're going to do it.

Can I say something totally unassociated?

I'll stop you if you say something I don't think you should be saying.

What I would like to see is, when me and Alan talked about how we wanted to do this, we thought we would do it more in a dialogue fashion, right?

Kind of talk, bounce things off of 1 another.

But it's not just me and Alan talking to 1 another and you guys listening.

If you have questions, it's really important to me and I think to Alan as well that we make sure that we're we're answering your questions why you're here and so if we can bring you into this discussion you know we we need to control it a little bit there's quite a few people here but if we can have a healthy discussion, I think that would be probably the most beneficial for you.

You would definitely want to know your first frost date?

So, How much before the frost date do you start?

So how much before the frost date do you start is the question.

So when you ask a question, because we don't have a roving mic, we need to repeat it so Audioverse and whoever is listening to this, They don't know what we're talking about.

So for instance, if you're talking about frost date, it's getting a little bit off of subject.

Not that we don't want to address that subject, but we want to stay on topic as well.

Frost date, end dates, temperature, a lot of these things that are outside of actually growing transplants because for instance in a transplanting situation we're more concerned about what we need to do to alter the environment so that those transplants actually sprout at their ideal rates and at their ideal perfection.

And so we're talking about things of how we're gonna alter the environment to make this accomplish.

As far as your planting dates, that's a little bit of a different subject.

We could go into that, but that's not exactly what we're trying to address here.

We're talking about method as far as, okay, what temperature should my greenhouse or indoors be to make sure these plants sprout best?

How much daylight should I actually have to be able to sprout these seeds?

So as far as that though, your frost date will be good, but there's certain things that aren't going to make any difference like alliums and things that you can put out before the first frost date, and so those would be different than say your tomatoes.

Well my question, actually a statement with a question, is that you consider planting the seed in your trays as part of your transplants?

As far as part of the process of starting transplant?

Okay, transplants is basically a method that is used separate from direct seeding into your ground that we use to put in a kind of an artificial environment to give them a jump on the season inside of controlled area, and then they will move out into the field, okay?

Transplants can be done not only in the spring, but they can be done throughout the entire growing season, and that's what we do.

So Can you define what you mean by a transplant?

Because some of us come in thinking that you're going to teach us when to start our seeds, when those become trans...

When you start moving them up to larger pots and then when you put them in the ground, we see that whole process as transplant.

True, and that's a part of the process of transplanting, but that doesn't necessarily correlate with as far as what your last frost date is or not.

We're talking about an artificial environment here.

Usually when transplants are started in something like this, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Larry, but usually if you have them in a container like this, you're looking at about 4 to 5 weeks, as little as 3 depending on what type of amendments you put into the mix to keep them going.

And then After that, you're going to have to either pot them on or get them out in the field.

Every time you have to take this out of this pot and move it into a bigger pot, it's costing you money, okay, because it's more material, more time, more labor.

So the better you can time your system out, the better you're going to do as far as cost.

It all comes down to getting those transplants out when they need to be out so you don't have to block them on.

And 1 thing that you want to consider when he's talking about this, when he says 4 to 5 weeks, you could keep them in here longer.

But they won't perform the way you expect them to perform when you finally get them out.

And so timing is crucial, and how you choose to do it will differentiate time length that they can manage to stay in a pot.

Or a tray, or your cell block, or however you decide to do it.

And so, this is the thing we're trying to help you guys understand so that when you come to it and you make a decision about how you're choosing to do it, you understand why you're choosing what you're choosing to do.

So give us some parameters, Larry, as far as moisture, temperature, and daylight.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Who Knows If

47m

Post Harvest Handling

24m

Growing Transplants

1h 16m

The Growers Purpose

46m

2. Sweet Potato Production and the Adventist Advantage

29m

Irrigation

58m

1. Sweet Potato Production and the Adventist Advantage

32m

2. Online Marketing: The Next Step

1h

Tree Grafting

1h

2- From Seed to Harvest: Planning and Scheduling to Maximize Yield

1h 12m

Growing When You Can’t Buy or Sell

1h 23m

Container/Suburban Gardening

1h

Sound Doctrine