New blog from Brian McKenzie- Turning the first corner

With the rice seed falling from a crop duster and hitting the water in the last field, the 2011 planting season has come to an end. This marks the close of the first of four stages of the rice growing season. Planting is always the most stressful for many reasons, but the simplest and most important is that without planting - there can be no harvest.

Although planting didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, all of the rice was planted within a reasonable timeline. The weather mostly cooperated and our winter and spring equipment maintenance led to very little downtime from breakdowns.

With planting completed, the second stage of the season begins and we now focused on establishing a healthy rice crop. Although the stress of plating is over, we are far from relaxing. Our next steps include maintaining adequate water in our fields and mitigating weeds.

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Brian McKenzie proudly represents the fourth generation of rice farmers in his family. Following his graduation in 2005 from The University of Nevada Reno where he earned bachelors degrees in Economics and Marketing, Brian returned to the family farm in South Sutter County to farm full-time alongside his father, Chris. Brian and his wife, Ashley, grow several varieties of conventional and organic rice. Brian enjoys the challenges that farming brings and takes pride in producing food for the world.