"Rain rain go away, come back another day..." And by another day, we mean not during rice harvest! The storms that recently passed through left wet ground, overcast skies, water droplets sprinkled over the rice, and harvesters and bankout wagons that remained parked.
The weather caused quite a dilemma in our rice community. Since the rain and the wind caused the rice to lie down, the harvester can't pick all of it, causing the farmer to lose money. Also, when harvesting rice, the rice must be at a certain moisture percentage, so add a little rain and that moisture percentage increases, and so does you’re delayed harvest time.Although the kids at school are finally excited to wear their boots, rain is the last thing we need right now!
Fortunately sunny skies and warm weather is back in rice country, so my dad is happy and the harvesters are back in action!
Back at Maxwell, the FFA officers returned from their leadership conference COLC which was at camp Tehama and FFA members are preparing for our new fundraiser, which will be a spooky haunted house, so come if your dare for a great scare! We are also preparing for our Breast Cancer Awareness Day where the entire student body will be a sea of different shades of pink and will show that Maxwell High School is passionately pink for a cure. And the volleyball team prepares for even more long car trips to play games. Since we are such a small school, we don't have team buses, nor do we play many teams that are close to us. An hour and a half to two-hour drive is normal for us. We even play one school that is a three and a half hour drive of nothing but windy roads. But we keep ourselves busy by challenging games of eye spy and categories. Not to mention, blaring the radio and singing along to the newest Taylor Swift or Jason Aldean song. I'll be sure to update again when I have more details on our FFA secret fundraiser, I'll give you all one hint though... Save the Ag shop, join the fun, be a part of our "rice run!" :)
I'm really excited for my next blog because of our new FFA fundraiser idea. We are raising money to save our Ag shop and since Colusa County is the number one rice producing county in California, all of the FFA members are going on a "rice run" which will include a rice trailer decorated with balloons and signs and a line of students driving in their trucks to farmers' fields and asking them to donate however much rice they would like into the trailer. If we fill up the entire trailer we will have about $8,000, which we desperately need! Everyone jokes about the fundraiser because we say only in Maxwell would this ever be a fundraiser. So I'll be sure to update on that next time. Hopefully we’ll make our goal.
Lauren LaGrande is the latest in a family farming tradition that began nearly 100 years ago. She is a sophomore at Maxwell High School and is active in FFA, Future Business Leaders of America, volleyball, basketball and softball. When she’s on the farm, you’ll often see her with her trusted companion, Hank, the family dog. Lauren’s great-grandfather grew his first rice crop in the Sacramento Valley in 1916 and the family has continued this tradition ever since.
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