Hiking

We’ve been getting some good hikes in the last few weeks.  It’s great training for harvest, probably the best thing we can do in fact.  Calero County Park has been the destination for most of our hikes.

There are a total of about 40 miles of trails in the park and the connected open space preserve.  Mostly during the wee we’ll do smaller hikes of 3 to 5 miles.  There has been a lot of wildlife we’ve seen on the trail this year.  We’ve seen deer, including a fawn less than a week old, bobcats, turkey, rattlesnakes,wood rats, coyote, rabbits, skunks, skates, and all kinds of lizards and moles.

Birds are a regular site too, with red tail hawks and turkey vultures like the one below the most common.  We’ve seen egrets and lots of different small birds.  No pigs though this year.  We see signs of them but have not seen them live yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last weekend we did a very long hike. 9.5 miles in just over 4 hours. We went through all parts of the park including a climb to Bald Peak, the highestpoint in the park. We’ll be back a few more times before harvest for sure.

Training Camp Opens

Training camp for the NFL opened last week and that signals the start of training camp for us as well.  Each year we pick up the exercise to get ready for the harvest season.

Last year turned out to be very tough on us.  Harvest seson went very long, more than 14 weeks from first pick to last barrel filled.  Most years we count on 8 or 9 weeks from first pick through last barrel and the second longest we’ve had was 11 weeks.  Both of us were really worn out by mid December last year.

This year we’ve actually been training earlier.  Stefania has been treadmilling and running since April.  I’ve been walking 30-40 minutes every day and adding in jogging as well.  We’ve been getting in a hike every week.

We’ve picked up the pace now and have been doing a hike every 3-4 days.   We’re increasing the distance too and amount of climbing.  The running, walking and treadmilling will continue also and I want to add some biking.  Harvest this year looks like it will be early so I’m guesing we only have 5-6 more weeks to get ready.