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Just after a shower of rain, 68006 crosses over Kirknewton Level Crossing with 5G13. This is the Motherwell - Waverley ECS for Scotrail.
18/8/15 at 1531
Salvador Prieto gets nearly ground level to see how well this micro-sprinkler is working under one of his avocado trees, in Somis, CA, on Nov 15, 2018.
Salvador Prieto grew up watching and helping his father grow corn and beans on a small farm in Mexico. The journey from bean fields to 20-acre orchard owner with his wife Martha Romero was not a straight and narrow path to Somis, Calif. In fact, it was music that brought him to the United States. Today the passion is agriculture.
Similarly, Romero didn’t follow a career in agriculture to her beautiful and healthy avocado and lemon orchard. Romero grew up a city girl in the heart of Los Angeles. Now sharing this farm with her husband and two children, she quickly credits her success to the support and assistance from her family to navigate the learning curve.
Constantly seeking improvement on the family’s orchard, Romero discovered the local Farm Bureau and the Ventura County Agricultural Irrigated Land Group (VCAILG) coalition. VCAILG put Romero in touch with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Ventura Resource Conservation District, for technical and financial assistance to implement conservation and management practices.
NRCS California District Conservationist Dawn Afman, Soil Conservationist Elizabeth Keith, and Resource Conservationist Brooks Engelhardt, have all provided technical assistance and invested their time and expertise in helping Prieto and Romero incorporate conservation practices in their orchard. Prieto and Romero were immediately intrigued by NRCS’s efforts to improve soil health.
“At first it was overwhelming, but many other farmers I know are members, so it is comforting to know that I am not alone,” said Romero. “We need to make a profit, obviously, but, for me, I want to do it while protecting mother nature and precious resources like water. I am able to do this with NRCS’s help.”
Prieto and Romero learned a lot from trial and error. Romero admits that she even bought her trees before the land was ready. But learning opportunities, like an early community garden project, gave them critical knowledge and experience.
A big first conservation practice they learned was mulching to save water and reduce weeds. NRCS helped Prieto and Romero with this, through an Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) contract, to apply mulch to their orchard floor to conserve soil moisture and improve soil health in the Fall of 2018.
“Every time we have a question or need assistance, NRCS has been nothing but helpful,” added Romero. “They let us know about other programs out in the community and invited us to their annual Latino Farmer Conference, where my husband and I learned about other helpful resources.”
Recently, Prieto and Romero entered into a new NRCS contract to implement Irrigation Water Management (IWM) to their orchard. The IWM plan includes installing moisture sensors into the ground, which transmit continuous data to cloud-based storage, and accessed through a smart device app on their phones. The information lets them know when, where and how long to irrigate. This knowledge will help them toward their goal of producing 6,000 pounds of produce per acre.
Looking toward the future, Romero expressed that knowledge is key. “Before we plant further, we need to get educated on how to do it best,” concluded Romero. “From the planting of a seed or planting of a tree, we need the entire process to be profitable. It's not just about planting it. It's about preparing the land and using the resources wisely.”
In the meantime, Romero enjoys the weekends because she does not need to be worried about picking up the kids from school or rushing around. She just wants to be out in the orchard, making it better From mulching to pruning or irrigating and weeding. The family’s goal is to make the farm “better tomorrow than it was today.”
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Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) is the Department’s focal point for the nation’s farmers and ranchers and other stewards of private agricultural lands and non-industrial private forest lands. FPAC agencies implement programs designed to mitigate the significant risks of farming through crop insurance services, conservation programs, and technical assistance, and commodity, lending, and disaster programs.
The agencies and services supporting FPAC are Farm Service Agency (FSA), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and Risk Management Agency (RMA).
NRCS has a proud history of supporting America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners for more than 80 years. USDA helps people make investments in their operations and local communities to keep working lands working, boost rural economies, increase the competitiveness of American agriculture, and improve the quality of our air, water, soil, and habitat.
From weather to pests, and from a lack of time to markets, each American farmer faces a unique set of challenges. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) helps agricultural producers confront those challenges – all while conserving natural resources like soil, water, and air.
This voluntary conservation program helps producers make conservation work for them. Together, NRCS and producers invest in solutions that conserve natural resources for the future while also improving agricultural operations.
Through EQIP, NRCS provides agricultural producers with financial resources and one-on-one help to plan and implement improvements, or what NRCS calls conservation practices. Using these practices can lead to cleaner water and air, healthier soil and better wildlife habitat, all while improving agricultural operations. Through EQIP, you can voluntarily implement conservation practices and NRCS co-invests in these practices with you.
USDA Photo by Lance Cheung.
For more information, please see:
USDA
FPAC
www.usda.gov/our-agency/about-usda/mission-areas
NRCS
www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/site/national/home/
EQIP
www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/program...
Kentmere 100 pushed to 400 exposed with Olympus XA stand developped in 5ml Rodinal into 300ml distilled water for a hour
Freightliner Class 70 Co-Co 70020 heads through Tamworth on 4O49 09.22 Basford Hall - Southampton liner.
8th November 2016
7X10 03.20 Amersham - Derby Litchurch Lane conveying LUL S8 Stock for modification with matching pairs of GBRf hired Class 20s. Leading are 20118 Saltburn-by-the-Sea and 20132, and on the rear are 20107 and 20096
13th May 2014
Seybold Building is a historic jewelry building in Miami, Florida. It was designed by Kiehnel and Elliott. The building was erected in two stages. The first three levels of the building were completed in 1921. John Seybold had a bakery and confectionery business which he operated on the main floor. An additional seven stories were added above the annex in 1925. The Seybold Building is a City of Miami historic landmark. Seybold sold the complex in 1941. It is a National Register of Historic Places contributing property as part of the Downtown Miami Historic District.
The Seybold building was built back in 1926 as the brainchild of its namesake, John Seybold, who moved to Miami in the late 19th century and eventually set up a bakery. That business burned down, but he bounced back with another bakery. He then went on to run a shopping mall, called an arcade back then, that became the basis of the 10-story Seybold building, which is the second largest diamond and jewelry center in the United States at 166,000 square feet (15,400 m2). The plan to transform the Seybold Building into a jeweler's hub had a helping hand from the Cuban revolution. At the start of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro directed his regime to confiscate businesses all over Cuba causing a mass exodus off the island. This resulted in Cuban goldsmiths starting manufacturing in the US with the Seybold Building being the biggest spot, where individuals continually - seven days a week manufacture from scratch diamond wedding rings. Handmade Cuban Link necklaces, all types of earrings, pendants, bracelets, & cufflink. Numerous Cuban engravers perform artisan stone setting, specializing in engraving, fabrication & wax carving using gold, silver & precious metals. Platinum is the most durable for wedding rings, lost-wax casting using a silversmithing or goldsmithing process in which a liquid material - in this case Platinum is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Platinum normally has a melting temperature of 1,700 °C (3,090 °F).
In the 1960s, the building's first jeweler moved in. Jeffrey Buchwald, a Hungarian immigrant who first opened his jewelry shop on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, moved to Miami to escape the cold. Today, Buchwald Jewelers is a third generation, family-run business, and co-owner Jeff Buchwald recalls visiting his family's store when he was just a kid. "We were the first jewelers in the building — back then there were a few stores and a lot of lawyers", Buchwald said. "By the time I took over 25 years ago, there were a lot more jewelers".
Mario's Casting, a second-generation family-run jewelry manufacturing business, immigrating to the United States in 1969 to try and pick up where they had left off. "In the 1970s, a lot of Cubans were coming over and making a home for their jewelry business in downtown Miami", said Martha Camero, one of the owners and operators of Mario's Casting. "As more and more jewelers moved into the Seybold Building, lawyers started moving out. Pretty soon, every single floor was filled with jewelry makers of all kinds.
Building
The majority of the tenants are still jewelry and watch merchants, diamond cutters, repair shops and other specialty gem shops.
Awards
The Seybold Jewelry Building was named Best Place to Buy a Diamond Ring by Miami New Times in 2009.
Credit for the data above is given to the following websites:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seybold_Building
www.historicpreservationmiami.com/pdfs/2011%20designation...
www.miaminewtimes.com/best-of/2009/shopping-and-services/...
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Kyoto, Japan.
Canon 5d + Canon 135mm f/2L
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Before heading to the car I couldn't resist this going shot. This really shows the grade leveling off right before the Golf Road bridge!
One of the rather substantial level crossing gates which once protected Barton Road in Bristol from the Avon Street branch. I think I read somewhere that there was an attempt to salvage the gates but that they disintegrated. Their solid appearance in 1993 would appear to belie that.
Level 125, Burj Khalifa
Dubai / United Arab Emirates
See where this picture was taken. [?]
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