Since leaving the Sacramento area we have been driving through California’s Central Valley which produces more than half of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States. Miles and miles of orchards and vineyards border the highway, interspersed with a number of small towns and some bigger cities. It’s winter and the trees and vines are dormant. But for the enormous irrigation projects undertaken in the past to capture the runoff from the melting snow and releasing that water during the growing seasons, the valley would be a dry desert area.