Seagate’s neighborhood – Baja California

This post will give you a better perspective on Seagate. We are a farming and fishing company.  The area that we farm is in the remote foothills of Baja California. Sometimes our neighbors find it easier to visit by horse.

During the very hot dry summers, sometimes these hills can easily catch on fire.

Normal daytime temperatures in the summer months can be between 100-120F.  However this is also and ideal climate, because it is really a desert, for growing cactus.

The Nopal leaves are harvested once each year and brought back to Seagate’s plant to be freeze-dried and ground into powder for Seagate’s Nopal Cactus capsules.

This machine above is one of several large freeze-dryers that Seagate uses to remove the moisture from our products, prior to powder grinding. This is a rotary vacuum tank whose temperature can be controlled from 0F to over 120F depending upon the process and the raw material.  This particular tank has the capacity to hold over 3 tons of cactus leaves. The cactus is 95% water. To remove this volume of water by vacuum is a 3-day process.

This climate -hot dry summers and cool winters- is also ideal for growing olive trees.

As you can see, this is a very sparsely populated area of the world. The roads are dirt, which can make access to the trees difficult when there are Winter rains. Sometimes we have other visitors, that like to take shelter from the summer heat beneath the olive trees.

During 2014-15 seasons, we experienced a period of severe drought that affected our olive harvest. So far in 2016, the “El Nino” rains caused by a large pocket of warm water off the coast has helped this area recover.  We do not have very modern farm equipment, some of it like this tractor below dates back to the early 1960’s. But we also don’t hide inside air-conditioned, GPS-controlled tractors.  Our workers pull the weeds by hand.

Shown below is Seagate’s primary method of insect control.

Seagate is also a fishing company.  We rely upon the sea for raw materials that include sardines pictured below for freeze-drying into Marine Protein. We also harvest Seaweed, and produce Shark Liver Oil. It is a very interesting dive experience to end up surrounded inside a school of sardines.  You must also be aware while shooting these pictures that there may also be some predators such as sharks that are swimming with you. This can be dangerous when the sharks are in a feeding frenzy. Then your goal is to return to the boat with good photos and the same number of hands and feet that you had at the beginning of the dive.

Part of our neighborhood includes the rough streets of Tijuana. Located 65 miles to the north of the factory, Tijuana has some of the best carne asada tacos and colorful people such as this “lady of the night” …. who decided to start working earlier on this particular sunny day.                                                              Red Light District of Tijuana