Nisei Koi Farm 2007 harvest event

[HenryC]

The Floridians invaded New Jersey today. In previous years at the Nisei Koi Farm harvest event, we could arrive on Friday and get a lot of time with Mat and Ross, but it seems the secret is out. When we arrived today it was hard to find a place to park due to the crowd already here. Before we got here, Mat, Ross and Bobby had already seined a sansai pond. There were some really nice Koi coming out today. After each Koi was photography by Bob Brudd, Bobby would measure them and take them to the 85,000 gallon greenhouse pond. This year, they allowed hobbyists to reserve the Koi they were interested in which gave them the right of first refusal once the final price had been set. JR beat me to one nice Kohaku, but I did get a very nice sanke reserved. Excellent skin, thick beni and soft shiroji. The sumi will be several years in the making. Later I learned that the sanke I reserved is Mat's favorite so I am a bit nervous about what the price will be. I did not get a shot of her will in a show tank, but here she is in the 85,000 gallon tank:

[HenryC]

A couple of very nice sansai Kohaku that came out of the mud today:

[HenryC]

A few others from today (sorry for the quality of the photo but it was raining a good bit today):

[HenryC]

Anybody interested in a few tosai?

[Nancy M.]

Sounds like a great time was had by all who attended. Shame on JR, for grabbing that Kohaku you wanted.

[HEADACHE6]

Glad to see the group from Florida will be gone since each state gets only one day to visit .

From what I was told , Kentuckys day is Saturday , See ya there !

[HenryC]

Today's harvest included two sansai ponds. The morning harvest was a bit wet. Only the truly Koi Kichi would stand out in the pouring rain to watch some fish being pulled out of a muddy pond. I think the observers got just as wet as the harvest crew.

[HenryC]

Mat and MikeM discussing some of the Koi from the morning harvest. Both the Koi below are Mike's. The Sanke was from the silent auction at last year's harvest event. Mike bought the Kohaku today for far less than either of us thought Mat would price it at. Great body (the photo makes her look a little thinner than she actually is).

[HenryC]

After drying off a little and some warm soup and sandwiches, it was back out to harvest another sansai pond. This pond was a sumi machine. Many of the Koi developed significant amounts of deep lacquer black sumi. I asked Mat if there was anything different about this pond. He indicated it was one of the last to be built and since it is intended for growing nisai to sansai (versus fry and tosai), he used much less top soil and mostly bentinite clay in this pond (fry ponds need more top soil to develop the daphina for the fry to feed on).

[HEADACHE6]

Henry , I don't see any reason to have 3 or 4 threads going on for the same event . So I hope you don't mind that I add some pics. of my day with you guys .