My rights as a squatter enable me to collect all the pecans that fall into my backyard, plus Dr. P doesn't mind if I collect some from the area around my yard that sees high ruminant traffic. No sense letting them go to waste.
The oxen keep my house under siege. They know where the cook lives and are ever vigilant for the buckets to come out of the house with their 12 gallons of alfalfa mash and grain. They pace, they tread on the pecans, it sounds like they're walking on broken glass out there. I take it very personally that my pantry gets pillaged every day. The horses come in and eat the pecans too. Then, the ravens start plucking them from the tree top around dawn, dropping half of them on my metal roof.
Picking them by hand ensures clean, debris-free pecans, but it's so time consuming.
Enter 21st century. This machine has tongs that shake limbs to force the nuts to fall.
Next, a harvester is driven around the trees.
I opted to buy 100 gallons of those mechanically harvested pecans from the custom operator this year.
About 5 hours in all, over two days were spent separating out the trash from the pecans.
100 gallons yielded 118 lbs of pecans. I haven't been quoted my price yet, but I heard that it's hovering around $1.25 --to $1.50 this year.
Next step is to drop them off to be cracked. At 30 cents/lb, it saves so much time compared to cracking them one by one.
Final step: call in for backup, pull up a chair and stay a long while, pulling the halves out of the shells and cleaning takes time.
This is where dangerously high calorie intakes can occur!
That's all the news from the farm this week. Amazing I was able to get it written up with this 65 lb pup in my lap. I don't know who misses who the most when I'm off at work!
