Those Who Do the Right Thing

... almost always get kicked in the teeth.

In February I wanted to know exactly how much longer I could work without losing my Social Security Disability.  (Yes, it's legal.)  So I called them.

I wanted to know not because I was going to quit my job so I didn't lose my benefits, but because I needed to find a better job before the disability payments stopped.  I knew it was coming up soon - this month or next.

Of course, the government being what it is, they apparently think my reason for wanting to know was, in fact, so I could quit my job in time to avoid losing my benefits.

I received a huge packet of forms in the mail today.  They're going to review my case to see if I can continue to get benefits.  They're not supposed to do that; because I was working, I was exempt from medical reviews.

Now they want my medical records.  They want my work history.  Which they should have because, as required by law, I've kept them apprised.  Apparently those phone calls never got entered into the system because they're claiming they didn't know I was working.

They want the name of somebody who's not my doctor, but who's "familiar with my disability."  Presumably so they can catch me in any lies.

Folks, I know there are people who milk the system for every dime they can get.  I know that a "mood disorder" as a disability is hard for some people to swallow.  But I've done the right thing all along.

Now I have to spend hours proving it.  And I still might lose my disability. And Medicare.

I'm thinking of emigrating.

Who Are These People? Where's Hoss?

Two of our neighbors, whom we hadn't met yet, came by on Wednesday on their 4-wheeler.  They were out looking for their lost horse, Hoss.  He's a beautiful brown quarter horse and somehow he went through a closed gate hung on a 6" post to get out.  The post is now at a slant. The gate's a mess. (We speculated he was being chased by coyotes.  Who knows with horses.)

We hadn't seen him, but we had a great conversation with the neighbors, T. and F.  The next day, when Hoss still hadn't come home, I put up a Craigslist lost & found ad and by golly one of the neighbors down the road (quite a ways, actually) had him.  Hoss came home safely.  Whew!  T. was very upset and I was, too, on her behalf.  Just imagining if my little guy got out and disappeared gave me heart palpitations!

"These people", T. and F., turned out to be kindred spirits.  We were invited over for dinner Saturday night to celebrate Hoss's return.  We had an absolutely awesome time.  We have new friends.

Jeff and I are loners, always have been.  To have friends you have to be friends, and that's hard for us with all our focus on the farm and our produce business (check out my farming blog here).  We made time to go visit, though, and thanks to T. and F.'s beautiful back yard, we're now motivated to make our own little piece of paradise even better.

I'm talking about the R&R area we've started down by the lake. We took these pix last year when we had a get-together.  Obviously the screen room and the tent aren't left up all the time.  (Actually, the tent bit the dust.  Turns out it was dry-rotted. Dammit.)  Wouldn't it be nice to have a little post-and-beam screened room for the food?

The area is private, so we can raise a ruckus if we want.  But we're still missing some very important (to me) things:  a firepit, a permanently located grill, landscaping.  Gravel under the picnic table and the swing so the boys don't have to move them every time they mow.  Tiki torch holders.  A fish cleaning station.  We need to put in a swim dock and a sand beach. The dock needs replanked.  The swing needs painting.  Aargh!

We need a rack to hold the two john boats, the canoe and the pirogue.  (The other john boat is hiding.)

We've put in horseshoe pits with hope that the horseshoes don't end up in the trees:

As you can see, it's a huge area.  We could put in tent pads, or even a couple of RV spots.  Don't think we will, though.  Dad doesn't like too many strangers on the place.

Because we had such a great time outdoors on Saturday at F. and T.'s place, we decided to cook out at the lake on Sunday to celebrate Mother's Day.  It wasn't as fun without T. and F. there, and especially since we had to lug food and charcoal and a grill down there from the house, but the guys set up an outdoor fireplace (the regular kind) for me and we had a great time, just the three of us. Me, Jeff and our friend Doug.

But back to T. and F.  Like I said, they have a beautiful back yard.  They have the coolest fireplace ever.  F. built it out of a dryer drum and a piece of chimney pipe.  F. even had an extra of each lying around and just gave them to us so we can build our own!

They're our age.  T. is blonde, compassionate and funny.  F. is wiry, generous and clever.  They're smart, big-hearted, warm, good old-fashioned country people just like us.  They seem eager to be friends, as are we.  Sometimes it seems like bad things happen so good things can come along behind them.  If Hoss hadn't got out, we'd never have met T. and F.  Cool, huh?

Software Review: AnVir Task Manager 7.0.4

I don't generally post software reviews because what works for me won't necessarily work for you.  And I've stayed away from this kind of program in the past, mostly because I'm afraid I'll muck up my system by stopping or preventing something that's necessary. (I did that once with CCleaner, what a mess.  Not the program's fault.)

But because of the good reviews from users at Giveaway of the Day and the fact that my Windows 7 system seems to be gradually slowing down, I thought I'd take a deep breath, cross my fingers, and give it a try.  Hey, I have backups, so if I screw something up I'm covered.  Right?  Right??

Anyway, I installed this program and started tinkering with things.  I was amazed.  The GUI, which looks terribly busy when you open the program, is actually easy to use.  (That's "Graphic User Interface", or what you see when you start the program.)  After installation you're taken to AnVir Software's site where you can watch a video on how to use the program though I wish they had more in-depth videos on some things.  Normally it pisses me off to be taken to the developer's site upon installation because I've already been there or I wouldn't have chosen the program, but in this case I was pleased.  The video was helpful.

Because it's so easy to use and so comprehensive, I decided to review the software.  What does AnVir Task Manager do?  Here's the developer's description, with my comments in red:

Monitor your system and replace Windows Task Manager:

• Information about processes, startup programs, services, internet connections, drivers  
• Integrated database with Descriptions for 70 000+ startup programs, Internet Explorer toolbars and services

They're not kidding.  I was able to get comprehensive information on every single thing my computer is running, wants to run, isn't running but will/might run, and - I think you get the idea. Company name, file name, file location, in some cases a description of what it actually does, what other processes rely on it, you name it.  I've often wondered what some of those processes are and now I know. 

I was also able to stop some things from running at startup.  I found a couple of updaters for software I (supposedly) uninstalled weeks ago.  I found some stuff I don't use.  Stopping them from running was a right-click, left-click.  Simple!
 

• Icons in the tray that indicate CPU, disk, network, memory and battery

Installation of the icons is optional, but in Win 7 they aren't intrusive because they reside in that pop-up box on the taskbar.  Although I can't verify this (I don't run other monitoring programs), I've seen posts from other users saying the temperature readings are a bit off.  That doesn't bother me because I've never monitored the temps before so for me it's a "Who cares?".

Get rid of viruses, Trojans and spyware that your antivirus missed:

• Security risk rating for each active process and startup program

This is a terrific feature (though not unique to this software).  The only thing I don't like about it is they don't explain why something has a high risk rating.  All of the high risk things currently running on my system checked out as completely safe (meaning, virus/malware/spyware free).  Oh, well.  There weren't many and it didn't take long to look them up.

• Get notification when any program tries to add itself to startup

Oh, yes!  I needed this because I'm always opening email attachments (it's part of my job, can't avoid it).  In the past I've picked up malware that wasn't caught by my antivirus program.  Although I'm not about to deliberately infect my computer to test this feature, I believe it works like it says it does.  And this comes in very handy when your browser (read: IE) tries to sneak in an add-on or two without asking.

• Right click on any suspicious process or file and check it on virustotal.com with 30+ antiviruses

This is how you look up something to see if it's actually a threat.  How simple is that??  No more copying file names and Googling them. 

Enhance and tune up XP, Vista or Windows 7:

• Tweaker that gives access to hundreds of XP / Vista settings

I'm running Windows 7, so I haven't checked these.  They're not kidding when they say "hundreds", though.

• Click on the title of any application to minimize window to system tray

OK, you know what the system tray is, right?  It's the part of the toolbar where the clock is.  Minimizing to the tray saves space on your taskbar, but Win 7 takes care of this for me by overlapping file icons of the same type anyway.  And I don't usually have more than 2 or 3 things open at once.  I can see how it would come in handy for people who have lots of windows open at once, though.

• List of recently used folders in Open / Save dialogs

Meh.  

• Drive’s free space as a colored horizontal bar in Windows ‘My Computer’

Again, Windows 7 does this already.

• Last launched and favorites programs and folders in tray menu

Again, meh.

Speed up your PC and Windows startup:

• “Delayed Startup” lets you set up any startup program to run few minutes later after Windows startup

I love this feature.  Outlook was taking forever to load, presumably because everything was trying to load at once on startup.  I set it at a 30 second start delay and voila!  It pops right up.  You can customize the time delay, and you can even check a box to "Run as Administrator".   

• Run startup programs minimized to system tray, or as a floating icon

I guess I'm dumb.  I just don't see the benefit of the floating icon thing.  But it's cool.

• Balance CPU usage

I haven't tinkered with this yet.  I don't think I plan to, at least not until I educate myself about it.  It kinda scares me.

Would I get the free version or pay $29.95 for the basic version?  No.  You can't save changes to the process run priorities, and you can't permanently block undesired processes.  This was a "WTF?" for me.  If those settings aren't saved, what's the point of including them?  Plus, they don't do other things too.  Here's a comparison of what you get with each version.

Would I pay $49.95 for the Pro version?  I might.  I'd have to think about it, especially since there are free programs out there that do a lot of this, plus I could just learn to use my Windows Task Manager.  But because I got it for free from Giveaway of the Day, it's a keeper. 

Diagnosis: Unipolar Disorder

Unable to attribute.

Occationally I'll put up a post that has nothing to do with market gardening or hobby farming.  Today I want to talk about my personal experience with mental illness to help a dear friend (we call each other "Bro" and "Sis") who has just been diagnosed with Unipolar Disorder.

The "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM) 4th ed." is the reference book used by mental health workers to diagnose mental illness.  (The book itself isn't online but there's a good "Cliff Notes" version at Allpsych.com.  That link goes to the page on "Great Depression", aka Unipolar disorder.)

There can be overlap with mood disorders, and often a person is diagnosed with co-morbidities (other disorders as well).  For example, I'm Bipolar and I also suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder.


Brief Description of Unipolar Disorder

Symptoms

According to the summary of Unipolar Disorder at iFred.com (International Foundation for Research and Education on Depression), the symptoms include:

• Persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” mood
• Feelings of hopelessness, pessimism
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness
• Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities that were once enjoyed, including sex
• Decreased energy, fatigue, being “slowed down”
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering, making decisions
• Trouble sleeping, early-morning awakening, or oversleeping
• Appetite and/or weight changes
• Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts
• Restlessness, irritability
• Persistent physical symptoms, such as headaches, digestive disorders, and chronic pain, which do not respond to routine treatment.

Author's Comment: With no disrespect intended,  in my experience males are not in touch with their feelings.  A mood disorder is about feelings: anger, sadness, etc.  Coping with a mental illness requires in-depth scrutiny of all your feelings, not just the ones described in the symptoms.  I'll get to this later.

Treatment

Treatment can either combine both pharmacotherapy [medications] and psychotherapy or utilize one or the other individually.

Psychotherapy is useful in helping the patient understand the factors involved in either creating or exacerbating the depressive symptomotology. Personal factors may include a history of abuse (physical, emotional, and/or sexual), maladaptive coping skills. Environmental factors involved in this disorder include, among others, a poor social support system and difficulties related to finances or employment.

Author's Comment:  Medication will be prescribed. I've never been in treatment without them. 

Prognosis

Major Depressive Disorder [aka Unipolar] has a better prognosis than other mood disorders in that medication and therapy have been very successful in alleviating symptomotology. However, many people with this disorder find that it can be episodic, in that periodic stressors can bring back symptoms. In this case, it is often helpful to have an ongoing relationship with a mental health professional just as you would a physician if you had diabetes or high blood pressure.

My friend hasn't given me the details - says he'll know more after next month.  So I want to help him get off on the right foot with a bit of advice from someone who's been in his shoes.

• Develop a close relationship with your care provider.  If you aren't comfortable with him/her and can do something about it - shop around.  It's absolutely essential that you develop a good working relationship.  Be sure you find someone who doesn't arbitrarily dismiss your concerns, someone without the "God complex" so many healthcare professionals possess.  Note:  frequently your care will be managed by an ARNP under the supervision of a psychiatrist.  This is fine.
• Build a support network.  This includes joining online support groups - you'll have to shop around to find one that meets your needs - and in the beginning at least, I recommend going to group meetings.  A good place to find a group in your area is the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (dbsa.org).   It's also critical that you get your nearest and dearest educated and on board with helping you manage your disorder.  (But be aware that some people just don't want to deal with it.)
• Be prepared to spend large amounts of time managing your illness.  This includes studying the disorder until you know everything you can find about it. In my experience you can't just sit back and let the provider manage your care - you have to be proactive. You'll also need to spend time scrutinizing your moods and of course, working at getting better. 
• Learn how to identify your emotions.  If you use this chart and pair it with the below mood diary, you're well on your way.
• Look for "triggers".  A trigger is just what it sounds like - anything that deepens your depression.  A mood journal is a good way to identify your triggers.  I like this Mood diary.  It's short and sweet.  And if you look around, there are mood charting apps for your phone.
• Do not believe anyone who thinks that your disorder can be cured by "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" or is the result of laziness or lack of self-discipline. You have a legitimate illness.  Would those people say the same things to, for example, a cancer patient??  Just ignore them.  Ditto the people who think your illness is somehow contagious...  You'll need to decide if it's worth your time to try to educate these people or just write them off.
• Take your medications exactly as prescribed.  Psych medications are touchy things; you have to build up a suitable level in your body in order for them to work properly.  When trying a new drug or drug combo, ask the doctor how long you should give them to work.  Take notes about any side effects, no matter how insignificant they are to you.  And make sure you know what serious side effects can crop up.  Some can be life-threatening.
• Be patient with the "Medication Roller Coaster".  You'll have to try several meds/combinations to find the one that works for you.  The process can take years (but hopefully it won't.)  The roller coaster effect can be distressing and disheartening.  Some meds will make you worse and some won't help at all.  Because everyone's brain chemistry is different, trial-and-error is the only way to find out what works.  The roller coaster can be very hairy, but stay with it - the right drug/combination will eventually be found.
• Get enough exercise.  Exercise alone is a mood elevator.  You can find a plan that works for you on the internet.  I find just walking for a while every day helps.
• Avoid as much stress as you can.  Remember that good things can be stressful, too - like a promotion at work.  Hand off stressful chores and responsibilities to your spouse and/or friends if they're willing.  If you hate your job, try to change careers (that's very stressful at first but enjoying your job makes up for it in the long run.)
• Do things that give you pleasure even if you don't feel like getting started.  Sometimes it's impossible to overcome the lethargy of depression, but if you can possibly make yourself do fun things the better off you'll be.  Sometimes I find that if I can just get moving, I can carry through.
• Be patient and compassionate with yourself.  Try to avoid regret, guilt and beating yourself up.  AA members call this "stinking thinking", and it's just as true for those of us with mood disorders. They make things worse.
• Learn to live in the moment.  Worrying about the future and/or thinking about the past is counterproductive.  Pay attention to what you're doing at every- moment - google "mindfulness" and you'll get the idea.  Most of us are so busy that we spend too much time living in the future, or regretting the past.
• A Word of Caution.  Carefully evaluate what you find on the internet.  Sadly, there's a lot of misinformation out there.  Your provider can help you sort out the chaff.

Living with Unipolar Disorder is a struggle and the above list is just the tip of the iceberg.  But never give up.  Ever.  Even Pandora's Box had something wonderful in it:  Hope.

Good heavens.  I'm not much of a writer if I let my blog go for over a year without a post, am I??

I have an excuse, though.  It has been absolutely insane around here. And the drought got us.  And the heat.  Not much was harvested (from what survived the heat), and nothing went to market.  The entire market garden thing was a flop - except for the tomatoes.  My gosh, we had more tomatoes than we could give away! 

But we shall persevere.  The planning for 2013 is underway.  I'm having fun with my seed catalogs, and my wish list is HUGE.  Gotta cut it down or I'll be over budget (and we'll be overextended in caring for the plants!).

Here are some of the things we learned last year:

Weed and grass control is absolutely critical.  

Sounds pretty common-sense, doesn't it?  Well it is, but figuring out how to manage it in >100F temperatures is proving tricky.  We want to grow non-certified Organic, but I think in 2013 we're going to have to use some herbicides to kill that pasture grass and weeds.  The area hasn't been a garden in well over a century, so the weeds are very well established. 

We laid out the garden last year so we could use the walk-behind rototiller between the rows for weed control.  But in the spring we had to send it to the repair shop, and it sat there for over two months.  Every single small-engine repair place in a 25 mile radius was backlogged.  When they finally got to it, they said we needed a new engine and it would be cheaper to just buy another tiller.  (Wish they'd told me that two months ago.)  Meanwhile, the weeds just kept growing...and growing...

Speaking of weed control, note to self:  DO. NOT. allow weeds to grow over the soaker hoses!  I had to crawl on my hands and knees along every single inch of the 750' of hose to free it so we could pull it up and till everything under.  Urgh.

Keep myself cool in the heat.

With physical activity I overheated dangerously in the summer temps. This winter I'm going to make myself some "gardening tunics" to wear (short, loose, very lightweight white cotton), and I'm going to buy several of those little personal fans that hang around your neck, and I'm going to freeze water to take out there with me for drinking and for wetting myself down.   Fortunately our garden is pretty well screened from prying eyes, so wearing wet white clothing isn't going to get me arrested...

Don't let Dad help without supervision.

I love my Dad, and he loves to help.  Unfortunately he likes to sneak in and do it, and with all the tall grass he couldn't see what we had planted where.  Our row markers were too short.  We had a beautiful crop of banana melons and four different kinds of cukes, until Dad decided to help us by mowing.  The pulverized melons and cukes sure smelled good, though!  (No, I didn't yell at him.)

Dad mowed over some of the irrigation hose, too (but so did Jeff).  We've got some splicing to do before next year...

Pick the corn the minute it's ripe.

One day I looked at the corn, said, "I should pick it, it looks ripe."  The next day when I went out to pick the corn, there WAS no corn.  Overnight the raccoons had cleaned us out.  Completely. 

This year we're going to use the old Native American plan:  Plant corn in hills with pole beans and pumpkins/squash.  Raccoons supposedly don't like the bristly squash leaves and they'll leave the corn alone.  Supposedly.  And, we'll have to make sure we can get to the corn plants to pick without stepping on squash vines.

Don't plant a dozen heirloom indeterminate tomato plants.

We grew an amazing heirloom tomato:  Richardson.  They produce huge fruits and you just can't kill 'em.  They're delicious, meaty slicing tomatoes.  Not a lot of slime inside, and not overly acidic.  Unfortunately, we found out you can't plant them closer together than about 8' and the cages have to be at least 3' in diameter and 6' tall.  A dozen plants, planted too close together, in too-small cages, just didn't work.

In all honesty, I have to say that we have incredible competition for our slicing tomatoes.  There's a local variety called "Ripley" that everyone goes nuts for.  I don't know why - I personally find them slimy and acidic, but apparently a lot of people like that.  PS: the Richardsons taste more tomato-ey than the Ripleys, so maybe this year I can educate some palates...

Schedule time for harvest management.

What I mean here is, put together a calendar of when things will ripen.  Not so much for taking product to market as for scheduling time for me to can/freeze for the family.  I didn't get much of anything put up last year because of poor time management.

Don't plant more than you can care for and harvest.

Another common-sense item, but we're still learning where that limit is for us.  We have approximately 2 acres of garden; that turns out to be many hours of garden work for 2 people who also have jobs off the farm. It's another reason why the weeds/grass took over; not enough time spent dealing with them.

This year we're going to use wet-newspaper mulch around some of the plants.  That should cut down on a good bit of weeding.  We also have a "new" walk-behind tiller.  We're going to try tilling one row every day to try to keep up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And the biggest news of all from 2012:  

I was deposed as Farm Boss.  

Yep, what I thought of as "leadership" was regarded as "despotism".  I know the B word was in their thoughts, though none of the guys were rude enough to say it.  In hindsight, I have to admit it, it was true. 

I retired silently, with hurt feelings and the almost insurmountable urge to defend myself.  But my marriage and my relationships with Dad and Doug are my only true priorities in this world.  

We'll see how well the work goes this next year without me in charge, and I'll have to learn how to just do what I'm told - never my strong suit! (sigh)

Pickin' Nuts and Christmas

"There's not enough room in the pickup to put all of these pecans!!" says Dad.  Dad, the bags can be stacked on top of each other - we can indeed fit them all in.  Oh, he says.  "But they're wet!  They need to dry some!"  Yep, but Dad, they're in "onion" sacks - lots of air flow.  They'll be fine.  Oh, OK, he says.

Dad was worried because Saturday was another official harvesting day.  We'd got another 400-500 lbs. off of 8 trees.  Sunday was processing (cracking, shelling, picking) because of rain.  Again.  (Second Sunday in a row, dang it.) 

As usual, I woke up Sunday so stiff & sore I could hardly move, but it's getting better.  Or it was - now it's going to get worse because we have something like 900 lbs. of pecans to get ready for market.

See, I'm the official "picker".  (Jeff and Dad help, too, but I'm the one who is spending hours at it.)  That means I scoop a few handsful of shelled nuts onto a tray in my lap.  I then carefully examine every single one to make sure it's perfect (or close to perfect).  Pecans get something called "black spot" - which leaves, well, a black spot on the nuts.  It doesn't hurt them or change the flavor or hurt people who eat them, but they're ugly.  They scare people, so we make sure there aren't any in the bags for sale.

If possible, I break off the part with the black spot and put the resulting good pieces in one pile.  The perfect nuts go into a baggie.  The bad nuts (the ones with too many black spots, or the ones that are just plain old ugly) and any shell pieces go into a bucket to be disposed of.  When I have a pound of perfect nuts, the baggie gets zipped up and tossed into a box.  When I have a pound of bits & pieces, ditto.

As you can guess, this takes hours and hours to do.  The whole time I'm sitting on my butt, listening to the TV (I'm getting rather fond of Judge Judy).  Or music.  No exercise - and that's a whole 'nother kind of stiff & sore!

Anyway, the decision to actually seal the newly-picked bags of nuts wasn't made quickly or easily.  Dad had been reading again.  He was very concerned about the moisture content of the nuts.  Although we had hashed out what was an appropriate content for selling at market versus freezing them later, the topic had to be revisited.  Dad had had a revelation.

See, the higher the moisture content the more the nut weighs so it takes fewer nuts to make up a pound.  (Did you follow that??)  That's a good thing.  So yesterday Dad had to come over and check the moisture content of the nuts we sealed up 10 days ago.  Yep, they're losing moisture even though they're in sealed baggies.  That's a mystery - the bags still weigh a pound, and there's no visible moisture in the bags...

THEN, he made me count how many nuts were in the "old" pound, versus how many nuts are in the pounds I'd just been processing - the ones we harvested last weekend.

Amazingly (not), there was very little difference because the nuts were only about 1% different in moisture content.  

Meanwhile, I'm not picking pecans.  I'm jawin' with Dad.  No work is getting done except that Doug was processing the shelled ones, bringing me buckets to pick through.

Grrrr.  Can you see the steam coming out of my ears yet?

Dad finally took his hygrometer (the thing that measures moisture content) and went to go run the cracker.

But not until after we'd had another conversation about selling.  See, after we found out that Memphis has a huge flea market the third weekend of every month, and the third weekend in December is the one before Christmas, and we have all these nuts, we decided to try to get a booth down there.  I called last Friday and the lady told me to call back Monday 'cuz the vendors get to reserve a spot for the next weekend if they want.  (The flea market bounces back & forth between Little Rock, Arkansas, and Memphis.)

I forgot to call her Monday.  Oops.  I called her yesterday and hooray!  She had a couple of spots left so we got one.  

Oh, not-hooray!.  That means we've got to take ALL of the nuts we've harvested, 'cuz it's a two-day flea market and hopefully we'll be able to sell everything we've got.

Guess who's now sitting on her butt all day every day?  I picked for 10 hours straight yesterday.  And I'll be doing that every day until all the nuts are done.  Hopefully before the flea market.

I'm cross-eyed.  By the end of this harvest I won't want to see a naked pecan ever again.  

And the worst part is, there's no time to decorate the house & yard for Christmas.  Yep, I'm one of THOSE people - can't have enough Christmas decorations.  We were going to put the bucket truck (not the bucket tractor) in the front yard, stick a plastic Santa in the bucket and raise it high.  During the day people would see the Santa; at night the scene would be transformed into a giant Christmas tree with a star by running strings of lights from the bucket to the ground.

Maybe next year.  Oh, and of course today it snowed.  It's so cold I had to put my mini horse in the barn (he ain't happy).  But it sure is pretty...

And yep, these are our bikes.  THEY look prettier without snow!

Black Friday Wasn't Black At All

This post is late - I'm sorry.  I wrote it the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but didn't have any pictures to put with it.  I was hoping to get some but we were sooo busy!

I got out of bed this Saturday morning and my feet said "Now, Lisa, you know we weren't built to carry 400 pounds!"

Then my back said, "Lisa, you weren't meant to work like a pair of mules for 10 hours straight!"  My legs said, "Lisa, you are most definitely not a marathon runner!"  My arms said "You are not a weight lifter!" and...you get the idea, I'm sure.  I'm sore in places I didn't think I even had muscles.

I had a long conversation with the rest of my muscles and joints.  I finally convinced them to do their jobs. See, we harvested pecans again yesterday.  We had to cram in a lot of work because it's supposed to rain the rest of the weekend, and for once the local meteorologist got it right.  It's clouding up right now.  Thank heavens. I couldn't take another day like yesterday - I'd be stove up solid like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz.

I didn't have it as bad as the guys, though.  They had to constantly lift/drag/push/pull 100 lb. sacks of pecans and stuff.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As you can tell from previous posts, our entire focus in life right now is harvesting pecans.  I'm to the point of dreaming about it at night.  Jeff keeps wanting to take time off from his day job to get it done.  My Dad keeps dashing around buying stuff he thinks will help.  (Some does, some doesn't.  Thank heavens the shopping channels and infomercials don't have things considered useful for nut growers!)  Doug is an accommodating, happy-go-lucky guy who works when we want him to and doesn't worry about it the rest of the time.

All week we'd been gearing up for a whole weekend of "official" nut-picking.  Official means we bring out the heavy equipment. (Hand-picking with the rollie thingies goes on all the time.)  We discussed the upcoming weekend's strategy on Monday; on Tuesday; and on Wednesday.  Jeff would have four days off - we could get a LOT of nuts harvested!  I don't talk much about Jeff in these posts but he's an absolutely essential part of this farming thing.  He's the youngest, the strongest, and the smartest of us all.  (And he's my soulmate.)

All week Doug, Dad and I had got out with the rollie thingies at various times and picked up nuts.  We'd had rain last weekend and Dad had discovered an article on the internet by a member of the Alabama Pecan Growers Association (we're not in 'bama, but close enough).  It talks about how pecans mold if left on wet ground.  I'm a bit suspicious of that because if it were true there wouldn't be little pecan tree saplings everywhere, but OK.

We'd picked up a bunch of 5-gallon buckets of wet pecans.  Now, how were we going to dry them?  (Dad had ordered a hygrometer, which is a little machine you put things into that measures the percentage of moisture in whatever you've put in it.  Pecans for storage need to be at around 4%.  I know, you probably don't care about that.)  Anyway, we don't have a commercial nut dryer.  Putting them in the clothes dryer was out of the question - it gets too hot (yes, we actually considered it).  Ditto oven-drying.  Hmmm.

So Dad came up with the idea of just spreading them out on the front porch of the big house.  Surely the sun would come out, and since there's a bit of breeze they'd dry OK anyway.  I was very unhappy with this method because about a thousand squirrels live in the eaves of the big house, and I pictured those pecans as a smorgasbord just laid out for the tree rats.  (Turns out they stayed out of them because my cats and Dad's dog kept lurking about.)  Anyway, the nuts dried but it took a couple of days.

One of the most-discussed topics this last week was "Where are we going to store all of the nuts so the mice and so forth don't get into them?"  (Notice "where", not "how"...)  Well, we could put them in the metal-clad room in the barn that used to be where we stored cattle/horse feed?  Nope - pesticides have been stored in there (phew!), plus the metal's rusted away in places.  What about the big freezer that doesn't work?  Nope, not big enough, though it's a good backup.  The garage?  Nope, not rodent-proof.  Aha!  The back of Dad's pickup - it has a canopy and he's done it before and never had mice get in.  Problem solved.  (Remember that...)

We all took Thanksgiving off except for thinking about harvesting and one (long as usual) discussion with Dad about what our first tasks would be on Friday and what time we would all get started.

See, Dad's one of those abnormal people who habitually gets up around 4 a.m.  He's never been a full-time farmer, so I don't know why that is.  And the worst part is he thinks everybody should get up at 4 a.m. just like he does.  He wanted us to get an "early start", which meant get up at oh-dark-thirty.  That way we'd all be working when the sun comes up.  I have never, ever been a morning person (Dad knows this) and never shall be (Dad keeps trying to change this), and Jeff can't really function until he's been up at least an hour, but we told him we'd get out as early as we could. (It turned out to be around 8 a.m., which is very early for us.)

My first task yesterday was to shovel the now-dry pecans on the front porch into buckets so they could be run through the cleaner when we fired it up later.

And we hadn't been happy with the performance of the harvester two weeks ago; it was sweeping up basically everything that didn't have deep roots.  So Jeff's first task was to adjust the height a bit higher.  He'd read about it in the literature Dad downloaded off the internet (if there's a manual for the harvester, Dad doesn't know where it is).

Dad's first task was to talk to us about our first tasks (again).

Doug's first task was, apparently, to sleep in because he'd inadvertently been left out of the decision to get a very early start on yesterday's harvesting.  Doug's a lucky guy.

Adjusting the harvester apparently required a screwdriver.  I'm certain there are dozens of screwdrivers on this farm, but it took a little time to locate one.  Then Dad (who hadn't read the literature recently) had to instruct Jeff how to adjust the height.  My husband is a polite man, but he's a grumpy bear first thing in the morning, especially when he hasn't had a pot of coffee yet.  He didn't snap at my Dad, I don't think, (remember, I was on the front porch shoveling pecans) but when I showed up his face was red and I swear I saw a bit of steam coming out of his ears.

When I finished shoveling pecans into buckets I went around to the harvester where Jeff was still trying to adjust it.  (That's when I noticed the steam coming out of his ears.)  Dad and I talked about how and where we should get started (again).  He told me the first thing I should do is get the pecans off the porch (again).  To which I responded, "Oh, I'm done with that."  Oh, Dad says.

Then followed a discussion about whether or not the ground was dry enough to run the mechanical harvester over it.  We're standing in the driveway, not the orchard, so it was sort of pointless except we agreed that the harvester shouldn't be run over wet ground.  (Again.  And I'd read the literature, too.).  As usual, I was rarin' to go and the standing around talking things to death got to me - I snapped at Dad.  I told him this is all well and good, yes, we all need to be on the same page, but none of the work is getting done while we're standing here talking about doing it.  Ouch.  I had to apologize - I was rude.

About this time we started talking about what we were going to put all the harvested nuts into.  (That's the "how" part of storing the nuts.)  In all the week's jawin' we hadn't got to that very important part.  We had burlap sacks and we had actual red mesh pecan bags (think the plastic ones onions come in) "somewhere in the barn".  Oh, goody - wonder how old those are?

Dad wanted to save the burlap sacks for the cleaned pecans; my point was - what are we going to put the dirty ones into??  Jeff disappeared, and came back with a bundle of fifty of the red plastic ones.  They actually even said "Pecans" on them!  So we compromised - we'd use some of the burlaps for dirty ones, some for clean ones, and the red ones for cleaned and/or finished nuts.

Meanwhile, Dad had to clean out the back of the farm pickup so we could put the bags in there.  Oh-my-gawd.  It was full to the top of the bed sides with stuff, including an ancient hand-seeder with an iron wheel and big wooden handles that Dad had bought as a yard ornament.  We had to discuss where that was going to be stored until it could be put on display.  (It will have to be anchored because somebody will steal it.)  And I was rude again - Dad is notorious for just putting things any-old-where, so I said, "OK, you're going to actually organize this stuff, right?  Not just dump it in a pile somewhere?"  Ouch again.  But Dad took it in good grace (I think).

Jeff and I went to get the rest of the red bags.  Of course quite a few were ruined because they'd been there for who-knows-how-long, but most were good.  We got sidetracked; they were stacked behind piles of absolutely fascinating junk.  Some of it was stuff we'd heard Dad say, "I've got one of those around here somewhere but I can't lay my hands on it right now."  Some were things we don't know whose they were (like the big aluminum kettle thing with a bail - ??)  Some was trash (including a huge cardboard box that looked like someone had been living in it), so we ended up bringing out not only the red bags but a pickup bed full of garbage.  Not on the day's agenda, but every little bit of work counts.

Dad hadn't got 1/4 of his truck cleaned out when we got back.

About that time Dad wanted to revisit the whole "Is the ground dry enough for the harvester?" question.  So we went to the orchard.  And looked at the ground.  And kicked around in the leaves.  And picked up a few nuts to see how wet they were.  Dad decided we'd "try it and see how it does."  (That's one of Dad's favorite phrases.  I like it because he's open-minded.  Sometimes.)

Then we walked around some more to decide how many and which trees to harvest.  I was all for doing 10 or 15 of them, but because of the rain coming in we settled on 7.  After much arguing about which trees had the most nuts and were, therefore, worthwhile to shake.  (I did the arguing.  I'm kinda hard-headed.)  In the middle of it Jeff got disgusted and went to check on Doug.  By this time Doug should have shown up because of the motor noises, it's just his habit, but he hadn't.  (He slept in...)

Dad and I then got into another argument.  This time he was doing the arguing.  He said the trees further down in the orchard didn't have any nuts.  I said they did.  Dad wanted to go get his binoculars so he could look; I said there's no need, I can see the darned things though yes, there were a few that appeared to be bare.  Another conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with that we were trying to accomplish that day, so we tabled it.

My second task, once the area to be harvested was settled on, was to take Trusty Rusty and the cart, and go pick up branches from the area we were going to harvest.  Pecan trees are very messy; they drop more pieces of themselves than they do nuts.  So Dad was going to "blow" the area with the mower.  He sets the blades too high to cut but low enough to blow leaves and such into piles, so the harvester picks up less junk.  We got started.  Finally.

When that part was done and Dad went off to get Big Daddy and the tree shaker, I decided to pick up branches a little further into the orchard than we planned to work.  I stopped and looked up at one of those bare trees.  Yep, Dad was right - there were hardly any nuts up there at all.  Then I looked down.  Ye Gods!  There weren't any nuts on the tree because they were on the ground under the tree.  I couldn't take another step without crunching pecans underfoot!

Of course I had to run ask Dad if we could harvest those trees too.  The ground under those trees hadn't been finish-mowed, so the grass was pretty tall.  Dad said no.  I said damn.  That's OK, I know where I'm going to pick up nuts with the rollie thingie this coming week!

Dad went back to shaking trees.  I went to get supplies (burlap bags, the can of ethanol-free gas, which won't gunk up our old motors, a toolkit.  And some Cokes.)  Somewhere the wires got crossed, because a couple of trees got shaken that had already been done once.  (This is what happens when the boss turns her back, even for a minute!)

And about the time Dad finished shaking the first couple of trees, Nancy and her husband showed up to pick up nuts on the thirds.  (They're special family friends; nobody else is being allowed to pick up as of yet.)  So Dad finished shaking trees and went to talk.  They chatted a while, and I went to (successfully - I thought) prod Dad into going back to cleaning out his pickup.  Jeff started running the harvester, and all went well.  For about twenty minutes.

Then the motor on the harvester quit.  And wouldn't start.  Then it started, ran for a couple minutes and quit again.  Then it started and ran rough, and quit again.  (Remember, Lisa - you can't get there from here...)

Jeff, who doesn't have much patience for that sort of thing, was cussin' and stomping around.  Doug was helping (mechanickin', not cussin' and stomping around).  Since I realize (ok, I lied - I've been told) that my mechanical abilities are limited to annoying the mechanic with dumb questions like "Does it have gas?", I stayed out of the harvester motor issue other than to make sure nobody gave up.  While they each took turns watching the others work on the motor and providing helpful hints which were received with varying quantities of good grace: "Yeah, I know!" or "I already checked that!".

About this time I took off to get Dad, who'd had a visitor pull in and was jawin' with the guy even though he doesn't like him and was busy cleaning out his pickup.  I was hoping to get the visitor to leave, then point Dad back towards the truck, not the harvester motor.  The harvester would just be my excuse to interrupt and get rid of the guy.  No luck.  The guy knows all about engines, so he had to come help.  Now we've got our usual Farm Confab - all work halted, four of us standing around while Jeff worked on the motor. Offering helpful input like "Does it have gas?".  That didn't come from me, no sir - I was assisting by handing Jeff tools like a scrub nurse.  He'd bark "10 mm!" and I'd hand him the socket.

Sometime in here I pointed out to Dad that he really ought to finish cleaning out his pickup.  I don't think he could make himself leave; all of the repair talk was too exciting.  I couldn't leave because they'd all get to jawin' and work would stop.  Can you see the steam coming out of my ears yet?

Long story short, the harvester motor was repaired and put back in service.  It had been set at the right height and Jeff was doing circles under the trees, grumpily trying to work around Bill and Nancy who have the uncanny ability of knowing exactly when we're going to shake trees so they always show up to pick up nuts within ten minutes of the first shaking.  Hmm, wonder if they're being tipped off?  I heartlessly told Jeff to just drive, that they'd get out of the way.  (Bill and Nancy are in their seventies I think.) Dad disappeared, to clean out his pickup (or so I thought).  Everything was ticking along.  Doug was rolling up any nuts the harvester missed so I was kind of at a loss.

Then I remembered that Dad had been wanting us to pick up the cultured walnuts from the 4 trees in the front yard.  So, casting a guilty glance over my shoulder to see if anybody was watching, I snuck off with a bucket to pick them up.  These aren't those pretty, reasonably-soft-shelled walnuts you get whole and have a nice time cracking and eating during the holidays.  These are crossed with black walnuts, which you have to take a hammer and a chisel to, to get to the meats.

Now, if you've never harvested walnuts, you probably don't know that the husk of the walnut (that's the soft outer shell) was used during colonial days to dye clothing, well, walnut brown. It's a beautiful color, but it's permanent.  I had gloves on so I thought, "I'm safe.  No black hands for me!".  Unh-unh.  The hulls were all squishy so I was squeezing the nuts out, leaving my gloves coated with pitch-black walnut sludge.  One of my gloves, unbeknownst to me, had blown out.  When I got done I had one brown hand (including under my fingernails), and one regular hand.  Oh, well.  It'll wear off.  By next summer.

Things went well for quite a while (several hours, actually); we had a system.  We also had our nut cleaner back from the guy we'd loaned it to (he finally found one for sale and bought it).  The sack on the harvester filled up, it was taken off and dumped into the cleaner hopper, and everybody but the harvester driver picked debris out of the nuts that the cleaner missed.   Until the cleaner motor wouldn't start. Oh, fer Pete's sake!  Dad must've heard the silence because he showed up in his (not-yet-empty) pickup.

While Jeff and the others had another stand-around trying to fix the thing, in the interests of getting work done I got on the harvester.  First time I'd driven the mower (a big orange thing that tows the harvester).  Dad must've not been feeling well because he just pointed me towards it instead of giving me the usual instructions. And about this time Nancy had showed back up with a piece of homemade coconut cake for me.  What a sweetheart!  She appeared to be fascinated with the cleaning process because she hung around for quite a while, jawin' and helping pick out debris.  (Doug told me later that her husband was watching the football game and she's not into football, so she probably just came back because she was bored.)

I only ran the harvester out of gas once.  But I kept forgetting to stop by the cleaner and have the full bag removed and replaced, so a couple of times I had to go back over the same ground because the harvester just picked the pecans up and dropped them right back on the ground when the sack was full..  Hey - at least the pecans were all in a neat row, stacked and ready to be picked up!

We got a lot of pecans harvested, considering it was another Keystone Cops day.  I'm guessing 600 pounds or so.  We sold some pecans this last week and we have pending orders from local candy makers and nut roasters.  Nancy has been spreading the word far and wide.

The weather ain't lookin' too good, though.  Rain for the next three days and Dad says maybe even snow for Tuesday night.  It won't hurt the pecans much, but it won't let us harvest, either.  Darn.  Guess I'll have to spend more time at my day job...

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go: Flea Market!

OK, maybe this weekend wasn't the best to take pecans to the flea market. It was the one weekend a month Memphis has their huge flea market. We didn't decide to start selling in time to get a booth there. But we figured maybe the country folk would want pecans for Thanksgiving pecan pies (wish mine were as pretty as the one in the pic), so we rented a booth at a year-round, rinky-dink little market on a major highway out in the boonies. We've been by there on the weekends and usually the place is packed. We figured we would be far enough away from the Memphis market.  (Turns out we weren't, but so what? This was a test run anyway.)

Although the idea had been kicked around for a couple of days, the decision wasn't made to actually go until Wednesday evening. Only two days before the sale. (I tried not to panic.)

But, as with everything here on the farm the decision to go to market wasn't reached quickly or easily. No, we had to have several Famous Farm Confabs about it. Anytime one of us had a new comment or idea, we'd call a meeting to discuss it. Which kind of booth - covered, with tables; uncovered, with tables; a bare piece of ground? (Covered, with tables. $20/day.) What quantity and stages of nuts should we take? (As many as we can - cracked and finished.) How much are we going to sell them for? (Finished go for $7.38 for 10 oz. at Walmart. And they're old - anywhere from 3-5 years in storage. And they taste like crap. Our finished halves are priced at $7.00 for 16-18 oz., bits & pieces at $6, cracked at $5, and whole in the shell for $4. We'd market them as pesticide-free, 2011 crop, heirloom trees "Stuart" variety, planted in 1960.)

Speaking of confabs, Dad panicked on Friday - he'd just realized we needed change. (I'm way ahead of you, Dad. Jeff and I are old hands at this selling stuff. We've been to numerous craft shows.) I told him Jeff was going to get the change when he got off work. "Oh, goodness, what if he has to work late?" Dad - I have my car, I can run to the bank, no problem. "Oh, good!" Then, "How are we going to handle the money??" Dad, I have a cash box. I carry part of the bank in an apron pocket to make change. The cash box stays hidden and locked up in the truck. "Oh, OK. But what if somebody wants a receipt??" Dad, I have a receipt book too. "Oh...um, OK." (I think at that point he kinda gave up on micro-managing, since we seemed to have the business aspect under control.)

On Thursday we took inventory. Oh, no! We had almost no clean halves to sell. Let the mad scramble begin.

Pecans have to go through several steps to get to the pretty halves stage. There's cleaning up under the trees; shaking the trees; harvesting the fallen nuts (aka "picking up") which can be done with a mechanical harvester that leaves the nutshells REALLY dirty and picks up everything under the trees, or picking up by hand, which takes forever but allows us to skip using the cleaner because we're only picking up good nuts. See my previous farming posts).

Then comes running them through four different pieces of equipment: the cleaner, which does an excellent job at, well, cleaning - it gets rid of leaves, branches, "pops" (which are empty or very light pecans), dust and debris. We had two or three huge burlap sacks and 8 or 10 5-gallon buckets of whole nuts that were already clean either because they'd been run through the cleaner or picked up by hand. We decided not to worry about the 1-1/2 burlap sacks that need to be driven up to where our cleaner is temporarily out on loan. We decided we had enough nuts to sell. Check.

The whole nuts for selling had to go through the cracker, which is under a lean-to in the barnyard. I *love* this machine. The nuts go into a hopper on top and Ka-POW, pause, Ka-POW, pause...one nut at a time gets whacked on both ends without crushing the nut. (Like I said, it's magic - the nuts vary in size and I don't know how that machine can tell.) The nuts then fall into whatever container you've stuck under the machine. This one takes a while to process the nuts. Somebody has to stand there and watch to make sure nothing goes wrong 'cuz sometimes a nut will get stuck. The guys love this one - other than toting the nuts to and from the machine, there's very little work involved. Dad and Doug started on the cleaned nuts on Thursday. Remember, hubby Jeff has a day job.

Then there's the sheller. See the hopper on top? The squared-off-cone thingie, not the round thing.  I'm not sure exactly how the sheller works - that's all guy stuff.  The sheller magically removes almost all of the shell from the cracked nuts. All I really know about it is you dump the nuts into the hopper, and there's a special stick (I think it's a pecan branch) that you have to use to stir the nuts to keep them going through one at a time. Yep, one at a time - just like the cracker. Takes a while. The guys love this one too - other than poking the nuts with a stick (which to a guy is a fun thing to do), they get to stand there and watch. I haven't figured out yet why it takes two people to stand there and watch, but that seems to be the Southern way. Dad and Doug got a lot of nuts through the sheller on Thursday and Friday.


It and the picker table (oh, and a sorting machine that hasn't been used in about 10 years but should "fire right up!" Yeah, OK, Dad...) are in the barn. In what was a really filthy room - layers of dust, the room stank of farm chemicals stored in one corner, you don't want to know about the rest of the stuff that was in there. Blech. It had taken Jeff and Doug a whole day to clean up that room and sanitize the machines. After discussing it with me because apparently I'm the Queen Bee of Cleaning. (Not - my answer was "bleach-water everything!")

I guess you've figured out by now that my 86-year-old father hasn't done any selling for years. When he has a good crop, people come out of the woodwork and pick up on the halves. (Half for them, half for Dad.) Dad's huge commercial freezers are full of nuts from two years ago. And he gives away most of his share, or they sit in the freezer too long (over 2 years) and he throws them away. Waste, waste...


Finally, the nuts had to be picked. (Are you confused yet? "Picked up" is different from "picked".) On Thursday, Dad and Doug had run a bunch through the mechanical picker. Jeff and I spent 4 hours that night hand-picking finished pecan halves and bits & pieces out of the picked nuts. We got 19 lbs. of halves and pieces. Remember those numbers: 8 man-hours for 19 lbs...

It was now Friday afternoon and the remaining nuts had been cracked, but not picked. Jeff had to work late, Doug was having some health problems, and Dad just works too slowly. Jeff and I made the command decision to just bag up the cracked nuts and call it good. It took us about 6 hours to bag up 63 pounds of cracked nuts. Dad was horrified that we were sorting out the bits of shell and only bagging the cracked nuts. Apparently the way it's usually done is they're scooped out of a huge bag or bin and weighed - shell pieces and all. Well, that's not good enough for Lancaster Pecan Farm. (Yep, he's decided to change the farm name.) We want to give our customers the highest value for their money.

Saturday dawned sunny but cold and windy. We went to market. I'll bet you guessed that after all our hard work the flea market sales sucked. We sold $101.00 worth of pecans, but we found out something really valuable - people don't want to buy cracked nuts. Of course they want the finished halves or bits & pieces. We sold out of bits & pieces, and 9 pounds of finished halves, plus 5 pounds of cracked nuts. That's it. (sigh) 

The stuff on the left table is bath salts and other homemade things we brought to sell.

And I spent 'way more than our share of the sales at the flea market, but that's OK - I got a great Christmas gift for our triplet nieces who are turning 1 year old just before Christmas. (I won't say what it is because I think their Mom reads this blog.) And some pipe insulating wrap 'way cheaper than in the store. And a pretty beaded necklace w/earrings for $1. And we bought lunch. And I found some reference books I couldn't live without - how to run electrical wiring, basic woodworking, etc. And some more hot rocks for our hot rock kit. If you've never used hot rocks on sore muscles you should definitely try it! (sigh)

Dad popped in and out of the booth during the day, (Jeff and I were manning it - Doug had the day off) and in the early afternoon he had a brilliant idea: he has a small electric nut cracker and why couldn't we set it up and run pecans through it at the booth? Hmmm. Well, electricity costs extra, doesn't it? Dad toddled off to find the flea market guy, couldn't find him, and asked a vendor who was using power. $3.00 extra - no big deal. OK, well, there just aren't many people shopping here today, Dad, so - is it worth going home, getting it, setting it up...? It was to him so he said he'd bring it back after he ran some errands.

I guess he forgot, or ran too late with his errands, because he didn't bring it back. It would have been nice to have something to do while waiting for people to walk by, but I was afraid the other vendors would complain about the noise. (Ka-POW, pause...) We tried our best to stay out of the burlap bag of whole pecans we'd set out for visual appeal, but I caved. Towards the end of the afternoon I was just sitting there, cracking nuts by hand and eating them. They are SO good!

When Dad did finally come back, we had to talk about whether we wanted the booth for Sunday, too. Gee, Dad, they're saying it's going to rain. "Well, we could put up tarps along the sides." Yes, but, where are the tarps? "Oh. I can't think where they are off the top of my head. I could go buy some?" Well, if you really want to, but it's definitely going to rain. People don't shop open-air markets in the rain..."Yeah, that's true, they don't. Well, why don't we wait and see? I can call A.J. (the flea market guy) tomorrow morning and let him know." Good idea. We all agreed to wait.

But just in case we were going back on Sunday, we needed more finished nuts. The nuts that had been shelled on Friday needed to be picked. Dad felt strongly that we should use the mechanical picker to get ready for Day 2 at the flea market. We should have remembered how much we got finished Thursday (because the nuts had been run through the picker), because an argument could have been avoided. 

 We agreed that we could use the mechanical picker. It's a cool little number too. The nuts are vibrated to knock almost every bit of shell off. But it takes at least 2 people to operate because it's set on its highest speed. This is the "Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory" scenario. The guys hate this one because you really have to grab the nuts off the conveyor fast or you lose them...and that's too much like work. (Supposedly you can put a different widget on a whatchamacallit to slow the thing down, but nobody's had time to look it up.  Plus, Dad hasn't located the manual yet.)  In this pic, Doug is in the foreground and Jeff is in the background.  They don't have the picker turned on 'cuz I guess they can't keep up.  They've run a few nuts through, then turned off the machine so they can pick through them.  Hey, whatever works, right?

Anyway, for Day 2 of the market I was all for using the picker at first. But not because it's efficient (that's another story). The three of us dipsticks ganged up on Dad and said it was easier on our backs to just do the finish picking by hand until the picker table could be either raised or lowered for the two tall guys. It's at just the wrong height. And, one leg is about to go through the barn floor so it isn't level - we need to put plywood down.  That barn was built in the '20s.  Plus the picker runs FAST, so if we don't want to go through all the shells to find the nuts we missed on the conveyor belt, we've lost them.

Oh, the arguing! (Dad's really a "It's my way or the highway" kind of guy, though he's getting better.) Finally it was settled - Dad was overruled - we idiots would finish-pick by hand. (I wish I'd known what I was in for: My fingers hurt - those !#*A!? shells are sharp!)

By 6 p.m. Saturday night we'd sat down to pick the shelled nuts by hand. Nothing like waiting 'til the last possible minute, huh? It took three of us (and several beers for the guys) 6 hours to hand-pick 17 pounds of halves and bits & pieces out of a big plastic tote full of shelled pecans. Remember those numbers above? 8 man-hours for 19 pounds after the nuts have been through the mechanical picker. So let's see, Friday night was 18 man-hours for 17 lb. finished. Duh. Like I said, we're dipsticks.

Selling the finished halves at $7.00/lb. makes no economic sense whatsoever considering the expenses involved, but we look at it like this: what else do we have to do? Well, a lot  actually, but none of us are able to stand by and watch this bumper crop of pecans go to waste.  All the nuts I'm talking about here, and including several 5-gallon buckets people picked up on the thirds, came off of 4 (four!) trees.  4 down, 194 more to go... 

Oh, and here's what could be excellent news: Dad decided to go visit the big Memphis flea market on Sunday to check out any competition. He didn't find a single vendor selling pecans, but he found 4 (four!) companies who make things with pecans. They've been buying their pecans at Sam's Club or Costco, and they're not happy with the price or the quality. We might not have to go to flea markets and such - we may have some year-long customers lined up. I'm to call them today and arrange to take them samples. Then we'll haggle price. Awesome!

Meanwhile, hubby took the day off from his day job today (Monday). I put an ad on Craigslist yesterday morning and I've already had 3 responses to purchase pecans, and one lady who wants hers cracked and shelled.  Jeff and Doug are out in the barn right now, running those 60+ pounds of cracked pecans through the sheller and the picker. My job for the rest of today, tomorrow and probably Wednesday (because of rain): hand-pick and package finished nuts. It's OK, it's raining cats & dogs. The dishes and laundry can wait another day or two.

Then this coming weekend, if it dries up enough, we go back to harvesting.  Starting Friday.  Thursday we're smoking a couple of Cornish Game Hens and I'll be fixin' the trimmings.  Hey, all work and no play makes us really bitchy...

Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away - Home??

Ladybugs are what's called "beneficial insects".  To us farmers, anyway.  They're carnivores - they eat nasty, crop-destroying bugs called "aphids", among others.  (I think aphids are cute - they're bright springtime green, and really funny-looking, but...)  The more ladybugs around, the safer our crops will be.

See, we are going to be "all-natural".  In more ways than one, but that's another story.

That means organic fertilizers and no petrochemical pesticides.  We think we're going to have to plant double the amount of things others do, so the bugs can have some.  And the deer.  And the raccoons, possums, etc. Even though we're trying to figure out how to keep some special ducks that eat bugs but not the crop - we have HUGE red-tailed hawks here, plenty big enough to carry off a duck.  And duck poo is excellent fertilizer for the plants.

There are lots of critters around here that are good for our crops.  This last summer we were overloaded with toads.  You know, the cute brown ones with black spots?  They're good bug-eaters too.  They were everywhere, and ranged in size from your thumb to your hand.  But don't step on one! And by the way, toads aren't slimy like frogs are.

Anyway, ladybugs are apparently long-lived.  They hibernate in the winter.  In our bedroom. I have no idea how they're getting into the house.

This is only the beginning.  Later there will be hundreds of them, in a huge mass in that corner.

And here's another good sign:  they're starting to form a mass in our other bedroom (my office), too!

Before you say Ewwww! let me say that we'll put up with a lot in order to make a go at farming.  Although there's a very slight musky odor in the bedroom during their sleep, they don't bother us. Except the other night we found one in the bed, literally between the sheets. That one got totally lost!

They don't fall on us, or fly around, or crawl around except when they're getting ready to go to sleep.  It's kinda fun to lay in bed, watching them walk aimlessly around the ceiling.  They look a little like a Pac-Man game - they'll move along, then take a sharp 90 degree turn and head off in that direction. We counted 15 of them the other night.





Eventually they'll find the mass in the corner and nod off.  One day in springtime we'll wake up and they'll all be gone.  Every single one.

Isn't nature fascinating?