Love light of the trees is shining low?

Trees are light on nuts!? Or so it seems.  We don't know really. It's a little tricky to tell.

The crunchy green nuts.. The (green exterior) hull continues to harden and mature, and in Aug it begins to split open. In the following two months, the split widens, exposing the shell, which allows the kernel (nut) to dry.

When a harvest becomes personal..

Lane and I decided to pick the first harvest of candycots ourselves. Because the harvest is light. So, it's not worth the expense to hire harvest workers and it's a shame to leave them on trees. We had a lot of fun picking fruit and inspecting the orchard at the same time. Why is harvest light? We think it's "juvenile unpredictability" on the part of the trees.

Trying to get a glimpse into our future..

Our future with Candycots, anyway. Made a visit to the Candycot packing operation to get an idea. This is where we will be sending our fruit to get it packaged and shipped to whole foods and such. This is set up at Britton/Konynenburg's modesto ranch. The fruit looks beautiful this year and the flavor is amazing.  However, it will be a year or two before our candycot orchard bears sufficient fruit to call it a commercial operation.

Rust? A shower may be prescribed..

The crops look good, trees are growing well, and the oats are "in the barn." The mild weather has been pleasant, but is conducive to rust disease. We put a fungicide on this month to prevent the disease, but we will continue to watch for it.

Rust disease looks like the following:

The curious case of a green almond.

Lane is my teacher. He explains, with a well placed dissected green almond on his palm: "The process of solidification of the nut meats continues to advance from the tip of the almond toward the base. This is visible as the gelatinous material becomes opaque. As this process continues the nuts become heavier. This is an early-harvesting Nonpareil nut. Interestingly, the later-maturing Monterey and Woods Colony nuts are just as far along in this process." Good to know.

Oat bales dry and ready at Whitmore

This will be the last non-almond crop that we plant. If all goes well, almond trees should be planted in this space by end of fall/winter.

Growing oats has been Lane's project. He thinks growing hay has been interesting, much more passive than nuts and fruit, but kind of fun for a change.

All of these 1000 lb bales are ready to be delivered to cows to be turned into milk.

Oats harvesting at Whitmore

Oats were cut today. They will need about 10 days of drying before they can be baled and sold. Then we can begin getting this field ready to plant almonds this fall! But, do we make enough money to cover oats cultural costs. Remains to be seen!