Jarrell, TX Food Forest project

Whew, its getting dry out there.   We've had more rain over summer this year than usual, but its dry as ever now.   I'm on a siphon system.   It's very complicated and consists of a water hose dipped into my cistern.   The cistern is partially buried, and when it gets low, I have to draw the water from low ...even to the point of digging a hole for my water buckets.    This is the last of my "easy" water.   Once the level gets too low to pre-fill this tote, I'll have to fill each bucket with the siphon hose.   Its a natural way for me to know that its "dry-time" and to shift from "keep 'em growing" to "keep alive" only.

In other news:  

Sweet potatoes do grow well under a huge layer of wood chips and are easy to harvest.   This is the first year that they've done well after 2 previous failure years.

The wood chips in the middle of my driveway are still moist down under, so doing their job.

Macali (one of the resident felines) knows to keep an eye on El Chapo ...who is just hanging out hoping for a belly rub.  Still he's not to be trusted.

Yay, food!   ...in the form of fresh pecans

The paper shell tree is actually outside of the area that I've been caring for, and it almost set a bumper crop this year.   September and October have been very dry though, and it caused the tree to partially abort about 1/10 of its crop last month.   Those pecans ripened early and the meat in them was only 1/3 ish of normal.   It was interesting how the tree handled the lack of water.   Of the current harvest, another 1/4 of the pecans are dried out inside ...still good for me to eat, but not marketable.    If I had that tree wood chipped in like the rest, I would have gotten a much better crop, so the next loads I get are for sure going there.

On harvesting, this is the 1st year I used a pole and tarp.   I highly recommend it.    I don't have squirrels in Jarrell, but there is a wood pecker that punches a hole in the pecans and eats about two bites before the pecan falls and she goes to another.   The ants end up eating the rest.   So, I left a few for the wood pecker, and knocked the rest out of the tree with a long bamboo pole down onto a tarp.  Its definitely worth the extra effort on tarp and pole vs. waiting for the pecans to fall.   I think probably this method is more efficient than those fancy tractors with a trunk thumpers when you consider the cost of a tractor vs. a pole.

Pecan cracking ergonomics 101:

1.  Standing is a little faster, but make sure cracker is waist high as well as the tray of pecans and jars
2.  Sitting is a little slower, but I can take longer shelling shifts from my chair.
3.  On sitting, its worth the effort to get everything just "so" ... pads, foot rest, location of pecans to be cracked, jars for marketable nuts, and jars for "for me" nuts.