Shaking Wood Colony

Monterey

We started shaking the Wood Colony variety today.  Nut removal has been good.











The Monterey will be close behind.  They are splitting but there are still a few that are still tight on the trees.  They will likely be ready in about a week.

The weather forecast is very favorable; warm and dry for at least two weeks.

FRESH TRACKS

 Picture taken Friday Sept 7.  These fresh tracks are indicative of the dust settling impact of the recent rain showers.  The forecast is for warm and dry weather for at least the next 10 days.  Good.

LIGHTNING! THUNDER! SHOWERS!  This morning nature provided a reminder that we need to keep harvest moving along.  The showers were not enough to get things too wet; they just settled the dust, but three days ago they were not even in the forecast.  This time of year the weather can change quickly.

We will finish harvest of all of our Nonpareil tomorrow.  All of the orchards will get a good drink of water and then we will start shaking the other varieties next week as they mature.

No rain for a month, please!

Here is our 5-man crew, taking a well deserved lunch break while working Sunday of Labor Day weekend.  The harvest season knows no holidays!  I brought them pizza as a thanks for the extra effort they are putting in.  These five men will pick up roughly 800,000 pounds of field run almonds from this ranch in 4 days!
"Field run" refers to what we pick up and send to the huller.  It includes the almond meats, the shells, the hulls, and any foreign material such as sticks, rocks, etc.
The "crackout" is the percentage of meats that are in the field-run product.  Typically the percentage for Nonpareil is around 22-25%.  We had one ranch that averaged 28% this year.  Industry wide, I am hearing that crackouts are running low this year, some as low as 18%.

We planted a 30 acre almond orchard on Wednesday and Thursday, August 22 & 23.  We used a mechanical planter this year.  The tractor is driven by GPS and as a result the rows are very straight.  I am not as happy with the placement within the rows, but they are within inches and in a year the variation will not be visible.




It has been a unique experience to be planting a new orchard at the same time we are harvesting others.  The early planting will allow the trees to get established this fall and grow very rapidly next spring.

We used the drip irrigation system to give them a good soaking immediately after planting.

Trees arrive from Duarte Nursery in Hughson

Tuesday, August 21, trees were delivered from Duarte Nursery.  Trays, each containing 16  trees, are stacked two high inside the trailers.



Everything is in place to begin planting.  The soil has been ripped and fumigated, and the irrigation system is installed.  The soil was pre-irrigated so we will be planting into moisture.

Ready for the heavy lifting of unloading

The trees are unloaded and placed at the edge of the field for planting on Wednesday.  They must be kept wet to stay healthy.

Giving the trees plenty of water

The first cart of our 2012 season loaded on August 24.

We started shaking on August 17 this year.  This is a third leaf tree.  Nuts on the younger trees matured first this year.  Nut removal has been very good and very little hand poling will be required.

Hull split status

Hull split has rapidly advanced over the last week. Some nuts in the interior of the trees are still in the early hull split stage. Harvest will likely start in about two weeks.

normal progression of hull split (July 23)

This picture is of nuts with hull split at the stage I would have expected most nuts to be since I saw the beginning of hull split more than 10 days ago.


The nuts in the lower picture are representative of most of the Nonpareil nuts I am seeing.  Many nuts not split at all, and many with only early splitting along the suture line.  This is surprising considering the warm weather we have had.  Hopefully things will move along faster so that harvest is not delayed.  The later harvest starts, the later it will end, increasing the chances of wet weather at the tail end of harvest.

slow progression of hull split typical of nuts year, (July 23)

Started an exciting new almond development project this week.  The pictures don't show it, but some of the hills are STEEP!  Scrapers are taking the tops off the steepest hills so they can be safely farmed.  A ripper started loosening the ground.  I'll post pictures of the equipment working next week.

These are the first splitting hulls I've seen this year.  They are on an outside Nonpareil tree along an avenue.  The rest won't be far behind!