Burn ban status

Well, Monday morning I eagerly called our local "general store" to see how quickly I could purchase a burn permit. Nope. Gov. Easley didn't lift the ban even though we had rain (and in fairly substantial amounts in many places across the state). The locals recommended I call the Governor's Office directly to voice my concern. I called. They gave me a pat answer about lake levels being too low to fight any significant fires (there's not even a reservoir in my county but I didn't argue). So here we wait. Still. This morning we had a slight shower across much of this region (about an eighth to quarter of an inch) and there is a chance for more brief showers for the next 2-3 days. It's enough to keep me from hanging laundry but unfortunately not enough to make the one change we need. (Insert big sigh here). Maybe by next week......

Rain, beautiful, wonderful rain!!!

Today we have had rain. Not a "spit" as my Pop used to say, not a sprinkle, but real, genuine rain. For the first time since.... well, I don't even know when it's rained like this last! Months and months for sure. So we are praying hard that since this rain is slow and steady (and statewide!!) that Gov. Easley will lift the burn ban Monday morning. It has been a long, long drought and I am sure that it will take a long, long time to recover but there is temporary relief tonight anyway. Praise the Creator who has a purpose for all things, even droughts.

Rocks and roots

I know this will sound weird to most people but we have been having a grand ole time picking up rocks and roots to clear the land. We still can't burn the stumps and it is looking very possible that it may be next winter before we are able to put trees in the ground since we can't finish clearing it unless we can burn. If the ban isn't lifted in the next 2-3 weeks, it will probably be impossible to go forward until 2009. In the meantime, there is still lots to be done. Lots of rocks, lots of roots :) ! D marked off the acres in sections and we work on part of a section each chance we get. We pull the 4-wheeler into the area, load up the wagon with roots, put rocks in buckets on the wagon, and when needed we rake the roots and stumps off into the burn piles and dump the rocks at the side of the garden shed to be used for building things with later (lots of plans as always!). We really like working together with our hands and the children enjoy it (since we don't do it every hour of every day). Our prayer is that years from now they will look at and remember all the hours spent talking and laughing as we did something useful with land that was in an almost useless state. If the land can't be cleared (burned)in time, we will just plant a cover crop between the piles to hold in the soil in case we ever do get rain again. The rabbits and deer will love us, I'm sure!

Marketing thoughts and ideas

Now D is much better at marketing than I will ever be. But our daughters seem to be better than both of us put together (got their Grandma's talent for that - she was a top-notch cosmetic salesperson for years). So as we put together information and ideas on marketing we are going to use family to "test market". Considering the wonderful size of our extended family (over 35 sets of aunts/uncles and multitudes of cousins as well as immediate family!) we should get a good idea of how well we are doing. This week we really got a boost when D told several of his co-workers about how we plant to process, package and market our products and several of them seriously asked him about if we would consider investors! These are ladies in real estate and marketing and they are very gung-ho about pecans?!! Hopefully that means we are on the right track! Personally I really look forward to the interaction with the customers when the time comes because that was so much fun at the Bagel Shoppe. Right now I have to begin testing chocolate coating recipes (oh, poor me!!) and chocolate fudge recipes and pecan pie recipes to get those down-pat. I must admit that we are all becoming "pecan connoisseurs" and I can now tell something about the age/drying time of a pecan although I still can't taste the difference in varieties that some people claim they can taste. Maybe with time.....