Trip from Texas

Friday, Dec. 26 - rose at 4:30am, was at airport at 5:50, flight to Atlanta then after sitting on the tarmac, left 2 hours late for Austin.
Arrived in Austin about 1:30pm, picked up at airport by Mrs. Lisa Berdoll who graciously fed our hungry tummies before giving us a tour of both their retail store as well as the orchard and some of the harvesting buildings. The Berdolls are some of the nicest people ever, and we got to meet their daughter (Jennifer) and son-in-law who are buying the store on Monday, as well as their son (Brandon) and his wife who works at the retail store.
After seeing the orchard and Hal's new sorting machine (which he designed himself to re-sort pecans to his own more stringent specifications), we stocked up on some fantastic pecan products at their store and got a few pointers from Hal about planting the trees. They had already loaded up our order (85 Desirable and 235 Pawnee trees that are 2 year-old grafted onto 2 year rootstock, as well as 12 young Pawnees that have been budded but not yet forced, and one large Pawnee that will go at the entrance to the farm).
We drove to the closest Home Depot, bought a padlock to help protect our lifetime savings packed in that truck!, and hit the road just before dark. We drove down to Houston, and on into Iowa before stopping for the night. (Yes, Iowa! - Iowa, Louisiana, that is :) !). Saturday morning we fueled up at Waffle House and got gas for the truck, and hit the road. We crossed Louisiana amidst scattered light showers, marveled at the acres and acres of rice fields, drove across the southern edge of Mississippi, and on into Alabama. From Mobile we headed up to Montgomery, then on to Atlanta by about 8:30pm Saturday night.
Derwin was feeling very achy and feverish by late afternoon and by the time we reached Atlanta was into a full-blown flu. I had thought I would trade off driving with him when needed but a 16' truck loaded with everything it had taken us 30 years of marriage to save, and our two lives at stake if I made a mistake on a rainy, foggy interstate was more than either of us wanted to risk. So we stopped for the night and although D got very little sleep between coughing and headaches, he hung in there to drive us the rest of the way home on Sunday evening (he's amazing!).

Plan for planting:
1 - Unload trees under garden shed cover where can be wrapped/covered if freezes below 15 degrees or so before planting
2 - Subsoil the tree holes where they've been dug with 3' auger in at least 4 places (2 times across each hole)
3 - Level off each hole if sunken
4 - Dig 9" hole for each tree
5 - Remove from pot and plant in hole, packing in well, and then watering
6 - Berm about 3' from trunk around each tree (to hold in irrigation during dry spells before irrigation system is put in); mulch inside the bermed area
7 - Put up electric fence to keep deer out
8 - Wrap tree protectors around each trunk and put up bamboo supports & tie them
9 - Get sprayers, insecticides, etc. ready for spring
10 - Mark varieities with more permanent markings at each row
11 - Log varieties and planting info (weather, etc.) in computer database
12 - Water as needed
13 - Determine/file tax information
14 - Continue to monitor and log weather and soil conditions throughout winter and in preparation for spring fertilizers, etc.

Shelling Pecans

Saturday I was finally over the flu, so when D returned from a local pecan cracker with 10 pounds of cracked beautiful Desirables (that's a pecan variety :) !) we all sat on the back porch, spread them on the plastic tablecloth and shelled them. After weighing them into 1-pound bags, we delivered our first "prize" to friends and neighbors, reserving some in our fridge for soon-to-come Thanksgiving pies! The nuts were grown in an irrigated orchard in northern Georgia and make us even more excited about getting our trees in the ground and growing.

We pick up our first tree order next Saturday from Lake View Pecans in Bailey. D is taking Friday through the whole next week off to dig 3' wide, 4' deep holes at each tree spot with a rented bobcat with a 3' auger attachment. We will then hand mix lime into the soil (just a small amount) before refilling the hole, then he will subsoil both across and down each row which should break up any "glazing" done by the auger. After the subsoiling is done, we will use the tractor to smooth out the rows and will then replace each measured marker for the exact center of the hole. Our plan is to then be able to simply use manual post hole diggers for the hole and planting of each pot. We will probably try to get all of the NC trees (85 of them, 4 different varieties) in the ground before Christmas, but definitely by New Years. I will hand water and tend to the trees in the pots between this Saturday and the day they go into the ground. After New Years we will be going to Texas to get the rest of the trees (385 total but just two varieties). That's the plan. We will see what reality brings :) !

Texas

D returned weary but happy very late Saturday night (technically Sunday morning). Where do I begin? There was so much to see and do and find out but the main things are:
1 - We will definitely get as much of our stock as we can from Berdoll's. He does not carry some of the "Eastern" varieties we want but he does carry Pawnee and Desirable, 2 of our 3 main varieties.
2 - Other nurseries in Texas don't even come close to the quality he has (and we want)
3 - We are more convinced than ever that the key is going to be not just in growing a great product but in marketing it directly to the consumer, often with additional processing being needed.
4 - We will have lots of headaches, problems and many, many hours of labor before we produce a crop but won't it be great to produce something that is healthy and of real value, not like so much of what is produced and consumed in this country (eg movies!!). Sure, we'll never be as rich or famous as movie stars but that's another good reason to do this!

On the home front, it looks like we will still have to wait on burning for now. Praying for more rain and for that ban to be lifted soon so we can finish prepping the land and get some of those beauties growing!

In the meantime, I'm having lots of fun "taste-testing" all the goodies D brought back with him from Texas!

Daily journal

D is in Texas and had a fantastic meeting with Mr. Berdoll. We will definitely be getting trees from him but we need to decide fairly soon what size and get our order in to him before someone else snatches them up. Nursery stock is very short this fall after that very late spring freeze and ridiculously hot and dry summer here in the South. (This man and his family produce well over 1 million pounds of pecans a year, buy more from other growers to meet their demand, and sell about 25-30,000 trees a year! I can't even begin to think in those kind of numbers!) Tomorrow D goes to visit one other nursery and several orchards, retail stores and processors.

I haven't made much headway with the number crunching but hope to do so tomorrow. The land is cleared and graded (thank you Lord!) and we had a little rain this morning (much bigger Thank you Lord!!) If the Governor will just lift that burn ban for a few days we can finish prepping the land. The fruit trees and berry bushes have been hanging on and I am hopeful to keep them alive and actually get some small harvest from them next year, Lord willing. I especially would like to see the raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and grapes produce at least a little. It will probably be 2009 before we see any apples, pears, peaches and plums, though.

Bees - still researching how/when/where to set up the hives. As soon as we can get the clover established in the pecan orchard and it is feasible we would like to set up hives. It will not only be good for the clover and the bees but for the whole farm.

We've sketched out the layout of the retail space and will work on it ourselves over the next couple of years so that hopefully it will be ready by the time we need it. D and I have also been playing around with the layout of the logo but I think we need some more help. I am going to try to get Matt, Russ, Katy and Joanna all to give it a try to see what they can come up with either from their own photos or drawings or computerized drawing.

Varieties and Layout

The layout of the farm is finished. Depending on availability, the plans now are to have the farm mapped out in 4 zones for different varieties and for irrigation purposes.
We divided the farm with each block within a zone representing 36'x36' for each tree. From East to West and North to South, the first zone is almost 400' wide x 360' long. The second zone is about 680' long (also 400' wide). Both of these zones are on the Eastern side of the farm with neighboring woods to the East and a dry creek bed (wet only during rainy times) to the south of the second zone and we have left about 72' of "buffer" where we will plant ground cover, put up an electric fence and use to spot "pests" that need to be hunted on both the east and south sides. We plotted the orchard in these two zones (East to West) 2 rows Pawnee (54 trees) , 2 Kiowa (54 trees) , 4 Pawnee (108 trees), 2 Kiowa (54 trees). The winds are usually west or northwest to east/southeast so we have the Kiowas on the Western side of the Pawnees. The rows are almost exactly north/south.

The remaining two zones are broken into one large area (360' wide x 680' long) and one small area that is actually part of our "yard" on the 2 acres surveyed off with our home. The smaller area is only 18 trees, 6 each of Cape Fear, Stuart and Nacono; sort of our "test" area for these, none of which we chose to be a large part of our commercial production (for now) but wanted to have to see how they do. The larger area is planted with (East to West), 2 rows Oconee (34 trees), 2 Sumner (34 trees), 4 Desirable (68), 2 Forkett (34). There is also another 70+ feet buffer on the west side of the farm that adjoins a less densely wooded area. Again, we chose to have the Forketts to the west of the Desirables.


Total tally: about 400 trees (after taking away those rows that will be shortened due to the southern ravine), 136 Pawnee, 86 Kiowa, 6 Cape Fear, 6 Stuart, 6 Nacano, 34 Oconee, 34 Sumner, 68 Desirable, 34 Forkett = 400. Right now supplies of most varieties except Pawnee and Stuart are very small so unfortunately rather than dealing with one source we will have to deal with several. In addition, our main supplier no longer sells bare-root and we now have to decide whether to go with a less reliable supplier or spend almost double the amount we planned to purchase container grown, and if the latter we also have to figure out a way to get that size and weight of a load from Texas back to NC! Stay turned to see what new problems arise in the next episode of "As the Pecan Turns".......