Whats on your fall "to do" list??

Thanks! You just reminded me to

1. Order firewood!

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Jim Steele
Sweetpea Farms
"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." -- Robert Gates

Hey folks, you'all just tuckered me out reading your list!

hahaha Go for it, Easyday!

Run electricity to the duck coop

prep additional garden area so it's ready by spring

beyond that the list is enormous & I'm not quite sure what will rise to the top of the list

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I brake for thrift sales.

Lots of things on my to-do list. Didn't get as much done this summer as I would have liked to due to injuring my knee. Spent a while bed-ridden and then I was wearing a leg immobilizer. After that it was a leg brace which I finally stopped wearing about 3 weeks ago.

So, here's my fall list:

1) Finish fencing our North pasture - we have the posts in but didn't move forward after that due to above.

2) Harvest Black Walnuts and Hickory nuts. This is an "on" year for the nuts so we will literally have tons to collect and process.

3) Finish up pulling honey supers and extracting honey.

4) Finish moving greenhouse hoops from the pasture below our cabin. I want to get at least some of them set up and ready for spring.

5) Plow under the patch of corn that the deer trashed. PLant 60/40 cut down or something else I can plow under that's beneficial.

6) Prep spots for planting more chestnut trees in the spring.

7) Transplant fruit trees that I have been growing on pots. Need to put fencing around them to protect from deer.

8) Finish small bridge that I built over Labor Day weekend. It's a simple 8x5 deck on 4x4 stringers. It's roughly in place but I need to place some stone footers and then do the grade up to the bridge deck. This will make it shorter to get to where our chestnut grove is.

9) Clean and repair woodenware from our bee operation (a never ending chore)

10) finish digging the last of the onions

I'm sure there's more, just can't think of it off the top of my head.

Mike

Wow Mike - very industrious list - Good for you! Please share how you process your walnuts. We have 4 huge, mature (and loaded) walnut trees on our new homestead. I know they're in an outer pod with the actual nutshell inside. But do you just gather them as they fall? Have a "standard" drying period? etc?

We've had pecans at other locations (and have some here as well). But we have not tended or harvested walnuts. Also, do you use a spraying schedule, etc?

Any advice most welcome....Thanks...Kim

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Mill River Farm

I want to know God's Thoughts...the rest are details. ~~Albert Einstein~~

Kim, here are some pictures from our 2005 harvest:

http://members.aol.com/export4/nuts.html

We gather them as they fall. We don't spray our trees. We try to avoid chemicals on our place - period.

The steps involved are:

1) collect the nuts - we have found that nut wizards work best for us. We collect them in buckets.
2) run them through our huller - it can do 1,000 lbs/hour
3) float the nuts - bad/empty ones float, good ones sink
4) place on drying racks in the barn for a minimum of 2 weeks. They need to be single layer and turned fairly frequently to prevent mold. I'm going to try using fans this year to see if that helps with the drying.
5) Then we run them through our cracker - it does about 600 lbs/hr.
6) Seperate the nutmeats from the shells. This is the one area we haven't figured out how to scale. This is a hand operation for now. I have some stainless counters that work ok for this. I would love to automate (or even semi-automate) this part of it.

Because of the high oil content in Black Walnuts they can go rancid if they are stored in warm conditions. We find that freezing the nut meats works well.

We have hundreds of trees. We still haven't cleared the underbrush from all of them. The only tending we do is to keep the ground under/around them in grass and keep it short come harvest season. It makes it much easier and faster to cllect the nuts.

Hope this helps.

Mike

Hey, sweetie pie... before you load your gun, your hook, and your jowl, there's a few things that I'm thinkin' oughta get done:

- get water pump/radiator fixed on tractor
- fence in the feed plot
- clean and prep garden for winter
- finish installing ceiling in my shop
- put shop light and ceiling fan in my shop
- build a holding pen and chute for the cattle

Knowing you, this short list will only take a week or so, so you'll still have plenty of time for sportin'!

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Before you marry someone, ask yourself, "Will they be a good killing partner during the zombie apocalypse?"
-someecards.com

Mike...800 gals "so far" (!) in a season. Your place must qualify as a walnut GROVE Great pictures. The huller is interesting. Also hadn't heard of floating them. Thanks for the info.

There seems to be quite a tent worm problem in this area. They're everywhere - although we fortunately don't have a severe outbreak like we've seen on some other properties.

I must add - Call Extension Agent - to my To Do list. Perhaps they'll have some advice on tent worms (other than something toxic).

Mtman sounds quite handy and speedy....may we share some tasks for his list?

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Mill River Farm

I want to know God's Thoughts...the rest are details. ~~Albert Einstein~~

Oh, he IS! But he doesn't like to travel... I mean AT ALL! Going 20 miles into town is a chore for him. So, if you could bring your tasks to Bliss Mountain, he might oblige (if you bring beer!)

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Before you marry someone, ask yourself, "Will they be a good killing partner during the zombie apocalypse?"
-someecards.com

Well, not too much beer or he really won't get anything done! LOL