Pecan Grove (www.pecan-grove.net) Pecan Grove and Senior Residence

November 1, 2012

October 2012

Filed under: Pecan Farming — knewman @ 9:06 pm

There are lots of changes happening at PG.  Barry Barkley brought Roger Cleveland to be the 11th resident.  Roger is 93 and is in very good health.  We’re glad to have him with us.  The first picture shows Barry and Roger.  The second shows the current residents.  In the front row from left to right, Naomi Nicolson, Barbara Hillagoss, Frances McPherson, Evelyn Wilson, Bea Jecmenek and Esther Potts.  The back row, Ken and Kathy Newman, Doris Crawford, Betty Lawrence, Jean Hagemeier, Roger Cleveland, Teresa Goff, Leona and Jack Newman.

All of the residents have done well in October.  Evelyn Wilson fell in her room and broke her collar bone (note the sling in the picture above), but she regained her strength quickly.  She has been in contact with her relatives in Missouri and they are arranging for her to move to an assisted living center near them, so she will be leaving us in early November.

All 11 residents were able to attend the convention at Georgetown.  Here are a few pictures taken at Georgetown.  We’re thankful for the use of golf carts!

Union meeting at our place on first Sunday with pot luck afterward is something the residents look forward to:

As was explained in last months posting, Ronda and Mike Rosamond and Brandon and Tamara Chandler (and kids and dogs) are moving back to Arkansas.  Here’s a group picture of them before they left (without the dogs).  The second picture is of Betty taking a walk with one of the dogs that they took.

Naomi turned 84 in October.  The picture below shows her with Joyce.   The second picture shows the 4 full time staff members goofing off – Cindy Erickson, Ronda Rosamond, Virginia McKnight and Kathleen Stancliff.  Kathleen has also decided to move back to Arkansas at the end of November, so our search for staff continues.

We were glad to have lots of visitors in October.  The first picture shows Anna Ross helping Roger, Leona, Kenny and Salena with the pecan cleaning process.  The second shows her grandson David and Nicole Ross and son Greyson.

Dale and Patty Maki brought Ken Johnson to visit.  Peggy Musgrove and Nancy Lyons visited their old companions.

Dub and Cindy Johnson visited from New York.  These pictures show them visiting with the residents.

Anita Forsberg (and old friend of ours) was a visitor at our conventions, and came for a visit after Mountain Peak.  Here’s she’s shown with Sharon Wahlin who is in our field again this year with Sara Lacock.  The second picture is of our fountain with a rainbow around it.

Finally, the twins at their first convention at Mountain Peak (held by Kathy and Leona), and at home practicing their new “sitting up” trick.

Ken

 

 

 

 

 

October 1, 2012

September 2012

Filed under: Senior Residence — knewman @ 4:53 pm

There are two postings this month, this one about the PG Sr. Residence, and the preceding one about the pecan harvest (for those interested).  A lot has happened in September.

Sadly, Frank’s confusion got to the point where he needed more care than we could provide.  With heavy hearts, plans were made to move him to a nursing home near his sister Jean in Florida.  Ronda flew with him from Houston to Orlando.  Jean and Philip Farris met them in Orlando and took them to the nursing home.  That was a difficult day for all of us, but it has turned out better than expected.  Frank is very happy to be near his sister, and the nursing home is giving him daily therapy which seems to have helped.  Jean sees him almost every day, takes him to meetings and sometimes to her place for a meal.  We’re sad to see him go, but glad the situation has worked out well for him there.  We miss his humor and soft spirit here.  The pictures below show him with Ronda and I just before leaving, and then him with Jean and Philip in Florida.

Ronda and her husband Mike Rosamond (who does the pecan farming), her son Brandon Chandler (who has been working on the farm) and Brandon’s family have decided to move back to Arkansas to be near their families (Rosamonds and Chandlers).  So we’ve put out a message asking for help at PG.  Then we realized that Destiny Minor (Mike’s niece who has been working part-time at the residence), is planning on staying, and wants to work full-time.  So, we’re planning on having Destiny work full-time, and Kathy (my wife) and Karin (my daughter) will take over more of the management responsibilities.  We’re still looking for someone to work on the farm, but Brandon isn’t planning on leaving till the end of the year, so we have some time to find the right person.  This will be a big change for PG.  We hope all goes well for the Rosamonds and Chandlers in McRae Arkansas.

We had 3 birthdays in September.  Jean’s (89th) must have been a hoot (I wasn’t there).  She loves Whataburger, so they loaded the PG bus with all the residents and took them to Whataburger in Willis.  The employees at Whataburger were great!  One even tried to dance with Jean!

Esther turned 97 – oldest resident, with a wonderful spirit.

Evelyn turned 86.  Visitors included the Beavers who visited Barbara.

Lyle Waldo (my cousin’s son) visited his brother Don and Jenny Waldo.  The picture shows Don, his daughter Ava and Lyle.  Jim Holmes came down to see Lyle Waldo.  Here he’s shown with his good friend (one of our residents) Betty Lawrence.

Frances McPherson’s son Richard came with Jerry Freed (Jerry on the left, Richard on the right).  Virginia’s sisters came to visit.

Janet Nicole came to visit her aunt Barbara.  Janet is also seen in the Pecan Harvest posting working at the vibrating table.  The second picture below shows a spider down by the lake, in this the bug capital of the world!

I can’t finish without some pictures of the twins!

Ken

 

 

 

Pecan Harvest

Filed under: Pecan Farming,Pecan Grove — knewman @ 4:53 pm

This post describes the process we use for harvesting pecans.  Our pecan orchard is relatively young.  Pecan trees don’t produce many pecans until they are 10+ years old.  Our oldest trees are now about 14 years old, but many of our trees are younger and still too small to harvest.  Last year we had no harvest at all due to the drought.

We have 5 types of paper shell pecans, most named after Indian nations such as Pawnee, Cheyenne,  and Choctaw.  We have one variety with the name Desirable.  The Pawnee’s are harvested in early September.  The rest are harvested in early October.  This year the harvest is earlier than usual by a few weeks.

When the pecans are about ready, the crows start coming.  In 2009 we lost most of our crop to crows.  The solution to that problem is “poppers”, like the one shown below.  These devices run off of propane.  Every few minutes they fire with a sound that is similar to a shot gun.  We run 3 of these poppers in the pecan orchard during the day.  One night we forgot to turn them off, and the next day we had a lot of complaints from our neighbors!  The first challenge for the harvest is to find a crew willing to work!  The second picture below shows part of the crew headed out to the orchard.

We catch the pecans from the tree in tarps that are laid on both sides of the tree.  Below you can see the tarps being moved to a tree using 2 4 wheelers, then placed around a tree.  The tractor is driven onto the tarps, the shaker clamps onto the tree, and the tree is shook.

The following link is to a video shows a tree being shaken.  It’s amazing that neither the tree or the tractor is damaged!

Shaking tree

After several trees, the tarps are emptied into a trailer.  When the trailer has a good load it is taken to the cleaner.

For the first harvest we had gleaners who followed after, picking up dropped pecans.  We didn’t continue gleaning though… too much work for too few pecans.  It makes one glad for gleaners that don’t count the cost!

The cleaner lifts the pecans up and dumps them through some brushes that help remove the husk and then in front of a large fan.  The lighter things like leaves, branches and bad pecans are blown out.  What’s left comes out on a conveyor for people to sort out the bad from the good.  The good pecans go into bags at the end of the conveyor.

The following is a short video of the cleaner in operation.  For many of the pecans the husks have not yet come loose, so they are thrown out.  You’ll see the green ones being thrown out in the video.

Cleaner in action

The bags of pecans are taken into the air conditioned/dehumidified “pecan room” and dumped on drying tables.  After a few weeks of drying, the pecans are ready to be cleaned.  The first step in the cleaning process is the cracker, shown below.  It uses air hammers to crack the pecan shells.

The cracked pecans are dumped by the cracker into the separator which thrashes them inside a rotating drum to separate the shell from the meat.  Then an elevator raises them up and they are dropped through a blower.  Since the shell is lighter than the meat, most of the shell blows out into a trash can, and the meet falls to an elevator which raises them again drops them onto the hopper of a shaker table.  At this point the process becomes very manpower intensive.  You see 6 people below picking out shell and bad pecans as they vibrate past.

Finally, the pecans are run through a sizing vibration table which separates them into 4 sizes.  The first, very small pieces, we throw away because they tend to have little bits of shell.  The next 2 sizes we call “pieces” and what falls off the end we call “halves”.  We bag and freeze the pieces and halves.  The second picture below shows the pecans waiting to be cleaned, from the first day of the second harvest, which is currently in progress.  We now have more pecans than can fit on the drying tables… so the best harvest we’ve had to date.

September 1, 2012

August 2012

Filed under: Pecan Grove,Senior Residence — knewman @ 9:03 am

The residents at PG are doing fairly well.  Jean had some bad days in July and hasn’t regained her full strength.  She’s decided to give up her car.  She’s the only resident that has had a car, though she seldom drove it.  Frank continues to loose weight gradually.  Now he’s 210 lb fully dressed.  His confusion and short term memory continue to get worse.  When his mind was clearer he insisted on one shower a week (whether he needed it or not 🙂 ).  Now he’s not sure what day it is, so he takes a shower every day!  In spite of the confusion, he keeps a wonderful spirit, and a sense of humor.

We had lots of visitors in August but didn’t do well at getting pictures.  Here are 2 pictures of a visit with Selna and Diane Thorburn and Diane’s sister Doris Kopitke.

Clarice Berry came to visit with her brother and his wife, Carroll and Cindy Smith.  The second picture is of Kathleen Stancliff (one of the 4 full-time staff at the residence) on her birthday surrounded by Serenity, Hailee and Dixie-Rose Chandler.

Three birthdays close together in August are Karin (our daughter who works part-time at PG), my dad, Jack, and my sister, Ronda (the manager at PG).  Here’s pictures of Karin and Jack.

Here’s a picture of all 3 together at Brent’s house.  The second picture is of Esther and Bea visiting on a bench down by the lake.  Both are nearly blind, but each evening they walk together down to the lake.  Esther insists that this little 7 acre lake is a river :).

The pecan trees are loaded with pecans!  Some are so loaded that the limbs are breaking from the weight.  The first picture below shows a tree that looks like it has been destroyed by the weight of the pecans.  The second is of a doe and fawn in the hay field.  These 2 deer are often seen by the residents around the building.

I wrote July’s post from Israel and included 2 pictures from there.  After Israel Kathy and I went to Montenegro (to see the McSpadden’s) and then to France for the convention.  We lived near Paris from ’90 – ’93, and love to go back about every 2 years.  This shows the workers there, and then our good friends Andre and Julia Bilbao and their daughter Ainoha, who live in Shanghai but were at the convention in France.  Andre (who’s French) lived with us for one school year here in Texas in ’95.

I’m not sure if I can write a post without a picture of the twins.  Here are the twins chilling.

Ken

 

 

July 31, 2012

July 2012

Filed under: Pecan Grove,Senior Residence — knewman @ 12:40 am

All at PG are doing well.  We’ve had many visitors in July.  Visitors are certainly appreciated!  The following pictures show Eldon, Ruth, Pam and John Badertscher with Esther Potts.  The second picture shows the same group visiting with the residents.

Sharon Morgan and Carrie Franks came to visit Dale and Patty Maki.  Patty brought them to PG for a visit.  Ralph and Dee Hart came back again, shown here with Evelyn Wilson.

Doug, Elaine, Karen and David Beaman visited as well as Jon and Mae Nelson.  Jon helped with the construction of PG… good to have them back.

Ron and Anna Furrow (the other grandparents) visited with our 2 twin granddaughters, Maren and Maven Furrow.  Frank Porter had his 73rd birthday.

On July 4th some of the kids did a fireworks show for the residents.  The picture shows them sitting on the back porch ready to watch the show.  Early in July we had a lot of rain and a problem with the lake overflow, so the lake level was too high.

Recently it seems there is always a Naomi story.  She insists we get her some bug tapes, like the ones you usually see hanging in the cook house to catch flies.  She hangs them outside her window (bug tapes are meant to be used indoors), and then is very impressed by the number of bugs she catches!  We have tried to explain to her that she now lives in one of the bug capitals of the world!

I’m writing this blog update from Rosh Pina, Israel (just north of the Sea of Galilee).  Kathy and I arrived in Israel July 18th, and will be leaving tonight for Montenegro for a few days to visit the McSpaddens, and then on the France for the convention.  Some of you have been getting my messages about Israel and are probably tired of hearing about it.  For those who haven’t, here’s 2 pictures.  The first is of Jerusalem taken from the Mount of Olives.  The second is of a Saturday evening bible study in Haifa.

We’ve had wonderful days here, touring Israel, understanding a little better the history and context in which Jesus lived, and enjoying sweet fellowship.  Israel has been much more enjoyable than we ever expected!

Shalom,

Ken

 

 

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