October has been a busy, wonderful month. The pecan harvest keeps us busy, and the conventions were wonderful. All 7 residents were at Georgetown full-time. John, Alice, and Dad were at Mountain Peak.
One big event was Elton’s 99th birthday. We brought Roger from the nursing home. Elton’s daughters Karen and Cheryl were able to join us by Skype.
Elton’s son, David, came for a visit and took Elton to Georgetown. Sandra Wilson (Doris’s sister) and Carol Bush came for a visit. We only got a picture of Sandra petting Bambi.
Alda and Ann Blakemore came to visit. Ann was a coworker with Doris. Here they are with Ruth and Doris, adn then with John, Dominique and Mimi.
Bobby Sylvia was at Georgetown (below visiting with Doris). He came back to PG with us. Then Glenn Sparks came by and picked him up… they were headed to Effie. Bobby was in our home a lot when when I was a kid.
The Howdens are now living in Willis. Deniese spent a day helping out at PG. Here she’s with Salena and myself. Jim Stipp is here visiting today. He knew Samuel in Monteray when Samuel was a kid.
We’re having a reasonable pecan harvest this year, which is nice after having no harvest last year. Last year the wet spring caused scab, then the crows and squirrels ate all that was left! This year, we had a wet spring again but we sprayed for scab 5 times. We had almost no squirrels or crows. And so we have pecans! For the first time we’ve identified the types of pecans, and are keeping them separate. The Pawnees (red on the map below) came in in late September, followed by the Cheyenes (green), then the Chocataws (orange) and finally the Desirables (yellow). We have about 7 native (N) pecan trees, and have planted a lot of Kiowas (pink), but they aren’t big enough to bear yet. There are 4 trees (blue) that we aren’t sure what they are, but they have huge pecans like the one shown below.
The pecan harvesting involves shaking the tree, picking them up off the ground with the harvester and running them through the cleaner which uses a big air blower to seperate out the leaves, limbs, etc. The pecans come out on a conveyor belt and people have to pick out the stones and bad pecans. Below Amy, Ty, Dad and John are heloing Samuel clean the pecans. John has found a new use for his golf cart! After this the pecans are put on drying racks to dry, then sometimes they have to be run through the cleaner again to blow out the empty pecans.
Ty added a cow to his longhorn heard, so now he has a bull and a cow. Sandy and Bambi are good friends.
Ken