October has been an amazing month. A short summary:
- John Culver’s funeral on October 1 Funeral of John Culver in Willis Texas – Notes
- Elton Cleveland’s 103rd birthday, October 10
- Abigail Hoffman’s birthday, October 13
- PG Special meeting, October 15
- Anita Bass’s birthday, October 25
- Georgetown and Mountain Peak special meetings
- Marilynn Frye came to PG Oct 26th as the 32nd resident (since opening in 2009), 10th current resident
- Pecan harvest
Karen Cleveland and Alicia Weaver came for Elton’s birthday. All 3 like to take pictures, so we have lots! Here are several… I won’t try to describe them all! Sorry, some of these pictures aren’t working right. Click on the picture if you want to see it correctly.
Birthdays for Abigail Hoffman (22) and Anita (53) (with husband Shawn):
We told Lyle we didn’t think it possible to transport the residents to the 1 day special meeting at Georgetown. He suggested we have 1 day at PG between Georgetown and Mountain Peak, which we had on October 15th. The 3rd meeting was tested and Shawn Bass (shown above with his wife Anita) professed. Again, a group of pictures… the workers that day, the room set up for social distancing, Titus and Domenic, Betty and Jack Poage with Domenic, Alice and Ruth, Tom Davis with Gilbert, Titus helping with crows (the day before).
Marilynn came after Mountain Peak. Ruth and Emma brought her. We’re so glad for her influence at the residence.
Other visitors in this difficult time included Jim and Sue Roachell visited his father Clarence, Marlee Freesmann and her mother Mavis Morgan, visiting with Gilbert, and Dan and Bev Oaks with Marilynn, Ronald and Alice.
We farmed less than half of the pecans this year. At the end, the crows and squirrels got more than we did. But we have enough to be satisfied. Here are a few pictures from the outdoor process, Wayne shaking the tree, Dominique picking up the pecans (plus leaves, sticks, stones…) with the harvester, then Wayne, Dawn, Dominique and Kathy using the cleaner to separate pecans from the rest.
The indoor process is long, starting with drying tables. Once dry the pecans are run through a cracker, separator (which separates shell from meat), air separator (which blows the shell away, similar to winnowing, with Ronald’s cane), and then to the hopper of the vibration table.
After that the process becomes fairly manual, sorting out bad pecans, stones, shell… on the vibration table, then running through the sizing table to separate out small pieces (which are discarded because of small shell bits), larger pieces and “halves”. Finally the pecans are weighed and put in bags. Here are pictures of Kathy, Dawn, Wayne, Ronald and Joyce working at the vibration table (the slowest and most labor intensive part of the process), then Dawn and Kathy at the sizing table.
Thanks for your interest in us here!
Ken