Sold

Darling Hubby and Darling Oldest went to the rental house yesterday to pick up the walnuts (poor squirrel, his good fortune gone as fast as it came). They took them over to the house that does the walnut hulling. So, they had to dump all the barrels into the "huller" which takes off that outer hull. They said that after they get done doing walnuts, those hulls get ground up and put out on their fields for fertlizer. Once the hulls are off, the walnuts get weighed and then they pay per pound. Last night we had 126 pounds turned in and they gave us a check for $13.83. For those of you not wanting to do the math, that's 11 cents per pound. Guess we're not going out to Red Lobster on our earnings, but it will buy us a pizza. The boys dreams of hitting it rich by planting a grove of walnut trees on our land here, are fizzeling.

Walnuts

I have accepted the fact that I am getting old. I turned 40 this year and things I used to do without much thought have required more effort. Things that didn't used to bother me required a good dose of ibuprofen to survive. Last night we went up to the rental house to mow. We have 2 big walnut trees in the yard and this week they did the big nut dump, so we had to pick up walnuts before we could mow. We started with having the 2 big boys mowing while Zach and I worked under one tree and Mike worked under the other one picking up the nuts. Wow, there were a ton of them. And the leaves that had started falling were not helping. We picked up a bunch, feeling under the leaves as we went. Then Mike came to get a rake. Great idea. I raked lightly, which moved the leaves, without picking up the nuts, and uncovered way more than I thought could possibly be left. The big boys mowed what they could and then started helping with nuts so they could continue. Zach was a little nut collecting machine!! He matched me bucket for bucket, everytime I was ready to dump my 5 gallon pail into the trash can, he was ready to dump too. We all picked up about 4 1/2 trash cans full of nuts and left them in the barn until we can come back for them with a trailer tonight and take them to an Amish place in our neighborhood who husks walnuts. (We figure the squirrel who is living in the barn is going to think he died and went to heaven - his winter supply right there, without any work!) They also buy nuts people collect and bring to them. We are hoping for enough money out of them to pay for a nice dinner for a family of 5. Last night there was a line in front of me when I got out the bottle of ibuprofen, everyone except Zach already aching. This morning, another line after everyone stiffened up over night. I think I actually feel a little better than the teenagers did this morning......