by George Collins » Thu Aug 23, 2012 1:38 am
Thank y'all for the concern but crop losses are as much a part of farming as sweat - inevitable. Having grew up on a farm, I was already accustomed to the occasional loss. The last year Youngblood didn't fence his garden in, he didn't get a single mouthful of food from the ~ 2 acres he planted. Deer wiped his entire garden off the map. That was the year he and two other fellers killed 29 within the area immediately around the garden.
The cool thing about farming trees is that they only have to be gotten right once, to be right for a lifetime. In some instances, such as the monkey puzzle tree when I've been studying up on, many, many, many lifetimes. (How many lifetimes are there in a 1,000 years?) When the trees drop their nuts, I will be there once again picking 'em up and putting them in stratification and running the same play one more time.
Guy, does seem that getting them in early is the key. The more time they have to grow before the stresses of a Mississippi summer are thrust upon them, the better their chances seem to be. Given the harshness of this particular year, the fact that any survived is a true testimony to how resilient trees are. We had our hottest, driest May/June sine the year 1910 (so I heard) followed up by 48 consecutive days of rain. Those conditions are harsh by most standards.
It was as if our year got put on fast forward by ~ 6 weeks. Even now, our weather feels cool and crisp like fall and here it is August. We ought to be sweltering yet the weather is quite pleasant. The conditions outside feel like it should 6 weeks from now. Sawtooth acorns and persimmons have been dropping since the first of August. Might a cool August portend a harsher than normal winter?
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