Nuts

While we were in the northern San Joaquin Valley in California in September, we parked "The Bus" in the farmyard at Dean's niece, Holly, and her husband, John. Their farmyard is surrounded by an almond orchard, which fortunately, had been harvested just before we arrived. Harvesting almonds is such a dusty process.

The harvest operation, however, doesn't gather all of the almonds. While we were there Holly walked through part of the orchard and gathered almonds still in the husk and shell. She gave us a large grocery bag of almonds in-the-shell as we were leaving.

Although I've spent many hours cracking those "Nuts", I still had half of the bag to go. The bowl doesn't seem fill up very fast when I crack two, eat one.


Sunday afternoon was a lazy day in the 80's, so I sat on our patio cracking almonds with a cold beer at hand. It was a really nice way to relax on a sunny Sunday afternoon . . . and besides, it was a job that needed to be done.

















. . . and since the NFL playoff games were on, it was nice to watch football while cracking "Nuts".

A few of the neighbor guys joined me to watch football on our patio. They did suggest I replace the 16" patio TV with a 42" big screen so we could have a Superbowl Party and they could watch the Superbowl on our patio . . . but the "Nuts" will all be cracked (and maybe eaten) by then.