George and I spent a good deal of time on the ground in the Southwest, thank goodness! Saturday August 28th, I was again out in the woods, scoping coning of soft shell pine nuts. There will be a harvest. Last year, we saw close to 200,000 lbs of soft shell Nevada pinenuts come out of the forest. It was a banner year. This year, pickings are slim - very slim, for the soft shell harvest. When the rains do not arrive at the proper times, the cones dry up, turn brown and drop.
Saturday I was scoping, with two young woman (ages 14 and 15) . I cannot tell what a joy it was to share with them and how eagerly they soaked up the information I had to share. I taught the young woman, to pray before harvest and give thanks, to never take without giving and sing to trees as a means for expressing the joy and appreciation for the harvest. These are the natural laws.
Hard shell New Mexico Harvest. The Colorado areas we saw were heavy with blight and beetle kill. The forests in the Four Corner's area were sick, very sick. There will be no harvest there for many years. We went to areas all over New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah to find harvest ground and we did.

We started working on the 2010 pine nut harvest the middle of June. I want to thank the ranchers and private land owners in the Southwest who have called and emailed us about harvesting, together with The Nevada Cattlemen's Association, albeit, the cattlemen are strange bedfellows for us.
This year, Goods From The Woods clients will have pine nuts. However, we are harvesting later this year. The longer the nuts can stay in the cones, the better the nuts. The very first nuts that come off the trees are not best. We are choosing to wait. To make this up to our clients, we are giving free gifts with 10 lb soft shell orders, including cotton draw string bags, free hickory nut samples, pinon essential oil and other goodies. We want folks to have the opportunity to try our sister company's products.
A Wild Crops Farm is George Frazier's enterprise, while Goods From The Woods, belongs to Penny Frazier. The two companies are a marriage, with George harvesting and distilling certified organic floral waters, hickory nuts, and other Missouri harvests, while I focus out west on pine nuts. Life is good, I am grateful to another pine nut harvest and hope our clients understand, the labors of love that bring them their products.

It looks like we will have a wonderful hickory harvest at A Wild Crops Farm. Hickory trees produce nuts almost every other year. 2009, there wasn't a hickory nut to be found up or down the state of Missouri.
We have several hickory trees on down on the bottoms of our farm. Additionally, we are hoping that several other organic farmer's in Missouri will have hickory nuts.

2010 will be a great year for hickory.

We met a great lady from river country who will help provide our clients with hickory nuts. While not certified organic, her farm products are chemical free, pesticide free and 100% natural. This lady knows her nuts and we look forward to offer her hickory nuts as well as our certified wild crop organic hickory. We do have to charge a bit more for ours, because of the certification. However, all the farmers we work with, respect the land and have good land ethics and share our values. We are really proud of our work with small farmers and wild crop harvest here in the Ozarks. In helping farmers make money with their wild plants, we help preserve biodiversity.

This year, we have wholesale hickory in 50 lb bags for $3.00 lb. Because hickory is difficult to process (even with George's sheller) shelled hickory nuts are pretty expensive. We will try and offer smaller quantities so people who want to make that special hickory cake or pie, won't have to buy a whole lb. We will have hickory nuts to ship mid October and it looks to be a great year
.

Link: http://www.pinenut.com

I have had a half dozen calls over the last week about shelling American Pine Nuts. Last year, Costco turned down American Pine Nuts because the processors could not remove the membranes. The kernels looked dirty and by in large, the poor effort soiled the American Pine Nut potential.

Goods From The Woods, pinenut.com had looked at all types of methods for processing pine nuts. The American pine nut harvest fluxes a great deal from year to year. Because of the supply of raw material, Goods From The Woods made the choice to invest in small scale, inexpensive shelling technology. Additionally, small scale, inhouse processing assures the consumer of the freshest,best quality pine nuts.

We design and had manufactured pine nut shelling machines suitable for coops, natural food stores, delis, small eateries and farmer's markets.
We have several of the shelling machines still available. The machines remove 90% of the kernels and inner hulls (membranes), creating a beautiful clean product. We are giving away these machines with contracts of 500 lbs or more. The pine nuts cost $10.00 per pound. The pine nut shelling machines are air driven, made of food grade materials, easy to clean and foot activated.

Link: http://www.thesalemnewsonline.com/pages/news.html#_5

Today's post are excerpts of a article in the Salem News by John Hambacker, a retired Salem High School science teacher who has spent time the past few months studying the possibility of a biomass facility that would produce electricity for Salem, MO. Thanks to the Salem Mo. News for printing his story. I have clipped some parts of the story of Dr. Hambacker. He asked questions and did the right thing for our community. Basically, this retire science teacher was invested enough in our community to investigate the impact using forest feedstock for the generation of power. I am really proud and inspired by his work.

The company presenting the proposal to the Salem City Council, is Proenergy, a company working mainly in countries known for corruption and exploitation of people and natural resources. The company presented a "folksy, down home two page outline" to the City Council as a proposal. It was a deliberate attempt to pass themselves off as "backwoods - just like you." Snake oil salesmen, I tell you! The countries that Proenergy operates in were listed on the front page of its website, until recently. Suddenly, Proenergy is not that proud of its operations in Ghana,Venezuela,Mexico,Argentina,Panama,
Pakistan. Now for John Hambacker thoughts on biomass, forest fueled power in Salem MO.

For 39 years my science club students participated in all kinds of outdoor activities, and I can only hope I instilled in them a better understanding of our immediate environment and the role each of us plays as stewards of this land, so that future generations might enjoy what we adults experienced in our youth. This involvement with nature has caused me to become very interested in the possible placement of a biomass electrical generating plant in Salem's industrial park.

The Biomass Generator plant met with some of the wood industries in our area.They presented water usage: 300,000 gallon per day. Second the number given for wood usage had changed to 325,000 green tons per year. ProEnergy was no longer interested in residual wood - now in round wood. ProEnergy was no longer interested in slabs. Since the charcoal industry had commented about their industry's 125 jobs potentially vanishing if ProEnergy came to town.

I calculated the amount of money ProEnergy would receive based on 10 cents per KWh and began to wonder where we were going to get the money necessary to run our police and park departments, which in the past had come from the residual remaining from citizens' electrical payments to our city.

I looked at the efficiencies of producing electricity using coal, wind, solar, nuclear and biomass and asked why biomass when other methods are not only more efficient but some are also much cleaner? I even did calculations where I tried to determine how many KWh we could produce using the gasoline and diesel fuel used by the loggers bringing the biomass material into the industrial park plant. The only calculation I could not perform, was the waste products f the charcoal plants use a high percentage of slabs. ProEnergy said they did not want the slabs because they have a high bark content. I began to wonder about other sawyers and their saleable wood products. Read more about citizen issues with forest fuled biomass power generation.

Link: http://www.agra-net.com/portal2/home.jsp?template=newsarticle&artid=20017779316&pubid=ag047

Link: http://www.agra-net.com/portal2/home.jsp?template=newsarticle&artid=20017779316&pubid=ag047

Increased global interest will keep pine nut supplies short in 2010/11 Tuesday May 25 2010 FOLLOWING historically high prices of pine nuts seen in the 2009/10 season, of up to €25,000 ($31,047) to €26,000 per tonne, supply will still be short and prices stable going into the new crop, according to the pine nuts working group of the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council (INC), headed by Cheng Hung Kay, of CHK trading. The total supply for 2010/11 is estimated at 19,740 tonnes, a marginal increase on the 19,330 tonnes available last year.

This forecast is also echoed on the pine nut commodity report, noting the small crop (not much bigger than 2009) will lead to the continuation of high prices.

Comment by Penny - A grain of salt on production rates @ 19,740 - I believe that is INC folks, rather than global. I don't think all the Russian folks buy into the group. Regardless, those folks that are currently paying UNI $35.00 lb won't see any major price break for 2010/ 2011. The risk of pine nut mouth continues, as no one seems to have firm "why" the pine nuts from China cause a bitter taste in people's mouths.

Of course, Goods From The Woods has free pine nut shellers for small commercial producers. They have pine nut contracts available *US Production - $10.00 per pound, 1,000 lb minium order - comes with FREE PINE NUT SHELLER. There are 17 spots left out of the 25 available places. Delivery starts early / mid October. We highly suggest that orders be placed early.

Categories: Background Tags: 2011 pine nut harvest, forecast, pine nut harvest forcast, pine nut harvest outlook, pine nut production, pinos, pinyon, price of pine nuts