Harvesting almonds

How amazing to have some of our own almond trees in  our new Andalucian garden...I harvested a few about a month ago, as a lot of the expert Spanish farmers were harvesting their trees with vigour, but many of the nut husks were still closed. Commercially that wouldn't be a problem, as the nuts are removed mechanically, but for us trying to get each one out by hand would have been near on impossible. A few weeks later though, many more have split husks, so over the last few days I've had my first major attempt at a proper 'harvest'. And many lessons learnt! The nets are slippy! The trees high (the tree pole not quite long enough!), and almonds, though small, hurt when they rain down on your head! They are delicious though, and I'm so excited that we can grow our own plant protein. So lots of almonds to shell now (while listening to a good book!), then recipes to create...but thats another post.

Kt x

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