Farm Fresh Almonds! Coming Real Soon!
Howdy! Soon, I'll be adding Almonds to AFD Mercantile! YUM!They will be FARM FRESH, from this year's summer harvest! The almonds were literally shaken from the tree within the month!Fresh almonds taste so so good! Way better than any that have been sitting on the shelf for months! I'm speaking from personal experience here. I mean, I've always had access to the fresh ones, but I may or may not have bought some from the grocery store on occasion, and let me tell you... they just don't taste quite the same!Try some fresh california almonds for yourself!! I know you'll love them!The nuts will be packaged in cotton sacks, screen printed by yours truly! They're almost ready! (Scroll down to see part of the process that goes into making them)
Here's a few photos that I took in the orchard last week, as well as a few tid-bits about almonds:
The Almond Orchard In August
Almonds are harvested by shaking the trees until the nuts fall off. Then, they blow them and sweep them up into neat rows between the trees. After the nuts dry, another machine comes by and picks them up and they bring them to a big trailer where they take a ride up an elevator to the top of the pile. Then they make there way to the processor where they are cleaned, shelled, and sorted!
The hull is the outer-most part, kind of like the "fruit" of the almond. The shell is the part that directly encases the almond inside.
Harvest usually starts in early August. But different factors and weather conditions during the year and at harvest time can shift the timing a little bit. The different varieties of almonds in an orchard are ready for harvest at different times as well.
Almond trees are stone fruit trees! They're cousins to peaches! But they have different edible parts. You don't eat the "fruit" of an almond, and the "almond" inside the pit of the peach is not healthy to eat!
Printing the Almond Sacks
[gallery size="medium" link="none" ids="1536,1533,1534"]Then I took the film positives and exposed the image on to the emulsion coated screens and washed them out and waited for them to dry.I printed the first color, and forgot to take pictures, but you can see the process through the second color, below![gallery link="none" columns="2" size="medium" ids="1538,1537,1532,1535"]
Thanks for checking out my blog! I'll let y'all know as soon as the almonds are ready in my shop.
Please contact me or leave a comment if you have any questions or comments about anything!
Have a wonderful day!
Love, Megan Rosemary