Going Nuts !! Its the Almond Harvest:::
Thursday, June 24th, 2010The Hondon Valley has 1000′s of acres of Almond Trees & it’s harvest time already !
The surrounding fields and mountain terraces are bursting with the delicious almond nut. You can still see the traditional method of harvest (i.e. put a big net on the ground and whack the tree with sticks until the almonds fall off). But more recently farmers are hiring a modern tractor attachment that looks like it was a prototype from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (see picture) !!!
Hondon Valley Harvest Time (late August / early Sept')
This does the job in a couple of minutes and is a joy to watch if you’ve never seen one before !! The tractor is driven up to the tree trunk; the attachment ‘clamps’ around the tree whilst simultaneously opening a large concertina style skirt to act as a vessel for collecting the almonds. The attachment then vibrates the tree trunk vigorously to shake the nuts into the skirt. After a few trees the skirt is emptied into a pile for scooping up later into trucks to go back to the farmer’s place for sifting and bagging… and sooner or later turned into salted, sweetened, ground, paste products. I particularly like the local roasted / salted almonds here which are sometimes served as a Tapa … very more-ish and probably too fattening BUT DELICIOUS !!!
Shaking and Collecting Almonds
