Busy Beavers

We've been pretty busy the last week. A couple of days were spent in the greenhouse laying out Jatropha seed so it can dry and filling pots so that more Jatropha plants can be started for transplanting in a couple of months. Here, Travis is laying out seed from all of the individual trees. 288 trees have to be hand harvested for individual data.

This is what the fruit looks like. There are 3 seeds inside each one of these pods.

We made a trip to Danbury to check on the Chinese Tallow trees and to fix the fence the cattle had torn up, but nothing too major. Hogs are getting in and rooting around near the trees, but no serious damage...yet. I think Travis will put up a low wire on the electric fence to slow them down.

Thursday 22nd: These next pictures are from Weslaco. We picked 2 large sacks of grapefruit at the A&M Kingsville Citrus Center there and I think we'll try to make grapefruit wine with them. They are super sweet and taste really, really good. Elizabeth was more worried about wanting to crawl on the ground than she was about taking pictures. While we were there, Travis machine harvested some of his Jatropha trees and I hand-harvested a row of trees to compare data later.

Yesterday, we made a trip to College Station. Travis had to drop off a trailer and pick up a tractor and disk on a different trailer, and I had a meeting. It's been a long couple of days traveling, but it was all fun and definitely worth getting out of the house.

Today, we did some work out in the garden, chopping and watering mostly. It was too windy and cool to be out there long! Last week, we set up the drip irrigation to water the poppies so maybe now they'll grow!