Old habits die hard...

Every time we are out and pass walnuts laying in the road, I want to stop and gather them.  At the least, I would like to stop and crack a few to see if they are good  We never do...at least not out on a public road.  There are a couple places where I will if we happen to go there.  One is a farmer who lets Roger hunt on his land, and the other is a place not too far from us.

When we were kids, we always gathered walnuts in the fall.  We would hull them, by hand or by putting them in the drive for the car to run over when parking.  Personally, I did not mind my hands being all stained.  Don't even really care much now if I am messing with them and end up with walnut stained hands.

I know we spread them out to dry, but for the life of me I cannot think of where all we spread them.  Maybe on the top of the doghouse?  (Here is a story about the doghouse to get an idea of its size.)  Even though it was big doghouse, I am sure we had to spread them somewhere else.  After they were dried, we put them in the basement.  Again, I don't remember what we put them in.

As a kid, I liked to every now and then go in and get a few, and get the hammer, and I would sit on the steps and crack them.  To eat as a snack.  In the winter when it got too cold, sometimes someone at night would go crack open a bunch of them in to a pan...just crack them enough till hopefully we could get the actual nut out.  Sometimes we sat and picked them out to eat, or sometimes it was at mom's request for us to crack enough to pick out a cup or so of the nuts to go in a cake or something she was making. 

I know one of my brothers still gathers walnuts, and the old guy we met out near the strip pits gathers them, but other than those two...I don't know a soul that will take the time to gather nuts. 

Also from the strip pits...

These are all from the strip pit yesterday...more than one hawk is involved.

This is a Northern Harrier...there are lots of them out there in the winter.

I am pretty sure that this one is NOT a Northern Harrier, but I have no idea what it is.

This is the same Northern Harrier as in the first two pics..

This is a another hawk.

I so wish this last shot of it had been in focus...still click on them to see a better view.  You can still tell he is looking at me!

Hope you enjoyed these...a Northern Harrier is about the only hawk I feel like I can recognize for sure.  

Almost standing room only....

I made a quick run through the strip pits again today...the first little pond I pass had more geese on it than I had ever seen there at one time.

There were White-fronted Geese mixed in with the Canada Geese.  There was weeds between me and the pond.  I did try to get out but that sort of agitated them.  Some flew away.

The photo above along with the ones below were take at the big strip pit.

All of these can be clicked on to expand the view, so click on them, and notice in the last three photos just how many are sleeping.  Even out on the water.

And on the way home, I went by the pond I showed in the first two photos...this is what was going on there:

I am assuming they were tired...it was the middle of the afternoon, and almost all of them were like this.