PineNut.com Mailing List    2022 Nevada Pinon Nuts Clearance and Sales Harvest Report -US PINON Pine Crop

Hello  Everyone,

It has been one of the most interesting harvests in last 25 years:

SOFT SHELL COMMERCIAL HARVEST (P. Monophylla)

Nevada and Western Utah failed to produce any substantial harvest. Commercial pickers teamed up in the single USFS area with only marginal pine cones producing about a 1/10 of what would normally be sold on the retail market. Cooperating families were able to each have a small amount of soft shell pinon, most of which are ending up being sold on street corners in Western Utah.

My orders started coming in mid October and this report was delayed while I ran across the southwest seeking more cones. Every cones needed to be spun to recover as many nuts as possible and there were no cone boxes delivered. Those orders are being refunded.

Preharvest orders have taken the majority of these nuts. There is a scant 500 lbs left and they will simply fly out of here. In an effort to preserver some of the harvest for long tern clients, prices were raised to point, I thought no one would buy - but, they still sold. 

My apologies. It is a wild harvest, and anything can happen - which brings us to hard shell.

HARD SHELL - New Mexico and Arizona

I saw PLENTY of pine cones in September, however, at the same time, I saw locked down communities, road block and curfews. It was if we had stepped into an entirely different country. People who would ordinarily been in the woods harvesting were hampered by the CV-19 conditions on all three of the reservations, Hopi, Zuni and Navajo. My heart was broken for the people of these nations. As a Colorado resident, I could not even travel into New Mexico without a two week quarantine.  There was a $1,000 fine for being out after crefew and one one side of the street it was a different time zone than another. Traveling through the Arizona side of the Navajo Nation was both sad and discounting.  

All that being said, some of the hardshell has made its way into the market place, as others have been able to travel through New Mexico to areas people could harvest. Our inventory is low and we are hopeful, more hardshell will be making its way to us.

ORDERS and Deliveries 

We are close to getting all the orders caught up. People place orders starting in July and by the time mid -October comes I am running behind and stressed trying to size, package and post . The sizing has been extremely time consuming as ONLY SMALL NUTS are removed. There are simply not as many larger nuts and the final product is rather medicore this year. Some  factors I know in the size development of nuts include:

Age of Tree - older trees. larger nuts - (Shout out to Mount Wilson Ranch which has excellent older trees.) 

Air Temperature - seeing cooler temps longer in in May and June, slowing growth 

Moisture - less moisture - drier temps causes tree to stop sending energy to nuts and the cones dry up.

Delivery

Please be prepared to wait for your nuts up to 2 weeks as I get caught up on all the work that a wild harvest involves. 

Thank you

Penny