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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 31, 2020 19:45:59 GMT -6
Bon,
Did you get any rain during the past week?
We had a steady downpour here that went on for days on end. We ended up with 4.51" inches last week.
Today, I sat out in the warm sunlight most of the day and shelled okra seeds. I've got 41.5 pounds shelled out so far. When I put it up on the scale and saw it was so close to 42-pounds, my inner being really wanted to shell out half a pound more, just to make it an even number, but my poor aching back was done for the day.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 1, 2020 16:29:32 GMT -6
Bon,
I'm so happy to hear you guys finally got some rain that I feel like dancing a little jig!
That's great news!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 5, 2020 22:09:36 GMT -6
I've been absolutely loving this warm weather! I've got 52-pounds of Okra seed shelled out now. Tonight, I stopped on an even number. The sad thing is that I've been working on shelling seeds for so many days that I completely missed the Fall colors. I usually take time right about now to drive along the Illinois River to enjoy the leaves, but this year, I've been too busy to hardly look up.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 13, 2020 18:05:44 GMT -6
I've finally got that 60-pound order for Baker Creek finished and ready to box up and ship out.
I've got 61-pounds of okra seeds shelled out so far, and still have three more tubs of dried pods left to go. As long as I've got them on hand, I might as well shell them out too. It's finally time to start cracking out pods for me to use here at home next Spring.
Whew! What a job this has been! I'll try to get some photos in the next few days. After cracking seeds all day long, I was just too give out to carry them outside for a photo while it was still daylight. It took three, 5-gallon buckets to contain sixty pounds of seeds. The rest are in a coffee can.
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Post by macmex on Nov 13, 2020 19:05:03 GMT -6
Wow! Just think how much okra coffee you could make! LOL!
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Post by rdback on Nov 14, 2020 9:19:19 GMT -6
I messed with okra just yesterday Ron. Shelled two pods and decided that was enough fun for one day lol.
Congrats on getting it done!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 18, 2020 18:10:17 GMT -6
I'm shipping the 60-pound Baker Creek seed order tomorrow morning. There are three boxes, weighing 20 pounds each in the photo below.
There are 13 okra seeds in each gram. There are 453.592 grams per pound. There are about 5,889 okra seeds per pound. If I did my math correctly, I have about ( 27.21552 Kilos), packaged and ready to ship, or about 353,340 seeds.
According to those numbers, that means it would take somewhere around 169.808 pounds of okra seeds to equal one million seeds (or about eight and a half, 5-gallon buckets of okra seeds to equal the number, one million).
Things like that kind of put our national debt and Presidential campaign spending into perspective. This total order is only roughly 1/3 of one million seeds. I can't imagine what that would look like if they were spilled out on the ground, and still, people seem to throw that number (one million) around like it wouldn't amount to much of anything. If it takes eight and one half, 5-gallon buckets to hold one million okra seeds, just imagine how many buckets it would take to hold one million silver dollars ... I don't know if my little blue pickup truck could carry the weight of that? The end of the season is finally here.Roughly, 353,340 Heavy Hitter Okra Seeds ... That ought to grow somebody a whole lot of gumbo!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 20, 2020 22:18:01 GMT -6
It has certainly been a lot of hard work over the years, but well worth every hour of labor spent. I only wish my grandma Fannie could have been here with me, to see how it all came together.
She deserves most of the credit here. She took me under her wing as a small child, and had me hooked on gardening for life, before I was even old enough for kindie garten. Most of what I do out there with the plants is done to honor her memory …
Not only was she a pioneer in the truest sense of the word; one of the original settlers who came here from the Appalachians to Oklahoma Territory (traveling here as a small child, in a covered wagon, along with her parents, before the advent of Statehood). Once here; she also became a dedicated farmer, a landowner, a knowledgeable homesteader, a dedicated wife, and a loving mother of 12 children of her own, plus my Uncle Milford.
My Uncle Milford was her eldest stepson, through grandpa Joe's previous marriage. (grandpa's first wife had died during the 1918 flu pandemic.) Grandma took Uncle Milford to be her own and helped raise him from infancy. She looked after him, as well as anyone that she ever met, and with the same sort of zeal, dedication, and self-sacrificing love, that only a true pioneer mother could know how to provide. Grandma Fannie Darrow was a Saint in truest form. she is truly, and sadly missed to this day, but her spirit lives on within those of us who knew her and still cherish her dearly.
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Post by macmex on Nov 21, 2020 6:16:16 GMT -6
Isn't it amazing how someone like your grandmother can have such a huge impact on the lives of so many? My father's mom, "Grandma Mac," as we called her, raised her boys and worked full time, after my grandfather left them. Later, she helped raise the grand kids who lived nearby. She had great impact in all of our lives. When the grand kids grew up and had kids of their own, the first born girl in each of those families was named after her... "Emily."
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 21, 2020 10:27:03 GMT -6
That's a touching story, George. Thanks, for sharing that.
People of that generation certainly were made differently than folks nowadays. I remember having Sunday dinner at grandma Fannie's house every Sunday after Church for decades.
I had nineteen first cousins and lots of Aunts and Uncles, so that was no small undertaking. There was always a house full of grandkids there and a yard full of horseshoe players. Plenty to eat too. Grandma canned enough from her garden every summer to feed that many people through the winter months.
Lots of wonderful memories there!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 23, 2020 19:13:04 GMT -6
Today, I shipped off my 50th seed order for the month of November. It has been a busy, busy, month. I was planning on spreading a ton of chicken litter this afternoon, before the rain sets in but I couldn't find any for sale around here. That's pretty unusual, being how we live so close to so many chicken houses.
Being able to purchase litter has been the only upside of living within smelling range of those brooder houses all of these years.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 26, 2020 1:04:19 GMT -6
I just packaged a 2,500 Heavy Hitter Okra Seed order headed to Dakar, Senegal, Africa. That was a pretty good-sized order to have to fill this late in the afternoon. Stuff like that keeps me busy almost daily.
Now, I'll have to make a trip to Tahlequah to fill out custom's papers on all that packing stuff.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 26, 2020 21:51:21 GMT -6
I shipped two kilos of Heavy Hitter okra seeds to Liberia, back in 2012 but never heard back from those folks. I hope they got some good from them, that was an expensive order to ship. Two kilos is about 25,000 seeds or about 10 times more than I'm shipping to Senegal. The Liberia shipment was part of a US-AID package that I never got reimbursed for. I didn't mind losing the seeds as much as footing the bill for postage.
Sometimes, a person can get taken advantage of by dealing with overseas orders. That has happened to me more than once, but in the end, everything seems to even out. (This time, I'm getting paid before I ship.) Live and learn I guess.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 22, 2020 18:57:34 GMT -6
Things are still busy here. I just shipped my 105th seed order for the season. I've had several seed orders get stuck in the mail lately. Some of them were shipped 8-days ago and are still in transit. When I inquire as to why the orders are running so late, I get the following reply from the Postal Service:
ALERT: USPS IS EXPERIENCING UNPRECEDENTED VOLUME INCREASES AND LIMITED EMPLOYEE AVAILABILITY DUE TO THE IMPACTS OF COVID-19. WE APPRECIATE YOUR PATIENCE AND REMAIN COMMITTED TO DELIVERING THE HOLIDAYS TO YOU.
So, hopefully, everyone will receive their packages soon, but it sounds like we should be expecting delays.
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Post by macmex on Dec 22, 2020 19:58:53 GMT -6
My impression is that the USPS folk are working extra hard, but that mail volume is way up.
I am leery of foreign requests, especially from Africa, unless they send payment for postage first. Got burned some years ago by a fellow who is still well known in a Facebook gardening group I belong to. He asked me to ship sweet potatoes for seed and promised to repay, never did.
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