Click on a photo to enlarge it.
The beginning of December meant more snow - four inches overnight. We extended our time at the campground in Alamogordo rather than heading off into such bad driving conditions. But
then we got up to leave and were confronted with thick fog so we extended again and used the time to get up to date with our website.
On Thursday we decided to leave the campground and went to Eagle Ranch to go on a 1.5 hour free tour to see how pistachios are grown. It was a very interesting tour
and we loved the free samples!
Iran and Iraq are the main growers and only 3% of the worlds pistachios are grown in North America - 98% of these come from California and the other 2% from New Mexico,
Texas, Arizona and Mexico. We were at the largest growers in New Mexico.
Originally pistachios are bushes but these are grafted onto trees - the oldest is 700 years in Iraq. There are male and female trees and Eagle Ranch has 12,000 trees
with one male tree per eight female trees. The male pollen is blown by the wind onto the female trees which are pollinated in April. The harvest is in September.
Eagle Ranch uses machines that grab the tree trunks and shake them so that the nuts fall onto the machines below. The nuts are sorted and re-sorted by machines. Some
take off the hard outer shells and customers can buy the nuts with or without shells and there are also many different flavours - green chilli, red chilli, lemon and
lime, green chilli and garlic, unsalted, roasted salted and extra hot!
We went out to see the pistachio groves. A mature tree is 15 to 17 years and will produce around 80 pounds of nuts. A 5 year old tree will only produce a handful. The
ranch's normal crop is 125,000 pounds but they had a bumper year this year and got 165,000 pounds.
Then we did a tour of the factory where the sorting takes place. We saw how the nuts were roasted and got a sample of freshly cooked green chilli pistachios. Absolutely
yummy!! Then we watched ladies doing the final sorting by hand where the nuts are put onto a moving conveyor belt. It takes 1.5 days to do the final sort on 1,000
pounds of nuts.
Quality control is extremely important here and it takes a lot of concentration for the final sorting. But it is not just the nuts that are looked after but the
employees too which is obvious when you see the employees here. Most have been working here for decades and are well looked after by the owners.
At the end of the tour there are free samples in the shop and then bought some green chilli pistachios plus a pack of garlic and green chilli in the shells. They are
a real treat and we will definitely have to go back and buy some more.
The ranch also produces gift packs and everything can be ordered online (www.EagleRanchPistachios.com) or by phone (1-800-432-0999).
Eagle Ranch Pistachio Farm, Alamogordo
We left at 3 pm and then drove to Las Cruces. It started snowing just after we set off. We parked up at Wal-Mart for the night and it snowed again - another four
inches! It went down to minus 8° C overnight and poor Winnie had some very large icicles hanging off him.
By 2pm we decided the snow had melted enough and we would continue heading west and drove 58 miles to Deming. We stopped at another Wal-Mart. Freezing overnight and we
did a lot of shopping as we knew we would be crossing the border into Mexico soon.
We bought new storage boxes and got rid of all the old stuff. We spent so much time that we ended staying another night but our battery
wasn't coping with such low temperatures and we had to get the candles out.
We drove into Arizona and found a place to park near Rodeo where the Geronimo Monument used to be but no longer exists.
