This year Piedmont Biofarm had a bumper harvest of peanuts.

I first wrote about this in May in an entry called “Working for Peanuts,” in which a box of green peanut seeds arrived at the plant from a fellow in the mountains who had been seed saving for years.

I tried to grow them at my place.  Mine were eaten by rabbits.  I gave some to Bob, and he reported crop failure.  I’m not sure what happened to the ones we sent to UNC.  But both Jason and Doug took off giant peanut crops this year.

Doug will be taking some seed stock up to Black Mountain this year to the 24th Annual CFSA Conference, where seed gets traded amongst growers and plant breeders.

Here we are with greenhouses and garages packed with peanuts still on the vine, and along comes Carol Hewitt, who is staging a kiln opening next weekend.  Her life long interest in local economy was rekindled in part by seeing Michael Shuman speak over at STARworks.

The Hewitt’s openings are an institution in these parts.  People come from miles away, and line up early to buy Mark’s pots.

Before I knew it I was  committed to delivering locally grown peanuts to their preview party.  Pounds of them.  And there is only one trick:  they need to be shelled and roasted first.

Which is what I did on Sunday.  I set up a shelling and roasting operation at the plant kitchen, and tons of people passed through.  I would like to say they helped, but they mostly watched and chatted.  Carol came by and helped out, and as we toured the plant she also had a chance to sample some of Doug home grown popcorn.  Surely she left with the notion that at Piedmont we are snack food independent.

Years ago Oneas and Roey rigged up a concrete peanut sheller over at White.  It was part of the Full Belly Project in which they were attempting to deploy appropriate technology in Africa.

I need to find that rig, if it is still around, so that we can begin shelling peanuts in earnest.  As always, if you want to help the developing world, it is best to start right here at home.

And in the meantime, anyone looking for some amazingly delicious locally grown peanuts should simply head to the Hewitts’ for their show.  Here’s Carol’s take on our peanuts.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Energy Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.