How to Harvest & Store Almonds

Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen, and in this segment we're going to talk about how to harvest and store almonds. Almonds are such a delightful nut and they taste so good in so many different dishes and with cookies and ice cream and so many different dishes that they're just wonderful. But when you have an almond tree and you want to harvest your own almonds, there's a few tricks, there's some rules as when to harvest them. So almonds are ready to harvest right when the shells just barely start to split. So they start to look a little bit dried out, and if you shake them they'll feel like there's something inside that's moving and then they'll actually have just a barely a split on the hull. And at that point, you can either shake them out of the tree or pull them out, or take a long stick or a broom handle and kind of shake them out of the tree. Now at that point, you just dry them for one to two days out in the sun. So whether you put them in a bag or just write on a sheet of paper or anything that you want to place them on, as long as they dry for one to two days in the sun, they're wonderful. And then you'll know that they're ready is when they're, they'll dry and when you shake them, they move around. And once they're dry, you can store them in many different ways. You can put them right into a paper bag, or you can put them into a jar. And they will keep for one year up to five years. It seems that almonds do store for quite a while. And you can either hull them and take them out of the shell, or you can keep them in the shell themselves and store them that way. Either way, they're a wonderful addition to your diet and they taste delicious.