I had this idea that I would spend a little more time on the blogs in their final days. But, as I have found to be more and more the case of late, the daily thrill of living has interfered with the opportunity to spend endless hours glued to the computer, reading and laughing at other bloggers' antics. No, as sure as the spring was filled with hours of planting of things to bloom later and the summer was filled with of hours casting for fish, so the autumn has been filled with hours of hickory nut collecting.
Each day as I run down the stairs from my office at the end of my "real work" day, grab my nut-collecting bag and head off into the woods on my version of the great Easter egg hunt, I think, "tonight, when it is dark and I cannot pick up nuts, I will post on the blogs."
And then, when night falls, I find myself processing the nuts collected and packing shipments of nuts to go out in the mail the next day. The hickory nut sales have been surprisingly good, considering I refuse to participate in the "let's undercut everyone else's price" form of eBay competition. No, I know the price I need to get for my product, and that's how I price mine. And, the day before yesterday when I tallied my shipped orders, discovering I had sold to 30 customers for a total of 160 pounds already, I was shocked!
So tonight, as I was processing the latest trailer full of nuts collected (not ALL from today, of course) I realized the time has all but run out for eBay blogging.
Only two posts in October 2009..... well, so, let's make it three, and then, as they say in the movies, "that's all she wrote."
For me the blogs were certainly fun. I met some amazing people here. I even met some of them in person when I happened to be traveling in their neck of the woods on business travel. And these people have enriched my life. No question there. I never really enjoyed the drama aspects of the blogs, but that was the beauty of the blogs... like a smorgasbord, I could take healthy helpings of those things I enjoyed, and maybe a taste of something new, but I could say, "no thanks" to things that did not appeal to me.
I have copied the posts I was interested in retaining into my new blog on blogspot (http://judyscornerstore.blogspot.com) and the rest, well, eBay can keep in their archives of "wisdom pearls" (that's that very large circular file that is labeled "jcarolek"). I can almost FEEL the server that has housed my zillions of posts for over more than three years, breathing a sigh of relief, as it anticipates the jcarolek load being lifted.
And there you have it. August slipped by, followed rapidly by September and before I knew it, October had all but vanished into the autumn air..... and here I've been, just enjoying the heck out of hickory nut pickin'.
I'm heading to CA for a couple of weeks next week and my hickory nut sales have paid for my trip.... but.....................
hickory dickory dock
the mouse ran up the clock
the clock struck one
the mouse ran down
hickory dickory dock....
My time here is done... I have enjoyed it...
And there are still so many nuts............
It's been an interesting hickory nut season so far this year. My trees are producing abundantly (I call them "my trees" though I neither planted them, nor cultivated them -- still, they are on my property and by that virtue, I have inherited them... they are mine). All I have to do is take a walk through my woods at least once per day, a walk that generally lasts at least two hours, but on weekends can stretch into five or six hours.
OK, I over simplify my part. Yes, I have to hunt the nuts as I walk. I have to stoop and pick each one up from the ground where it has recently fallen. I have to shuck off the thick hull and toss the nut in its shell into my sack...my double WalMart bag that is ALWAYS in my hand when I am outside this time of year.
When my bag is too heavy to carry, I return to the house and either return with a fresh double bagger, or set about the next stage of hickory nut preparation. I bathe every nut and examine each to ensure I retain only those nuts that are not either undeveloped or already consumed by worms. It's a fact that "organically grown" hickory nuts will have a certain percentage that have been inhabited and consumed by the hickory nut worm. Since I sell the hickory nuts on eBay, my preference is to eliminate those less than perfect nuts from my inventory. And after their bath, the hickory nuts enjoy congregating in mesh sacks where I place them, allowing them to air dry while awaiting shipment.
I started my walks this year about a month ago. I imagine I have another month yet to go. And already I have collected at least 500 lbs of hickory nuts, 400 lbs of which were fit for sale. My eBay room is lined with mesh sacks of these large, beautiful nuts.
I have sold about 60 lbs so far this year. When I put up my first listing on eBay in September, there were only maybe three of us selling the whole nuts. Others were selling the nut meats. My first listings sold within hours of being listed, and sold for my Buy-It-Now prices. I shipped immediately, received positive feedback and listed more nuts, listing daily as I collected daily. Then, all of a sudden, there were 15 listings from multiple sellers.
This year I have observed a behavior different from my last excursion down hickory nut sales in 2007. This year I have observed a willingness of other sellers to take the "easy" way out. I was looking at another seller's listing, and all of a sudden it struck me. Her photo was MY photo. Not my entire photo, since I have my id watermarked on the photo. No, she had taken only the center of my photo and displayed it as her own. She was successful in selling her first listing of hickory nuts... the one using my photo. I did notice that she did decide against using my photo for her subsequent listings, opting, instead, to take photos of her actual product... which looked significantly different from mine and which did not sell. I decided to get more creative with MY photos....
I also noticed sellers literally copying each other's verbiage in their listings. I don't mind being a mentor for a new seller, but for goodness sake, would it be so hard to write your own story? Promote your own product? I made it harder to copy mine... I know this will come as a huge surprise to anyone who has made it this far in my tale, but, I added verbiage to my listing... making it more verbose... most of the copiers want to copy short listings... easier to disguise as one's own.
The hickory nut marketplace is getting larger on eBay, now sporting more than three dozen listings on any given day. There are those who sell the nuts in the hulls and those who sell them without the hulls.; those who wash the nuts and those who don't; those who offer free shipping and those who try to lure the buyers in with a 99 cent starting bid, and charge more than 10 times that amount in shipping.
Naturally, eBay sellers will try to entice the buyers with lowest price, best product and outstanding service. But in the past month I have watched as the hickory nut sellers have competed so intensely to hit that lowest price mark, they have literally made their product and the work involved in getting their product to market, worthless. It is sad to watch. I still have my hickory nuts listed and will continue to list them. But I refuse to engage in the "undercut the next guy" game. I have determined what my hickory nuts, in all their glory are worth, and I continue to list them at those prices. I work hard to take good photos to market my hickory nuts, and of course, I am committed to exceptional customer service. And I continue to make sales, albeit not as many as others, perhaps, but, I suppose when they have sold out of their hickory nuts, I will still have plenty to sell....
None of the concerns above will change the fact that walking through my beautiful Virginia hickory woods every day is rejuvenating to both body and mind. I enjoy the company of my three outdoor critters (two cats and a dog) who accompany me every step of the way, each and every day. And when I put my head on the pillow at night, I sleep hard, thoroughly exhausted from my favorite autumn pastime. I've been a little busy lately....walking in the woods collecting hickory nuts.
When I was a very little girl, maybe three years old, I have memories of dancing. Dancing with my doll, dancing with my sister and brothers. Mostly I recall our "dancing" to be sort of "ring around the rosie -ish" but in my teeny tiny mind, I was dancing. Time passed and I outgrew the circle dance that so delighted me as a preschooler. It wasn't until we moved to England, when I was 10, that I recall dancing again.
We never had a television, and instead, amused ourselves with records and books. On occasion, Dad would move all of the living room furniture out of the way, put records on the turntable and we'd dance. All of us, the six kids and Dad. I don't really ever recall Mom dancing with us, but probably she did and I am just not remembering. I know Dad taught us how to waltz (ever so useful in the disco's of the early 70's LOL) I have never forgotten how to waltz, though I probably can count on one hand the times I have actually "waltzed" in public.
One night I recall Dad showing how to dance the "modern way." Now, I don't mind telling you, it looked a little funny to me seeing Dad do his rendition of the 70's dance hall. His arms were flailing and his legs were going every which way. And Jeannie, my sister, did not indicate that Dad's version of the modern dance was anything less than accurate. And she was 12 or 13 at the time. She would have KNOWN, because she WAS out there at the discos, dancing with the other kids of Cheltenham. No, I was convinced that Dad was correct and so, copied his "style" -- we all did, my brothers and me. I really cannot recall whether Jeannie did, but, then again, I was too preoccupied with polishing my own dancing skills to concern myself with hers.
When we returned to the States, I was in the eighth grade. One of the very cool perks of being in Jr High, as we called it then, was the "teen club." Now I don't recall whether this was an every Friday night thing, or once or twice a month, but I do know it was fun. I looked forward to going to teen club, where many of the kids danced, but where those who prefered could go play games, basketball, etc. I vividly recall the night I finally had the courage to get out on the dance floor with the other kids. I decided Dad had been right, that the kids were dancing, more or less as he he taught us. And so, with a reasonable amount of confidence, I joined the pulsating throng of kids and before long my arms were flailing and my feet were moving in all sorts of strange directions.
All was going well for the first few minutes. All of a sudden, my friend Chris Macey, who himself was no prize, with a mouth full of metal braces, and a skinny gawky appearance, started to laugh. I looked to see what was so funny. Part of Chris's charm was his laugh. He threw his head back and I swear his mouth opened wider than any I've ever seen, except perhaps that guy on the commercial with the flip-top head. Anyway, Chris had his head thrown back, mouth open a mile, and was laughing for all he was worth.... AT ME!
"What's so funny?" I asked. He seriously sounded like he was going to choke to death, he was laughing so hard.
"What are you doing?" he finally got out.
"What do you mean, what am I doing? I'm dancing!"
Well, he laughed even harder at that. It seems that simply flailing the arms and having the feet going at all kinds of cock-eyed directions did not actually constitute "dancing." I laughed it off, and blamed it on my father having taught me wrong (couldn't POSSIBLY be that I just was a klutz and dancing should be left to more graceful souls). I found I was suddenly thirsty, and headed for the punch bowl. After that, I moseyed out of the cafeteria (aka dance hall) and down to one of the rooms where the geeks were playing chess. Chess, I could handle.
So, for the remainder of my teen club weeks, months, and years, I mostly played chess. I figured I'd leave dancing to those who would not embarrass themselves. To this day, I still evoke roars of laughter when I dance... ask my brother Dan... he was laughing at me when I was dancing at my son's wedding last October.
What brought on this little trip through the dance halls of yesteryear? I was driving to Northern VA today, as I will be working here this week. I had the radio on to pass the time on the three hour drive, and a song came on that immediately made me feel like Pavlov's dog. The song was "Playing in a Travlin' Band." And it was all I could do to keep on driving. For every nerve of my totally klutzy self screamed at me "Dance, Dance!" Ahh, yes, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is SO weak! I managed to continue on my journey, satisfying my spirit's urge to dance with a little rhythmic finger thumping on the steering wheel. And Chris Macey's flip-top head, and his outrageously contagious laugh, jumped forward 38 years and dragged me back into that teen club when I was 13 years old.
Two years ago I test marketed an item that was abundant in my yard that fall. Hickory nuts. All day and all night I heard the nuts falling from the trees and crashing down on unsuspecting decks, cars and the occasional passerby. I wondered whether anyone sold these hard-shelled nuts on eBay. A quick look assured me that, indeed, they do. So, I decided to start collecting and selling my collection.
When I started, in late September of 2007, I had no idea that by the end of the season, some two months later,
I returned home from my out of town training yesterday. As always, it was good to be home. It really doesn't matter whether I am traveling for training, work or pleasure, returning home to sleep in my own bed is truly a reward.
Though I'd been gone only three and a half days, as I find so often, things were noticeably different upon my return. Yes, the grass needs cutting again (I think it grows double time when I am not here to glare at it daily), but that's not what really struck me as my broken car rolled down the driveway to the garage. What struck me was the tobacco.
I had decided to try growing some
Tonight I drove to MD for work. I'll be here the rest of the week, and my schedule will be very full. I intentionally left my camera at home -- didn't need the temptation to go wandering around and taking photos -- must stay on task, blah, blah, blah.
So, mine was about a three hour drive and right at about the 1 1/2 hour mark, I had a thought about deer. My thought was, I really hope I get off this particular road before it turns completely dark and the deer start jumping. I'm always
Seems the seasons are changing. I can feel the coolness in the air and the hickory nuts are, once again, bombarding me when I venture out in the woods. I collected a sackful today, the first of many, I am sure.
As I walked, I thought about these things that are so familiar and yet are forever
I'm a real Facebook know nothing. Seriously, I just DON'T get the whole point of it, or the allure of it. But there's that little niggling thing called "peer pressure." You know what I'm talking about. Since everyone ELSE is so in love with this Facebook thing, I suppose I SHOULD try to wrap my little pea brain around it...(I'd honestly rather be fishing, but I digress).
So, I dunno, maybe two months ago I signed up with this here Facebook and I was "on my way..." I've always been an extremely geographically challenged individual and Facebook offered me yet another opportunity to be "challenged." I did figure out how to fill out the information I wanted to share with others, and was successful in loading a photo,
We took the little boat out late yesterday afternoon. We were going to fish, but we were going to explore a little. Rather than heading out to the more open part of the pond, we decided to see how far we could get into the marshy area through which the little creek runs that feeds the pond. When the dam broke three years ago and most of the water drained from the pond, the beavers moved their operation from one side of my property to the other, to the trickling creek. In almost no time, there was water on the side of my property where until then there had been just marshy land. Now that the water is back in the pond, I have water on three sides of my property, literally making my parcel a peninsula. It was this newer beaver dammed area that we paddled into, gently, carefully, following the twists and turns to get around the numerous varieties of vegetation and fallen trees, etc.
It's hard to believe I have been "blogging" for three years. I looked at the left menu on my blog page and was amazed at the list of months, years worth of blogs. It isn't as if I haven't deleted any, either. I've deleted plenty.... Still, I rather like keeping the majority of the entries I have made over the years, because I find it interesting to look back
