Smokey Joe

Plodding tractor and trailer rigs on the road suggest that it's grape harvest at the moment though I think the main wine crop is still on the vines. It was almonds in the trailers a little while ago but it looks as though we're right at the tail end of that crop now

The almonds end up drying in big piles outside the local processing plant. Shelling the nuts makes the crop more valuable and cheaper to transport. It also leaves tons of almond shells to dispose of.

I've heard that before we got here someone had the bright idea of burning the shells (they're loaded with oil, burn well and produce stacks of heat) to provide the fuel for a power station. So a power station was built. Unfortunately the burning shells produce a thick black smoke and the locals weren't too keen on the layer of soot that settled on their houses. It didn't help that someone had forgotten to get the proper permissions to build the power station in the first place.

So it stands empty. That's it in the photo. Well it's one of the photos. The other is of almonds.