Around here, they generally collect the grounds all the time in the summer because people are always looking for them. But come winter, they stop because no one asks for them. I let my SB know that I was going to be coming in every day, and I have been doing just that all winter. It took them a week or two to realize I was serious, but since then they've been very good about saving them for me. I get 2 5gal pails a day, usually full, or close to it. We have a 4 pail system (2 are mine, 2 theirs) and I just swap them daily. In fact, I usually just help myself if they're busy (but I always try to thank them). I understand they have another regular over the summer, so we'll see what happens then :o) Anyway, if SB is close to where you live and it's practical to go regularly, try and set up a regular pick up. Over the supper hour is a good time as they're usually slow then. I think persistent but polite is the best policy... Good Luck Tim

Smoke until dry, which takes about all day, with the temps in the 150-180 range. Store and grind as needed. We tried all kinds of variations, including soaking small chunks of mesquite and adding it to hardwood charcoal fires, but a plain mesquite fire with air cut until it's smoking lightly is the easiest and has the best results. The sandias came out "sweeter" than the ripe serranos we did at the same time.

Wow, that is shallow! I bet that is it. Was the tree tagged incorrectly or they were mistaken? A place in San Marcos told me that they had a Arroyo Sweetwood, so we went there and it definitely wasn't but I got it anyway because it looked familiar, it was a gallon and cheap. So I got home repotted it and several months later I was repotting a 4" up to a gallon and when I finished, grabbed the pot to put on the table, I saw honey lo in a very faint print. It was on there the whole time, I didn't look, the salesperson didn't look Of course that is what it was, hindsight........

I've gone back and re-read this thread and would like to offer a few qualifications regarding the making of mesquite bean flour. The thread reveals that how the flour is made depends on how much and what quality of flour is desired. If someone wants a cup or two here and there, a blender will do the job--to a point. A blender will break down the soft part of the beans but leave the stringy outer layer, the leathery outer casing of the bean, and many of the hard interior beans. A blender powders about a 1/4 of the bean and leaves out a lot of fiber and protein. A blender can be used to re-blend and re-blend until the whole bean has been broken down; but this process will eventually kill the blender. If someone wants to process a lot of beans, an electric garden mulcher will do about the same thing as a blender on a much larger scale. This morning I ran a few pounds of beans through my mulcher, screened the result, and then ran what didn't screen one more time for a second screening. The result was a tasty flour but still a lot of waste. I have tried to get it all, i.e., turn the whole pod into flour hence my acquisition of a hammer mill. But as I may have noted in my previous post, the result is a little gritty and I think I need to revise my process and allow more waste. The sharp hull of the interior seed needs to go as well as the leathery husk that surrounds the interior sharp hull. My quandry, at the moment, is that I believe the interior seed contains the bulk of the protein and I trying to figure out a way to get that protein without the hull. This morning, spent in experimentation, led me to believe that I can run the mesquite beans through the mulcher, then run them through the mill with the largest screen--this seems to knock the interior seed out of its leathery outer covering. I think that with the right screening I may be able to extract the seed from the bulk of the waste and then run that through the mill with a finer screen and then screen the interiour seed heart from its hull. I suppose that all sounds somewhat convoluted, it is. It might be that I'm working too hard to extract more than needed from the mesquite bean flour. As noted above, two runs through the mulcher and a good screen gives me a tasty flour--I just hate to throw away what may be the most valuable part of the bean's food value. Forgive me if I've gone on too long. I'm five years into this process and still haven't gotten it all figured out. Maybe tomarrow?