美国国家公共电台 NPR Another Storm Victim — Pecan Groves In Southwest Georgia

Another Storm Victim — Pecan Groves² In Southwest Georgia

NOEL KING, HOST:

When Hurricane Michael plowed³ through southwest Georgia, it hit that area's farms like a bomb. Cotton fields near harvest were blown bare, and decades-old pecan groves were leveled. GPB's Grant Blankenship visited a pecan farm in southwest Georgia to see how the recovery is progressing.

GRANT BLANKENSHIP, BYLINE⁴: Tucked away in a corner of the Pine Knoll⁵ Pecan Grove¹ near the town of Pretoria, Ga., is one of those things that Mitch Bulger says makes living and working here worth it.

MITCH BULGER: I promise you, you stick your finger in that, that's the coldest water. There goes a duck.

BLANKENSHIP: A flock of about half a dozen water birds fly through cypress⁶ trees bordering a bubbling, spring-fed pool. And yes, this summer swimming hole is, in fact, cold.

Oh, wow.

BULGER: (Laughter) A lot of fun back here.

BLANKENSHIP: Bulger's been the farm manager at Pine Knoll for 20 years. The family that owns the plantation⁷ is mostly scattered⁸ to Colorado and Rhode Island. But for Bulger, this is the only home his kids have ever known.

BULGER: This means everything to me.

BLANKENSHIP: Which is why the scene at our backs hurts so much. It's one of the thousands of the farm's pecan trees laid low by Hurricane Michael. And this one was a real moneymaker.

BULGER: One of the oldest varieties there is.

BLANKENSHIP: It's actually called a moneymaker?

BULGER: It's actually called a moneymaker. Here's the biggest one, Grant, this one right here.

BLANKENSHIP: Its ripped-up taproot is encased in red clay. And maybe 30 yards away, pecans are piled like gravel⁹ in a dry stream bed between enormous tree trunks. The nuts could still be gathered by hand, if only someone would do the work.

BULGER: I had a crew Monday, and now I don't have a crew. So... (Laughter). I paid them 25 cent, and they still didn't stay.

BLANKENSHIP: That's 25 cents a pound, and that works out to about $25 a day. In an average year, these nuts would have been headed to China - not this year, and not because of the weather, but because of the U.S.-China trade war. Now?

BULGER: I don't know that we can supply what our Americans will need.

BLANKENSHIP: There's still money to be made in a grove of far younger trees, though it didn't escape damage.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHAINSAW)

BLANKENSHIP: Thousands of these trees must be cut down, too. Still, Bulger says the younger trees are the long-term future of the Pine Knoll plantation. But in the short term?

BULGER: We got those lean years coming ahead of us, and we'll - you know, we'll work around them.

BLANKENSHIP: Mitch Bulger says that means replanting and tending and waiting - for decades. Then he's hopeful he'll see the Pine Knoll Pecan Plantation thick with moneymakers again.

For NPR News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Pretoria, Ga.

1 grove   

n.林子，小树林，园林

参考例句：

• On top of the hill was a grove of tall trees.山顶上一片高大的树林。
• The scent of lemons filled the grove.柠檬香味充满了小树林。

2 groves   

树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields. 朝阳宁静地照耀着已经发黄的树丛和还是一片绿色的田地。
• The trees grew more and more in groves and dotted with old yews. 那里的树木越来越多地长成了一簇簇的小丛林，还点缀着几棵老紫杉树。

3 plowed   

v.耕( plow的过去式和过去分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过

参考例句：

• They plowed nearly 100,000 acres of virgin moorland. 他们犁了将近10万英亩未开垦的高沼地。 来自辞典例句
• He plowed the land and then sowed the seeds. 他先翻土，然后播种。 来自辞典例句

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 knoll   

n.小山，小丘

参考例句：

• Silver had terrible hard work getting up the knoll.对于希尔弗来说，爬上那小山丘真不是件容易事。
• He crawled up a small knoll and surveyed the prospect.他慢腾腾地登上一个小丘，看了看周围的地形。

6 cypress   

n.柏树

参考例句：

• The towering pine and cypress trees defy frost and snow.松柏参天傲霜雪。
• The pine and the cypress remain green all the year round.苍松翠柏，常绿不凋。

7 plantation   

n.种植园，大农场

参考例句：

• His father-in-law is a plantation manager.他岳父是个种植园经营者。
• The plantation owner has possessed himself of a vast piece of land.这个种植园主把大片土地占为己有。

8 scattered   

adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的

参考例句：

• Gathering up his scattered papers,he pushed them into his case.他把散乱的文件收拾起来，塞进文件夹里。

9 gravel   

n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石

参考例句：

• We bought six bags of gravel for the garden path.我们购买了六袋碎石用来铺花园的小路。
• More gravel is needed to fill the hollow in the drive.需要更多的砾石来填平车道上的坑洼。