I harvested most cones on Friday anticipating Irene's worst, but left those that were clearly not ready for picking. We got enough wind here to shatter a big old maple tree, and this morning I noticed there were quite a few cones scattered on the ground, so I'm definitely glad I picked when I did.
My twelve bines are looking a bit shabby after the beating they took from the wind, but there's still roughly half as many cones remaining as I picked, mostly Cascades and Chinooks, and a few Centennials (plus a few handfuls of cones that my three little Fuggles rhizomes that I planted in late May are producing). It will be interesting to compare the intensity of these with what I picked earlier...
Cheers!