Picking up Pecans

The arrival of Fall means that leaves begin falling from the trees.  We'll mow those leaves eventually and then rake them up and work them into the garden soil.  There is something else falling from the trees besides leaves, though.  Pecans!  What is Fall and Thanksgiving without a piping hot from the oven, delicious pecan pie made with Steen's Cane Syrup? We are blessed to have four pecan trees in our yard and at least three in the pasture.  We end up having much more that we can use.

We also have a pecan orchard on the family farm that was planted by my Great Grandfather.  The pecans at the farm are bigger than the ones that we have at home and they are easier to shell.  Our pecans are very small and difficult to shell, but they are rich, fat, and full of oil.  Our local feed store has a mechanical pecan cracker, but our pecans are so small, they won't work in the machine.  That's okay, though.  I enjoy sitting in front of the fireplace on cold nights and cracking and shelling pecans.

Before you begin cracking and shelling, you've got to get out there and pick them up.  The shortened days don't allow me the daylight to pick up pecans on weekdays, so Tricia and Benjamin go outside and pick every day.  Just look at the ground.  You can't find a square foot area without a pecan or two.  And more fall by the day!

Pecans 'a Plenty!

Now you can pick them up the old-fashioned way - by bending over and picking them up and tossing them in a bucket.  Or you can use a couple of back-saving methods.  We have two different contraptions we use that are both based on what I call the "Slinky" technique.  I purchased this first one from a local hardware store. You simply hold the handle, point the pecan picker upper right over a pecan on the ground, and push down on the device.  The 'slinky' will open, allowing the pecan to enter the holding area.  Rinse, wash, repeat until the 'slinky' is full.  Simple as pie. Pecan pie.

Pecan Picker Upper #1

This second contraption is one from my childhood.  It is the same general principle, except instead of stabbing down on the pecan, you roll it.  When you roll over the pecan, the 'slinky' opens to accept the pecan and closes and will fill quickly.

Pecan Picker Upper #2

On Saturday Benjamin and I got outside for a few minutes and it didn't take long for us to fill a 5 gallon bucket.  He used one of the picker-uppers and I used the other.  It was quick work and soon we had picked up everything under the tree right outside the back door.  A quick glance skyward tells me that there will be more to pick tomorrow, and the day after, and so on and so forth.

Emptying Pecans in the Bucket

You can work fast or you can be slow and steady.  Both methods enable you to collect pecans that we'll eat on for the next year.  We'll also give some away and allow our neighbors to come pick pecans from our trees.  The only reason that you don't want to go too slow picking them up is that you are competing with critters for the pecans.  We have lots of squirrels in the trees that are interested in the commodity that falls from the treetops.  If you work too slow, they'll put a serious dent in your pecan harvest.  You can see some evidence of the squirrels' eating pecans below:

Evidence of Squirrels

So far we have 3 onion sacks (we call them crawfish sacks) full plus a half-filled five gallon bucket. We'll still pick up a few more, but this should be enough for our family for the year. 

2014 Pecan Harvest (so far)

We'll hang the bags from trees on low humidity days and allow them to dry.  One year I jumped the gun and began shelling pecans before they were dry.  I looked in my bowl of beautiful shelled pecans the next day and noticed that they were all molded.  Such is life in a high humidity zone, but I won't make that mistake again. From what I read, you are supposed to let them dry on screens or in mesh bags for 2 weeks.  You can test to ensure they are dry enough by shelling a few.  If the pecan half breaks, you're all good.  If it bends, you need to leave them out hanging to dry some more.

It's a lot of work between picking them, cracking them, and shelling them, BUT when you take that first bite of homemade pecan pie, well... you'll know immediately that your labors were worth the effort!