A Year Without Pecans

After the Thanksgiving feast was over yesterday, the coffee was set to percolate and we prepared to eat dessert - traditional pumpkin pie and pecan pies.  It is hard to beat a homemade pie.  It is also hard for me to name a favorite - they are all good in my book!  Since I can never make up my mind, I always say, "I'll have a little slice of each."  C'mon, I bet you do that too.  I enjoyed my pumpkin and pecan pie immensely!

Speaking of pecans, This morning I walked across the yard to our Husband and Wife Pecan trees in the front yard that I wrote about in THIS BLOG POST last year. Since we've only had one frost, the leaves are still clinging to the trees and have started to turn yellow a little bit.  The wind was blowing softly and I witnessed a few leaves beginning to fall.  Pecan trees are notorious for dropping limbs. After each rainfall, we pick up bunches of limbs that we use for fuel in our fire pit.  We enjoy sitting out around the fire pit, watching the fire and talking on cool nights.  The smell of pecan wood burning is a nice fragrance.

Our "Husband and Wife" Pecan Trees

I walked under the canopy of the pecan trees and began searching on the ground. Last year we picked up hundreds of pounds of pecans.  I sat in front of the fireplace throughout the winter, cracking and shelling pecans, then packing them in gallon Ziploc freezer bags for storage.  This year I'll pick up exactly ZERO.  That is too bad, but not entirely unexpected.

Nothing, Nada, Nil, Zip...

The phenomenon that takes place with pecan trees is called alternate bearing and it simply means that you can count on a really good crop one year and then a poor crop (or no crop) the following year.  It is all based on nutrition.  After a really good pecan crop, the trees are nutritionally depleted.  They'll store up their energy to produce a good crop in the next year.  You can do things like fertilize the trees with nitrogen, spray zinc and make sure the tree is sufficiently watered, but we tend to just let it be.  

We just make sure that we put up enough pecans in the freezer to last and you know what?  Pecans will keep in the freezer for exactly two years.  I think we have enough stored to make it until then, but we may have to institute a pecan pie ration program if our inventories dip lower than we'd like.