2021 Pecan Harvest - By the Numbers

As we've discussed in previous posts, we have three pecan trees on the property that bear pecans.  Trouble is, they don't produce every year.  This is the first year in the past two or three years that they've produced.  In this PECAN BLOG POST from mid-December 2021 we talked about the harvest a little bit and then how we brought them to our local feed store for cracking.  In total, we brought 122 pounds of whole pecans for shelling.  As discussed, it costs $0.33 per pound to crack them.  In other words, we paid $40.26 for the feed store to crack the pecans.

Once cracked, we take them home, and shell them.  It is really easy and quick to do this!  You simply separate the shell from the "meat."  In the past, I'd save the $40 and crack and shell them myself, but I've found that the time cracking can be better used in other areas.

It is a very relaxing task to do while sitting in front of a fireplace, especially if the weather is cold and wet outside.  I'll take all the pecan shells and throw into the compost pile.

An added bonus in allowing the machine at the feed store to crack them is that you generally get mostly whole pecans - not a lot of brokens.  We'll generally get gallon-sized freezer bags, label them, fill them and then put them in the deep freeze.  Pecans freeze well and then you just don't know, we may not have another pecan crop for a couple of years.  We'd do well to stock up.

And, stock up, we did!  We filled a number of gallon-sized ziploc bags.  Before I loaded into the deep freeze, I decided to count and weigh the bags.

In all, we filled 13 gallon bags and 5 quart bags.  The total weight of pecan "meat" was 39 pounds!  The total weight of pecans cracked was 122 pounds.  So that means that 83 pounds of the total weight was NOT the edible pecan.  Seems like a lot of shrinkage for the shells, but as I think about it, roughly 1/8th of the pecans were bad (rotten, dry, inedible).  

So, not counting my time, we spent $40.26 in total for Parsley's Feed to crack the pecans.  That yielded 39 pounds of pecans and that equates to $1.03 per pound.  I just pulled up the price of a pound of pecan halves at Wal Mart.com and the Great Value Brand is $9.48 per pound.  Looking at the bottom line, we saved $8.45 per pound on pecans.  With all this talk of pecans, I'm getting hungry for a slice of pecan pie right about now!