That's Just Nuts!

We have three pecan trees on our property that we pick from.  There's a couple more in the back that the squirrels claim.  We don't get a single pecan off of those.  Then our neighbors directly east of us have three pecan trees.  Those pecans are huge!  Ours are very small.  In fact, most people wouldn't bother shelling them.  The thing about our pecans is this: although they are small, they are oily and very rich.  This makes them delicious!  So in our brief winters here in South Louisiana, I spend nice relaxing times in front of the fireplace shelling pecans.  It is a satisfying pastime while listening to music or visiting with family.  The only downside is the mess I make.  I keep the vacuum cleaner close and try to clean up after myself when I'm done.

Pecans freeze very well.  So we pack them in gallon-sized zip loc bags and put them in the freezer once shelled.  Some years the trees produce lots and some years, they make absolutely nothing.  That's why it's a good idea to store some in the freezer during the "fat" years to be prepared for the "lean" years.  I think that's what ol' Joseph did back in the Book of Genesis.  Here are 9 gallons of pecans in our deep freeze in the house:

And here are four more on the door of the stand-up freezer out in the garage.

And six more gallons on the shelves in the same freezer.

If my math is right, that's 19 gallons of shelled pecans this year.  I think we gave some away, so it's more like 20 or 21 gallons.  For the bigger pecans from our neighbor's tree, we crack them ourselves with our "Reed's Rocket" pecan cracker.  For the smaller pecans?  Forget about it!  We bring onion sacks of whole pecans to our local feed store.

They have a pecan cracking machine.  They pour the pecans in the machine and it cracks them.  You can hear the noise in the warehouse with the machine going, "Crack, Crack, Crack."  They charge $0.33 per pound before the government takes their share of it in taxes.  The machine is ancient and I figure they've probably paid for it many times over.  I think it is worth it for our small pecans.  The paperwork below shows that we brought them 109 pounds of pecans and paid $39.77 for the cracking.

We like to eat them to snack on.  Tricia will oven roast them in butter and Worcestershire sauce.  That's pretty addictive.  My favorite way to eat pecans, though, is in pecan pies.  I love pecan pies.  We like this Recipe right here that uses Steen's Pure Cane Syrup.  What can be better than a slice of homemade pecan pie and a cup of coffee?

A Bumper Crop of Pecans!

We lit our first fire of the season in the fireplace this week.  We put off turning on the heat for as long as we can and enjoy sitting in front of the fireplace in the evenings, enjoying the warmth and the mesmerizing fire.  There are so many memories associated with fireplaces.  The andirons come from my mom's great aunt and uncle's fireplace.  The bellows hanging was my maternal grandmother's (Bumby) and the fireplace tools were from my paternal grandparents' home.

We've watched a TV show set in Canada called 'Heartland.'  The grandfather (Jack) in that program has a fireplace in his home and has special stones set in the fireplace that are named after people.  They are special and have a place in the hearts and minds of those who gather around the hearth to enjoy the fire.  I wish we would've done that.  In the home I grew up in, Mom & Dad have bricks in their fireplace that were from other buildings that were special to my parents.  They can point them out and there are stories to go along with them.  I think that's neat.

As 'fireplace season' progresses, this is a place at night where I spend a lot of time, sitting around, shelling pecans.  We have SO many pecans this year.  We'll take the small ones from our trees to the feed store we patronize.  They have a pecan shelling machine.  You can hear it pop as the pecans are fed into it.  The pecans are cracked (for a fee, of course, and you're charged by the pound).  I'll sit here and separate the shells from the nut.  It's mind-numbing, but pleasant work on a cold winter's evening.

Our neighbors let us know that they are so busy working on their house that they won't be picking up any pecans from their trees this year.  They didn't want to see them go to waste, so they told us to pick up all we wanted.  Wow!  How generous.  Their pecans are almost as big as golf balls.  On a beautiful afternoon last week, I set up my pecan cracking operation on the back patio while listening to an audiobook.  How relaxing!

My pecan cracking operation doesn't involve mechanized equipment.  I use elbow grease.  I use a Reed's Rocket, circa 1950 manufactured by the Arthur W. Reed Manufacturing Company out of Little Rock, Arkansas.  I'll show you how the process works.  It is wonderfully simple.  There is no rush to the process.  It doesn't require any deep thinking or ciphering.  You just settle in to a rhythmic, efficient repetitive motion.  The nuts go in a bowl and the shells go in a bucket to be either burned in the fireplace (they make cherry-red coals) or composted in the garden.

The Reed's Rocket is adjustable and thus allows you to crack any size pecan, walnut, etc. in it.  You can adjust the threads to accommodate a larger or smaller nut.  Once you get is set just right, you slip the pecan in and use leverage to pull the 'piston' down.

You hear a loud crack and little pieces of pecan shell fly across the patio, revealing the treasured pecan inside.

While the pecans from our trees are only about half this size, they are full of oil, rich and fat.  These pecans from the neighbor's trees are larger and just about perfect, from my vantage point.

About 1 in 10 are bad, and I just throw them away.  Let me correct that.  Nothing goes to waste.  As it turns out, Belle eats them, even those that have bad spots.  A pecan-eating dog, can you imagine?  In just a short time, I filled a blue plastic 'pea-shellin' bowl with shelled pecans.  The contents filled two 1 gallon sized zip loc bags.  We'll put them in the deep freeze for later use.

This just scratches the surface of the pecans we'll have on hand.  We'll be shelling pecans all winter long, both on the patio and in front of the fireplace.  It's a good thing that we love pecan pies!  If you drop by to visit, we'll send you home with some shelled pecans.  Maybe Tricia will share her oven roasted pecan recipe with you.  It's got Worcestershire Sauce in it.  They are so addictive that you might have to attend a 12 step program once you've indulged.  

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!

Shelling Pecans after a Three Year Draught

For whatever reason, nutrition I'm guessing, our trees haven't made pecans in three years.  This year, however, they made up for lost time.  As discussed in previous posts, we picked up six five gallon buckets of pecans.  We could have picked up more, but realized we had enough.  We decided that we needed to get started cracking and shelling them.  Five years or so, I'd crack them all myself using an old timey cracker.  In recent years, we've taken them to a place in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana that cracks them or to our local feed store.

Don't you love going into old feed stores or hardware stores?  It's like walking back in time.  There's a screen door to enter.  The merchants are always friendly and talk to you about the weather and other happenings.  You can pick up feed, or medicine, halters, buckets, boots, seed, seed potatoes and Farmer's Almanacs.  They load the feed in the back of you truck for you.  Old feed stores are the best!

Our local feed store also has a pecan cracking machine.  It is an odd looking contraption.  When you walk in, you can hear the "pop, pop, pop" of pecans being cracked.  You pour your buckets of pecans in the hopper and they go through the machine.

The cracked pecan drops out of the chute below and back into the bucket that you brought them in.

Then, the shopkeeper puts them on a scale and weighs them.  This year's charge for cracking them is $0.33 per pound.  That might sound like a lot; however, it saves you a lot of time!

Once we get them home, I grab several handfuls of cracked pecans and put them in a box.  I shell them over the box so that all the shells and dust don't get all over the place.  I use a special tool to clean the shell out from the ridges in the pecan.  If you don't get that piece of shell out and you eat it, it will instantly make your mouth very dry.  It's not very appealing.  If you deal with home-grown pecans and are a pecan-eater, you know what I'm talking about.  Anyway, here's what they look like right out of the machine.  As you can tell, the machine has done most of the work for you.  All you need to do is remove the cracked shells and sort out any bad ones.  Most of them even come out whole and not broken.

In three shakes of a billy goat's tail, you have a pot-full of shelled pecans.  Nice ones, too!

So far, we've shelled two of the 6 five gallon buckets and have put FIVE one gallon zip lock bags of fresh pecans in the deep freeze.  By the time we've finished the other 4 buckets, we'll have quite an inventory of pecans.  Pecans freeze well, and it is a good thing.  You never know, we may have another 3 year spell where we don't get any.  It'll be good to have some squirreled away.

Before we go further, let me tell you about our pecans.  It is hard to get perspective from the photos.  Our pecans are a 'wild' variety, I think.  They are small and a little difficult to crack manually.  But what they sacrifice in size, they make up for it in taste.  They are rich.  Full of pecan oil.  If you cut them up, your fingers feel kind of oily.

For comparison, the photo below shows on the left, a pecan from a local Pecan Company that has orchards.  Our pecan is on the right.  Quite a difference, huh?

But that's okay.  We like our pecans and look forward to once again, having pecans grown in the yard to eat.

Processing the 2016 Pecan Crop

We have a few pecan trees in the yard and each year we pick what we can from underneath the trees crack and shell them.  Our pecans are really small, but they are rich - loaded with oil and very flavorful.

I like to sit in front of the fireplace while shelling pecans.  It is a relaxing, yet rewarding task. Depending on how many pecans we pick, it can be a long process to get them cracked, shelled and in the freezer.  We compost all the pecan shells into the garden.  This year we took our pecans to our local feed store to have the pecans cracked.  In the past, I'd crack them myself, but for a small investment, having them cracked mechanically, saves a lot of time.  There was a problem, though.  The mechanical cracker at our local feed store was broken and they weren't fixing it until next season.

We looked around and found that there is a place in nearby Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, called the Fruit Stand that has a pecan cracker that will crack our small pecans.  They charge by the weight and when they weighed the pecans that we brought to them, the total was 62 pounds.  They charge $0.35 per pound to crack them, so the total was $23.

Tricia dropped them off and drove to Lafayette and had lunch with me.  An hour later when she went to pick them up, they were ready.  She shopped around at the Fruit Stand and bought some good french bread while she was there.  She also looked at what they were selling shelled pecans for.  $10 a pound!  Wow.  She brought the big molasses tub full of 62 pounds of cracked pecans home and I got busy.  Since the pecans had sat on our back patio for a few months, we experienced some loss.  Some of the pecans were bad, but many were good.  In no time at all I had the big tub empty.  Out of 62 pounds of cracked pecans, we yielded five one gallon sized Zip Loc bags holding 18 pounds of shelled pecans.  I was hoping for better, but that's okay.  Now we have a baseline of 29% return on pecan "meat" to whole pecan, we'll shoot for better next year.

Four bags - with one already in the freezer

Although we snacked on some, we like to preserve them by soaking them and then freezing them. We use a recipe from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions cookbook. It is called Crispy Pecans. We love this recipe.  It is very easy.  It calls for:
4 cups pecans
2 teaspoons sea salt
filtered water

Mix the three ingredients and allow it to soak overnight.  In the morning, drain in a colander.

Then spread the soaked pecans on a tray and place in an oven, or in our case, a warmer, and let it get to 150 degrees for 12 to 24 hours, turning until they are dry and crispy.

When dry, we pour them back into a Zip Loc bag and snack on them or freeze them for snacking or using for baking recipes like pies and brownies pancakes.

Cracking Pecans - the 2014 Crop

Sunday afternoon was one of those days that the weather was so spectacular there was no way that staying indoors was an option.  After church, we enjoyed some coffee and chicory and nice raspberry truffles and then I was out the door.  I knew exactly what I was going to do for a couple of hours.  We have 3 1/2 onion sacks full of pecans that Tricia and Benjamin picked from our pecan trees that needed cracking.

I poured a 5 gallon bucket full of pecans from one of the sacks and walked around in the backyard to find the perfect spot.  I wanted a spot that was not too shady since it was a little cool, but not in the full sun.  I found a nice place under the tangerine tree and I quickly set up my assembly line.  It involved the bucket of pecans to my right:

The raw product

On a picnic table bench, I fastened down the 'Reed's Rocket,' a pecan cracker that belonged to Bumby & Poppy (my grandparents), with a ratchet strap and a zip tie.  I positioned it an an angle since I'm right-handed, so that it would be ergonomically pleasing.

The tool of the trade

To my left, I positioned the bucket in which I'll toss the cracked pecans one by one as the process gets underway.  Then I got busy.  The bucket quickly began to fill up, but I wasn't in a rush.  It was so nice outside, I was just enjoying the day.  The cows came up to the fence in a curious manner. Anytime you have a bucket, that is going to spark their interest.  Once they became aware that there was no feed in the blue bucket, they meandered off.  Then I watched a hawk circling high overhead and looked out at the hens running for cover into the chicken tractor.

Pecans are cracked and ready for shelling

Last year I posted about the Reed's Rocket Here, but I'll explain how this contraption works again.  It has a threaded cradle on the end that can be adjusted to fit the size of your pecans.  You place the pecan in the cradle...

Ready to crack

And you push the 'piston' type mechanism forward with a lever against the cradle holding the pecan. You hear a sharp crack and will see that the shell has basically exploded. 

Craaaaaaacccccckkkkk!

Most of the time they will come out perfectly whole, but sometimes you have some breakage.  In that case, I'll adjust the threaded end of the Reed's Rocket so that it is backed off a little bit.  That will keep the next one from breaking.  Broken pecans eat just fine, though.  Once you get in a rhythm, you can get really fast, almost like a machine.  Crack, Crack, Crack.  It is mindless work that allows your mind to drift as you sit outside and enjoy Creation.

Fresh shelled pecans

Cracking the pecans isn't the end of the work.  Once the blue bucket is full, I'll bring it inside by the fireplace and at night, Benjamin and I will sit by the fireplace and shell pecans.  With two people shelling, it doesn't take long to knock a bunch of work out.  We've found that in just a short period of time we can shell about 10 cups of pecans each night.  That ain't too shabby!

An 8 cup measuring container overflowing with pecans

We'll eat on them and will also pack them into gallon freezer bags and put them in the freezer for storage until Tricia makes some good old pecan pies with Steen's Cane syrup.  After two night's work, our blue bucket is almost empty.  That means this weekend we can set up our assembly line and get the Reed's Rocket back cracking, if the weather allows.

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!