It's Pecan Time, Baby

Yesterday I finally got pecans from a guy I've been wanting to purchase from for years and it was just a great experience. Because of doing the Woods to Food project, I'm more aware this year of when wild foods are in season. I remembered a fellow with a pecan orchard right in Columbia and called him this year early asking if he had any for sale, rather than too late or forgetting to call at all like I've done in years past. Yesterday we met up at his place, Montgomery Pecan Farms, and he was kind enough to show me around a bit. Fascinating.
Pecans, like many nut trees, produce heavily one year and lightly the next. And, this is a light year. In fact, pecans, hickories and persimmons are all having light years. White oaks, however, are having an absolute bumper crop of acorns this year (not that I'm planning on eating the acorns).
Anyhow, Mr. Mongomery showed me the sheller machine and drying racks for the pecans. He has several varieties and keeps them all separate. Some produce a larger nut, some a smaller nut with more flavor, etc. He showed me the cracking machine he has and the machine that takes quite a bit of the shell off the pecans. He sells pecans cracked and somewhat deshelled in 5 1/2 pound bags. Each bag yields about 3 pounds of actual pecan nut meats. His operation is so tidy and well organized. Not that this is saying much, but I told him his shop was cleaner than my house. And, Mr. Montomery is such a wealth of knowledge on pecans-like a pecan rocket scientist. I just loved listening to all the interesting details there are to know about raising pecans.
For instance, Mr. Mongomery was telling me, and I'm going to butcher this a bit but I'll try to get it right, that one frustration with raising pecans is that they produce lighter crops about every other year. He has a pretty steady customer base and hates to disappoint them on the light years by turning customers away. So, last summer, in 2010, he tried to do something about that. Mr. Mongomery could tell he was going to have a great crop of pecans last year. They were at a stage where they were not ripe yet, but certainly were many, many on the trees. He knew that pecan trees signal to themselves how many nuts to set for the next year by the number of pecans they have on their trees the summer previous. So, in an attempt to even out the two years' crops, so he used his mechanical tree shaker he normally puts on the trees once the pecans are ripe to drop the nuts and shook the tree much earlier to cause several the unripened nuts to fall in the bumper year. This then signals to the tree that next year they better put on a crop of nuts because they lost several the year previous. He said that the task of shaking the trees early in the season is much more difficult that at harvest time this time of year. Early in the season, there is an abundance of sap flowing and the bark is much looser on the tree making it very easy to slip the bark when you are shaking it. Later in the season, like now, you can shake the trees without the risk of slipping the bark because it's stuck fast to the tree. Isn't that interesting? Anyhow, eventually I bought a couple bags of pecans, and left such a happy camper.
Previously, I'd bought a small bag of pecans from Missouri at a supermarket just to keep me going in recipe making, but now I have a wealth of pecans and got to buy them from an orchard right in town.
Pecan recipes, here we come!