Pecan Harvest

Our pecans are about to start ripening on the trees and we have recently been clearing under the pecans to make it easier to harvest them.

One of our pecans ripening on the tree

We started harvesting the pecans last year. Fresh pecans taste much sweeter than store bought, last year we would cook the pecans in butter and salt on the stove for a few minutes, and they tasted delicious! This year we decided we could try selling them to customers and make some money too!

Here are some pictures of what we've been clearing

Most of our pecan trees grow along the creek. There is a lot of undergrowth that we need to remove to make it easier to gather the pecans. We had been using the tractor to remove unwanted trees and piles of cleared brush and that was really helpful, but just the other day the tractor's power steering broke. We were planning on getting a yearlt tune up around this time already, but not before we were done with the clearing!!

With the tractor being out of commission we are mostly using weed whackers and our XUV to clear up the brush. Our weed whacker has a brush attachment on it that lets us cut down all the little bushes growing under the trees without having to cut them each down individually with loppers. We also are using a harrow to help clean up under the trees, we drag it behind the XUV around a pecan tree quite a few times and it scrapes the ground and cleans up all the mess under the trees, and that has been really helpful too.

Dragging the harrow behind the XUV

When it comes time to harvest we will be gathering the nuts by hand or with the hand held nut roller. As of now we will be taking the pecans in to town to get them cracked. Our pecans are the wild variety which doesn't crack cleanly. The machine they use will crack them open for us, but we will have to hand separate the meat from the shell once we get them back home.

In the future we hope to be able to purchase our own nut cracker and do it all from the farm.

If you have a lot of your own pecans, here is a link to a recipe you can use them in

Blueberry Pecan Muffins | Long Creek Farm. We also have a few other recipes on that page, if you would like to try some.