Got right close to 3 tons of pecans sitting in bins right now drying down. Calling for rain the rest of the week. Take another week for them to dry out enough to start shelling them. Tryed hiring a couple guys at 20$ an hour cash money to help out, but nobody wants to work I guess. Just did it myself but it took me all week. Hard on an old fat man.

Isn't that about a month early?

What equipment do you have to pick them up?

I would have been there for as long as you needed me for 20$ an hour. Shame that no one took you up on the offer.

I do an early harvest. When the tree has about 80% of the nuts shuck split I start harvest. I don’t wait for a freeze and them fall out. Lose way too many to birds, squirrels, and coons while waiting for them to dry out and drop. I have a tree shaker to knock them out and a harvester that I pull behind my Ranger utv. They run around 8-10% moisture and are rubbery and don’t taste very good at this point. Use fans to dry them down to about 4% before I start the shelling process. Tryed to post some pictures of the equipment I use but it won’t let me. The 3 tons came off of about 80 trees.

dickey John moisture testers are not just for grain I guess

A BIG bag a nut or a Savage?

A big advantage if you can get them to drop early is not having to pick thru the leaves and other trash.

Just got to get it programmed for pecans. Works good. Just tested them again this morning. Down to 6.9 now from 9.4 two days ago. Just running 2 fans on them 24-7.
Running a savage 8042 harvester. Works like a little combine and blows the trash out the back. Does a pretty good job but still doesn’t pick them all up. Have to go around the base of the tree and hand pick up some. The bag a nut harvester gets the fingers clogged up with leaves, sticks, and other trash.

how much is this harvest value

I sell 3 lb bags to grocery stores @ 20$. It takes 5lbs of pecans run through a sheller to make a 3lb bag time it blows most of the shell off. So 6000lbs divided by 5lbs is 1200 bags x20$ a bag equals 24 grand if my math is right. Not to bad off 4 acres of trees and very little maintenance or deduction’s

Glad you had a respectable harvest.

Benefits?o
Full time?

Awesome job again WT!

Thank you. I had no idea about pecan prices. Do you sell the crop all at once? Are there a lot grown in your area?

Thanks Cliff. Slick Pan I could sell them in the shell right now if I wanted too. If you sell them in the shell to a accumulater they want to show up and check the moisture, percentage of nut meat to shell, check for chips and crack’s, any foreign material and on and on. Then they try to beat you down on the price which is already less a pound than if you shell or crack them yourself. I could open a store front and sell them for 25$ a bag but I don’t want to deal with the general public. I shell them and wholesale them to 4 different markets in my area, and sell out by Christmas every year ( so far). Quite a few pecans in my area but most of them are smaller native nuts than what I grow. Pretty much all the pecan farms in my area run crackers instead of shellers. Women don’t like to dig the pecan meat out of a bag of cracked pecans cause it breaks their finger nails and messes up their polish. When you run a sheller it takes the meat out of the shell and blows off most of the shell. Almost half the weight of a pecan is the shell. It varies a little bit by variety, but not by a lot. They present a lot better in a plastic bag when they’re shelled instead of just cracked.

I don't realize all involved of course but seems like a decent payday. nicely done

Thanks for taking the time to give more details. I am not going into any business anytime soon but being in business most my life I find it interesting to see all the different ways to make money off the land. My son's friend has an almond farm which is irrigated. The price per pound is not as high and he wholesales them in the shell. I am told he does quit well.

It’s not a bad payday Flint Hills. Wish I had 100 acres that I could have planted 20 years ago when I planted these trees. That’s kinda the down fall of getting started in pecan farming. You will go at least 8-10 years with no income coming from crop. At 20 years you should be under pretty good production which is where I’m at. It should just keep getting better production for another 150 years as the trees grow bigger. I just put in another 300 trees 8 years ago on 15 acres that I bought. This year is the first year they had a few pecans on them. If I was a younger man and wanted some income to supplement my future retirement, I would give a hard look at pecans. Getting an orchard established is most of the work and most of the money output. After 10 years you’re to the point of applying fertilizer and doing the harvest. I will not live long enough to see either one of these orchards reach maturity. But hopefully my kids and grandkids will.

wow good read thanks for sharing

Those sound tasty !