Pecan Trees

Our first view and picture of the house when we went to go look at it 4yrs ago notice the 4-sale sign up front we fell in love at first sight.

I have decided to do a blog for my pecan trees since it seems I get a lot of hits for it on my website. I wanted to add a more personal touch.

The best place to get a pecan tree is from a local nursery. Becareful of the where the nursery got it from. If your in Texas you sure dont want a tree from another state because of the climate.

Pecan trees as stated on my website are very brittle and break off easily especially with strong winds. Does it mean you can't plant them if you have high winds "yes" you can. We have trees on our property over 60yrs old and we have winds up to 75'miles and they are still standing.

Here in Texas around Aug, Sept, we start to clean up our orchard for future crop that will fall in Oct/Nov/Dec. With the limbs and branches you can use them for your own use or sale them in the winter for fire wood.

I have a lot of people ask where do we sell them. Well around here we have a few local places that will buy them from you, just look in your phone book. We however have such a small acres of only 60 trees I sell them directly to the consumer. We get a better price this way.

The best thing you can do is open your orchard up to pickers and then sell it by the pound. Kids love to pick pecans, this saves you back breaking work and time. Make sure you have insurance on your place in case of accidents. Places you can contact, word of mouth friends, family, local homeschool groups, schools. I would recommend the HS first only because most of them will have their parents with them while in a school field trip there are only a few parents to watch all the kids.

The next thing you can do is pick and crack them youself. Wel pick them in the morning and before it gets dark each day during pecan season. If I dont then the squirrels and racoons get them that night.

A friend of mine said they didnt make much selling them like she thought so they did the next best thing and bought a pecan peeler machine and harvester and after harvested they bought a candy machine to coat the pecans in different yummy flavors. They then sold them at the county fairs each year. I am not sure they made even after buying all that equipment but I did hear they were doing well.

If your looking for a smaller model then those huge machines I would recommend the one I have the Kinetic electric. Its funny at first I was scared to put a pecan in it thinking it would smash my fingers, but after a while I was so fast at it other people seeing it for the first time think WOW. http://www.crackyourpecans.com/Kinetic_electric_pecan_cracker.htm

is one of the places you can find it, its around $300 or less best look around for one.

Once cracked if any little pieces are left I give them to my chickens they just love them! or you can save the little pieces for pieces to sell too. The pecans shells can be used for compost under the flower bed or we toss them out in the field to help fertilize our fields.

Even old pecans are picked up and discarded for compost. I just love pecans trees and pecans every part of the tree can be of use. Its funny but my neighbor nubian goats across the street would bounce from one side of their field to the other on windy days I thought they were playing till I found out they were chasing our falling leaves when the wind blew to eat them. I thought it was so funny my own goats just love them too. For years I always wondered where the leaves went too each year.

Next year 2008 I am hoping to use the logs as a place for mushroom growing. I am doing research on it right now. So far I havent seen it done with them but I havent seen them say they can't use the pecan logs.

We usually have one good pecan season then another year its not so good so I wouldnt rely on it for a "only" income unless you plan to spray and put chemicals on it but who wants to buy those kind?.

The first year we had to spray, we contacted our local flyboy who does crops and had him spray our trees. We got the lowest dose we could find that wouldnt hurt our bees. Its been three years since then and we havent had much of the webworms like we did that first year.

Thats about it for now I might add things as I see them searching for them on my site.

Sam at the pecan ranch