I own and run a small 20 acre fresh produce farm , selling fresh non-certified organic produce at my local farmers market . My market closes for the year the second week of October , which is great timing for me to get ready to start harvesting and processing locally grown pecans . In this blog i will explain what is involved in my pecan operation ,from harvesting through to the final product .
HARVESTING PECANS
In my area pecans start to ripen and fall from the tree during the last week of October straight through to early January .
As the pecans ripen they start to split open their husks, as they hang on the tree in the open husks they begin to dry and fall to the ground . When our pecans start falling to the ground we use a pecan nut roller to harvest them , the nut roller looks like an oval shaped wire cage mounted on a long handle , as we roll the roller across the ground ,the pecans are captured inside and when full we dump the roller into bushel baskets . Each roller full of pecans equals 1 1/2 gallons of in shell pecans . We can get around 3 five gallon buckets of pecans to a bushel basket which weighs 50 pounds . As we dump the rollers full of pecans into the bushel baskets we remove any leaves, sticks, cracked or broken nuts,rocks and trash from the pecans; this step saves us time when it comes time to wash and sanitize the pecans prior to storage and cracking/shelling .
WASHING AND SANITIZING THE PECANS
As we harvest the pecans in most all weather conditions , at times they will have dirt and sand stuck to them after a rain and the ground is wet . To eliminate dirt and sand from entering the storage bins and cracking machine , the pecans are washed with clean water in a 55 gallon drum equipped with a drain to remove the washing water . After washing the same 55 gallon drum is refilled with fresh water and a 15% bleach solution and left to soak for a period of 2 hours , this process will kill any e coli that may be present from bird or small animal feces on the ground under the trees , as well as any mold spores that may be present as well . After the two hour sanitation soak the drum is drained and the pecans are removed to a framed table topped with 1/2 inch hardware cloth to air dry . When the pecans are fully dry on the outside they are then bagged in mesh bags and hung up to air dry for 2 weeks ; this drying process ensures that the moisture content of the pecans nut meat is reduced by a sufficient amount to eliminate molding when in long term storage . Drying time can be affected by the relative humidity in the air and the amount of air movement present ; we ensure our pecans dry completely by hanging them in an enclosed space with large fans circulating the air 24 hours a day with the humidity of the drying room being no more than 45%.
PECAN STORAGE
When fully dried we store our pecans in 50 gallon totes which will hold 100 pounds each . For the most part we can store all of our own pecans in the cracking shed , but there are times when we have to " buy in " pecans , when that happens we buy pecans from other local growers in 1000 pound "SUPER SACKS" and can quickly have more than can be stored in the cracking shed; when this occurs we store the totes inside of our walk in produce cooler to ensure they stay fresh .
CRACKING THE PECANS
We have a Pearce Brothers pecan cracker that cracks the pecans along the length of the shell as opposed to end cracking as with other crackers , cracking the way we do , along the length of the shell eliminates crushing the pecan into pieces and provides 85 to 90 percent halves . After the pecans are cracked they are moved onto a series of stacked shaker screens which separate the halves form the pieces and chips ; halves stay on the top 1/2 inch screen , pieces stay on the second 1/4 inch screen , chips stay on the third 1/8 inch screen and all fine shell trash and dust moves down to the bottom screen made to household window screen . After screening, each screen is dumped into its own sorting tote and the nut meat retrieved final cleaning for storage and the shell thrown away .
FINAL CLEANING
After the pecans have been cracked,screened,and sorted the nut meat has to go through a final cleaning process , we call this process "BITTER REMOVAL". During bitter removal each halve or large piece of nut meat is inspected for the presence of any remaining parts of internal shell ,which if not removed will cause the meat of the nut to taste extremely bitter , after which they are bagged for storage .
STORING THE PECANS AFTER SHELLING
After the pecans have gone through all of the above processes they are then bagged for storage until they can be bagged for sale . All this really is ,is that the various types of pecan nut meat , halves , pieces or chips , are bagged into gallon ziplock bags and then frozen until they can be bagged into individual 1 quart ziplock bagsfor sale ; each 1 quart bag weighs 1 pound . After they are bagged for sale the pecans are then placed into frozen storage until needed for sale .