Remembering and Cherishing Pecan Memories

Unlike most Texans and Southerners, I only have a handful of pecan stories from my childhood. My grandparents didn’t have a tree. My mom didn’t really bake. So, we didn’t spend hours baking pecan pies or picking up pecans out in the backyard. But like many Americans, my first—pretty much all—my pecan memories come from…

Compared with our pecan-growing friends in the humid central and eastern production areas, we in the western states, fortunately, have very, very few plant disease issues that we struggle with on a regular basis in our pecan orchards. Sometimes I’ll even hear folks say that we don’t have any pecan diseases out here because it’s…

Every fall I receive calls and emails concerning small severed twigs under pecan trees so this is a good time to address this issue. In my list of insects that feed on pecans, I have recorded 63 species that feed in the main trunk, branches, twigs and roots. Of these 63 species, 32 are beetles…

“I don’t want to say it just happened, but it kinda just happened,” says Doyle McDaniel, Tree Production Manager for the Choctaw Pecan Farms. He’s referring to the over 1,500 acres of pecan farmland that the Choctaw Nation now owns throughout Southeastern Oklahoma. In about two years, the Choctaw Nation has gone from an undisclosed…

It’s November and there is, perhaps, no better Month to celebrate the American pecan farmer. After all, you are one to be celebrated! You are, most assuredly, in full swing harvesting your crop. You are short on daylight, and your days are long. And at times you may be lacking the help you need to get the job…

Thanksgiving is upon us yet again. It’s time to celebrate family and friends and to cherish all of the blessings in our lives. This American holiday wouldn’t be complete without a delicious pecan pie, which has become a symbol of the holiday season and the South. But how did it get that way? And who…

This week I told Monte Nesbitt, “Well, it looks like we’re going to have two short crops in a row.” I asked him what he thought. Smiling, he said, “They need a good dose of Ammonium nitrate.” We both laughed because we know one cannot go 15 years without soil-applied nitrogen fertilizer on bearing pecans….

Richard Louis Haller of Fort Worth, Texas, aerospace engineer, pecan farmer and loving husband, father and friend, died September 14, 2017 of colon cancer. He was 87. Haller was born February 3, 1930 in San Antonio, Texas. He attended public schools in San Antonio, graduating from Edison High School, where he was on the basketball…

I was driving along backroads through native pecan groves when I came across a stopped pickup and a guy standing out in the middle of the road with a pair of binoculars trained on the upper branches of nearby trees. Turns out, I interrupted a pecan buyer trying to get a feel for the nut…

  HOW IT’S MADE, OCT. 2017— While filming the harvesting process at Sorrells Farms, the film crew worried over the possibility of standing in fire ants and asked the Texans present, multiple times, if they were. It’s safe to say, they escaped unscathed. (Photos by Blair Krebs)   HOW IT’S MADE, OCT. 2017— Kinley and…

Once again, we find ourselves talking about wet conditions at a time of year when we are usually discussing drought and high temperatures. August and early September are usually dry and hot, so we spend our time discussing ways to increase irrigation to meet the water requirements of pecan trees during the nut filling period….

The APC-hired marketing team from Weber Shandwick followed the meeting with a central region immersion tour on Sept. 14 and 15. The group consisted of ten team members from the Chicago and Dallas offices; these team members work across the APC account in areas such as creatives, issues, and media relations. On this fast and…

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is leading the effort for the U.S. pecan industry to lower the pecan tariff rate in India.  The U.S. pecan industry has worked to develop the pecan market in India in the face of a significant tariff rate of 36 percent on U.S. pecans. This rate is much higher than…

The dawn of the 2017 pecan harvest is upon us. As usual, it has its own set of unique challenges, which must be dealt with depending on where you are before one could even think about harvesting. First and foremost, many pecan bottoms were flooded due to Hurricane Harvey, and the cleanup of the debris…

At the end of August and beginning of September, two hurricanes—Harvey and Irma— hit the Southern portion of the United States. Harvey struck Southeast Texas on Aug. 25 as a Category 4; it quickly downgraded to a tropical storm and then stalled over Texas for three days. Following soon after, Hurricane Irma blasted the Caribbean,…

Raymond Darrell Eikenbary passed away on Sept. 9, 2017. He was born to Grover and Edna Allen Eikenbary on Nov. 2, 1929 in Quay, Oklahoma. He is survived by his special friend, Liz Konigmacher; his former wife, Dolores Guinn, (Harold Guinn); his children, Pam Guenther (Cris Bone), Darrell Eikenbary, Terry Shay, and Dale Eikenbary; his…

As we enter the harvest season, it’s that time of year for me to remind everyone about stored product insects and suggest post-harvest insect monitoring tools. As producers, processors, wholesalers and retailers strive to produce and present a high-quality product, stored product insect detection and management becomes essential. Post-harvest pecans can experience infestations at any level…

Sometimes failure hits you when you least expect it. When it does, I believe it’s important to seek beauty in the ashes. That was the case for us in May as we sought to find beauty from pecan ashes. I wish that was a symbolic term, but unfortunately, it’s not. If there is one thing…

The American Pecan Council (APC) met at the Noble Research Institute (formerly the Noble Foundation) on Sept. 13 in Ardmore Oklahoma. Council members and guests began the day by touring the Noble Research Institute’s greenhouse and labs. In the tour, members saw the latest research on scab as well as some of the pecan trees…

Don Bailey Pallett, 81, passed away peacefully on Sept. 13, 2017 in Granbury, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was born on Aug. 23, 1936 in Brady, Texas. Preceded in death by his wife, Joanne; Don is survived by his son Michael, daughter-in-law Holly, and granddaughter Hannah Pallett. Don was the retired General…

What a time of year for the current development of the pecan! As you may realize and experience yourself, when October comes around, it is most welcome. The cooler days tend to give that extra motivation, that sense of “Hey, it’s not so bad being out here today.” The cooler weather motivates us to get…

These last few months of 2017 have felt almost like one of those apocalypse movies. You know the ones. Everything seems to be going well when suddenly Mother Nature seems to turn against humankind. She batters us with rain and winds. She shakes the earth, toppling buildings and livelihoods with a flick of her wrist….