Flat Granny Goes Nuts!

Goodness gracious what a day! Today I found myself down in south Alabama on a pecan farm learning all about how much work goes into such a little nut! It was a beautiful sunny day and hot enough to fry an egg outside when I took the tour around the 100 acre pecan farm in Lillian, AL. I was showed all over and got a behind the scenes look at what it takes to get those tasty little nuts ready for Christmas pies.

I got to see the long lines of irrigation running through the fields to keep the young trees well watered during summer droughts. I also saw some of the tractors they use to keep the orchards, that's what they call fields of trees, all neat and tidy. They use the tractors to mow the grass and pick up any tree limbs that fall as well as spray the trees for fungus and insects. If you look closely in the background of one of the pictures I put in my photo gallery you can see the farmer on his tractor spreading fertilizer under the trees! (I asked but they wouldn't let me drive for safety reasons.)

After driving through the fields I was shown the harvesting equipment in the barn. They have a "shaker" which they attach to the trunk of the tree and it shakes the tree so that the pecans fall onto the ground. Then they pull a harvester behind the tractor which is a lot like a giant vacuum that picks up all of the fallen pecans. After all of the pecans have been picked up they are run through a cleaner which gets rid of the bad nuts and sends the good nuts down a conveyor belt where people look through each nut by hand and make sure no bad pecans have gotten through. Once they are sure all of the nuts are good they box them up in really big boxes and take them off to be sold to someone who will sell them to bigger companies who turn the pecans into delicious treats for all of us to eat!

Boy it sure is a lot more work than I ever thought just to get a little old pecan, but I sure am glad someone does it so I can bake delicious pecan pies! During my tour I got to hear a lot of interesting facts about pecans, like did you know there are over 1000 different varieties of pecan trees? Also the United States produces over 80% of the world's pecans; and they are mostly from the southeast! But you know, the most interesting fact I think I learned today is that one adult squirrel eats about 43 pounds of pecans in a year. In just one year! That got me thinking, the farmer told me one acre (about 28 trees) of grown trees produces about 1500 pounds of nuts a year.That's quite a few pecans, but I know there is more than one squirrel living nearby nibbling on those nuts... If there is a family of 5 squirrels each eating 43 pounds of nuts, what percentage of that acre of pecans are they eating that I'm not! Can you help me do the math?