Yankees love pecans!  I know this is a bold statement, but it seems to be true as far as I can tell.  Gosh, you can go to one of the local tourist stops, be it Adcock Pecans or the Magnolia Plantation,  along I-75 and watch them ooh and ah over the shelled pecans and pecan candies.  Don’t get me wrong, I love them too.  But this is like so many other things we experience in life, what we have easy access to others crave. 

Beside this explanation there’s another reason to take into consideration.  I have spent hours, at least hundreds, picking up these delicious nuts.  As a child, it was one of my duties, along with my siblings, to gather the pecans up for sale to the local pecan buyers.  But many of these nuts were also taken to the local pecan store or buyer to be cracked for mom to make pecan pies with. 

If you travel through the rural south during the fall of the year you will most likely see children and adults somewhere along the way picking up pecans.  Almost every home site has at least one tree.  Well, not in the more upper scale developments, these trees are not chosen for their beauty although they are beautiful during the summer.  The woods and roadsides are dappled with old and young pecan trees as the squirrels cache them everywhere and often forget where. 

It is not unusual to see a family gathering pecans on the roadside from a wild pecan tree hanging over the right-of-way fence.  So for the locals the pecans may often be had just for the trouble of picking them up.  Vast orchards planted with both old and young pecan trees are harvested with machines but the small growers still pick up their crop by hand.

But lets talk about pecan pies. These wonderful confections are perhaps the most thought of dessert when a northerner is asked about southern cooking. They cannot get enough of the nutty pastries. Besides the traditional pecan pie there are many different variations on this southern favorite. There are recipes for pecan chocolate pie, pecan peanut butter pie, pecan butter pie, and the list goes on and on. No traditional southern Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner would be complete without a pecan pie of some sort or another gracing the dessert tray.

And besides the pies there were also spiced pecans covered with cinnamon and sugar to tempt even the most diet conscious individual. On cold winter evenings we would shell pecans by the open fire while the wind howled outside. We could do this as we watched TV or talked without even thinking about it. We enjoyed thinking about the many good candies and pies we were in store for, but it was also something my family did together.

Since pecans can be had at little or no cost for the maker, these pies are full of the tasty nuts. Many northern ladies I have spoken with remark on how they cannot afford to cover the top of their pies with pecans. “We just sprinkle some pecans over the top of the pie” they tell me. The first time I heard this I was very surprised by the statement, but after thinking about it for a while I began to understand why this was so.

I had never bought pecans from anywhere because the freezer was always stocked with gallon plastic bags full of the nuts ready for use. When I began looking around at the local pecan store I was in shock. No wonder the northern folk loved the nuts so much, they could not afford to eat them very often. Like most all of the food grown across America, the growers receive very little for their efforts while the middleman makes a very nice profit for very little work. Nothing new to the farmers of America it seems.

If you are planning to buy a large amount of pecans to use or share with friends you can easily  buy them directly from the growers at a very low cost.  Almost any small Georgia town will have many small pecan producers who will be glad to sell you pecans at the same price the buyers give them, usually around a dollar a pound and sometimes much less depending on the crop quality and price.  If there is a bumper crop the price will be even lower.  Seedlings (smaller nuts) may be bought for as little as forty cents a pound and are still delicious.  

If you want to save even more money there is a chance you can pick up pecans on halves.  Many older residents offer this deal to local kids and adults who want to earn a little money or just pecans to eat or cook with.  By asking around in these small towns you may find many such opportunities for cheap or even free pecans.  Southern hospitality still exists in these small south Georgia towns with many residents happy to help “northerners” obtain the pecans they are looking for.  We are proud of these wonderful delicacies and also the wonderful pies and candies they provide America with.  

So don’t do without pecans because of the high prices charged at the tourist stops.  Go on a quest which will be entertaining as well as fulfilling.  Have a piece of pecan pie for me while you’re at it!