North Carolina Pecan Grove

We had family come visit us in North Carolina this last week and one of the main requests were that we found some home grown Pecans to mail back to South Dakota. I'd never been to a Pecan Farm and I wasn't sure if there were any in North Carolina. I knew they were farther south but didn't know how far north they came.

I took to the Internet and found a great website that has all the local growers of North Carolina.

We chose to call Don and Amy Smith because they were the closest to where we were at the time. Don was amazing! Not only did he let us choose what we wanted that he had picked but he also took us out to the grove and told us a bit about his trees and how Pecans come to be.

Here's just a bit of what I learned on this fabulous trip.

Pecan trees can take anywhere from 3-12 years to produce a good crop of pecans. At the grove we went to he had the faster producing trees every other tree in amongst the slower, stronger trees. Once the slower, stronger trees become mature he will cut down the little ones and plant more elsewhere.

To help keep the pets away from the pecan tree they sometimes paint them white, put up rodent guards and tree shelters.

The Pecan is actually grown inside a big green ball, once the ball opens the nut is visible and then it will eventually drop off the tree!

To shell or not to shell, that is the question. Some people like to be able to crack and shell them at their home table and others would prefer to just be able to dig into them and eat them right away. Me, I'm more of a no shell, or cracked shell, type of person. I like to be able to pull the shells off but don't want to use the muscle to do it.

There are many different things you can use Pecans for. You can use them for pies, cakes, and even beer. Pecans are a great source of Protien so some people even use them as a diet food (I might have to try that LOL). My favorite of course is putting them in a bowl and picking out a couple to eat at a time. I actually have a small bag of them in my freezer because my daughter is allergic to tree nuts so I can't keep them out in the open.

Here are some fun facts about Pecans:

• It would take a line of over 10 billion pecans to reach the moon
• You’d need a lot of pecans – 144 million – to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
• It would take 5,640 pecan halves to equal the weight of a standard watermelon.
• The U.S. produces about 80 percent of the world’s pecan crop.

So what do you do with your pecans??? Or do you prefer another type of nut?