In a lot of the country now is a good time to scout trees on non-tended/harvested areas for gathering pecans. There's so many places you can do this trouble-free around my area (NC, urban area). The trees are huge/productive.

Of course, if it's on someone's land it never hurts to ask and you probably should etc etc etc.

Same deal with peanuts - yield is down so peanut butter prices are going up.

I wish there were pecan trees around here. I planted one in my yard - growing well but a long way to go and no other trees to cross with.

Drought in Texas will soon be the new normal.

Eat something else. I never gather the black walnuts, because it is a pain to extract the meat, but obviously if things change I will.

I picked up a ridiculous amount of black walnuts from my 3 trees this year. Yes, they are a bit of work to process -- ok, a ton of work. But so worth it. We're trying to best our record of 67 pounds of shelled walnut meats from the 2009 crop. I know there were more nuts this year than in 2009, but I don't know the exact quantity since I had to press every available, random container into service to hold them for drying/curing. I would guess maybe 15 bushels of nuts after the husks were removed.

I just bought a different kind of automatic cracker, got it last night and am still learning to use it, but seems good, cracked about 2/3rds of a 5 gallon bucket in about 10 minutes.

Whatever happened to the popularity of hickory nuts. As a kid, I sold thousands of pounds of them. We always harvested those big river bottom hickories. They were delicious and close in taste to pecans. I offer whole nuts(walnuts, hickories, and hazelnuts) to my customers and have yet to have anyone want them. I think we've just gotten lazy.

As Dennis says, the meat of black walnuts is the best. If only there was a mechanic method to crush the nut and loosen the meat from the hard bits... perhaps my black walnut has particularly intricate walnut interiors.

Well, I just bought this contraption. As I said, it took a little practice to get it to work just right, but I'm pretty pleased with it. The last nutcracker took me approximately an hour per gallon of nuts to crack them. This one takes about 3 minutes per gallon.

I'm anxious to try it on other hard nuts, like my Hall's Hardy Almonds, hickories, filberts, and English walnuts.

Here is a link that might be useful: Drill Powered Hard Nut Cracker.

Phew...black walnuts are good, but so much work and so messy...the drill cracker was neat, but that dye/mess inside...ugg...wish they didn't have so many barriers to harvest.

Also, besides a lot of pecan trees around here on "urban grazing" areas we have a lot of figs. There's other stuff (including a few stretches of raspberries/blackberries...one I know of about 1/4 mile long), but pecans and figs are all over. Almost all of these "grazing" areas are unintentional by the way, but like dandelion greens, as long as the area isn't being poisoned to death with herbicide/pesticide it's fair game.

Man first coffee prices shoot up and now pecans and peanuts/peanut butter? The end is nigh for sure! (in other words, that sucks)

I took the long route by planting and grafting my own black walnut trees and now have about 35 different nut producing types as well as a few timber type trees growing. So far, I love the flavor of Thomas and Neel #1 best of all I have tried. They are outstanding trees for Kentucky and further south. If growing in more northern areas, I would plant Sparks 127, McGinnis, and Sparrow.

A friend of mine makes an excellent manual nutcracker.
master nut
cracker

If anyone is interested in grafting some black walnut trees, I can provide small amounts of scion wood or you can get some from Gerald Gardner at the above link.

DarJones

No pecan shortage here in SC! I have an old pecan tree that probably came from a squirrel burying a nut. It produced very well this year even though we have been in a drought for years too.

So far I have picked up 2 50# seed sacks full and they are still falling. A friend that sells his paper shell pecans said that his aren't dropping as fast as normal. But it appears to be about an average size yield and very good quality.

I find the nutcrackers interesting and may end up buying one if they work well on Hickory nuts. I have about 40 Hickory trees,I love them, but it is too much work to get the meat out!

I have a manual nut cracker that is home made. Black walnuts are a pain and I took them to the woods again this year. My English walnuts were fairly good this year. All in all it is a heavy nut and acorn year...though my pecans didn't bear this year.

We had a great year for pecans here. We picked 50 lbs. with very little trouble. Lots more to pick up. I miss hickory nuts. We picked alot of them when I was growing up in northern Pa. I think they were the best tasting of any nut I ever at. Sorry to hear that no one wants to buy them.

Even with the drought I'd have more pecans than I can use, but I've had crows--yes, crows--hitting my trees hard. Anyone else seen this?

I have an almond and macadamia. They were planted about 2 years ago. The mac is very productive, giving several crops a year, and is presently in bloom again.

The biggest problem is cracking them, but after several tries, I found if they are dried well, the chore is less problem. If the weather isn't permitting, they are dried awhile in the food dehydrator.

The almonds will drop from the trees when the outer shell splits, but they still need a curing/drying time to remove the meat easily.

Took me awhile to find out their dirty little secret, but it pays off.

Bejay