Scott,
Thanks for the info. I walked through a fall show last weekend in the OK Panhandle and another this morning here in Elkhart. I always wait to buy mine from a local ladies group who sells them at the show here for a money raising project. They then use the money for projects in the rural area around Eva, OK. They were .50 cents cheaper today than last year. I'm not sure last week where the pecans were from. They were supposed to be OK grown. They were 7.50 for a lb of shelled pecans. They also offered other options also. Unshelled and cracked. The ones I bought today were 8 dollars a pound. They are from Oklahoma Pecan Company in Armore,OK. Jay

Thanks for the heads-up! I always get mine from a friend who belongs to the "Zonta" group in MWC. They're always large, clean and fresh in 1 lb. bags. Last year they offered buy 2 get one free. Not this year though. This year I had to pay $8 a lb which I thought may have been a bit high, but now I know it's the average price and I'm always happy with the quality. I've been told they'll be processed by the 14th and she's delivering them on the 16th.

Appreciate the info!

Scott,

Thanks for posting this.

At our house the crop is poor this year. I think the frost we had in early May nipped back a lot of them. Some folks on higher elevations in Love County didn't seem as affected by that frost as we were, and I have seen lots of folks out in their yards gathering pecans this week.

We'll get a few pounds here from our trees, but not a huge crop like we have in good years.

Did your trees produce a good crop this year?

Dawn

We still have most of the harvest left to do after it dries out, so I won't know the final numbers for another week or two. We went "organic" this year (not premeditated), meaning we didn't spray anything, and as a result lost the majority of the crop. We would have lost a lot of it anyway because of the high temps and humidity.

Still, our good ones are very good, but we will likely only harvest about a 25% crop which is about 5000 to 8000 lbs for us.

Pecan scab was really bad this year because of the early high temps and humidity. Then the insects did more damage than usual in August and early Sept. That is just the nature of the business. The people who make their living from it will do very well this year since they usually do a good job managing their trees over the summer, and since their trees are irrigated or on deep bottom-land soil.

Scott,

I never spray, but then I have only a couple of trees close enough to the house that we actually harvest those pecans. Some years we get a great crop and some years we don't.

The other native pecan trees are off in the woods farther from the house, back in the "backwoods" area that I no longer venture into alone because of the periodic invasion of wild pigs back there. I might drag Tim back there today to see what those trees have produced.

We had a foot of rain here in September so virtually all our trees have a lot of foliar diseases and the leaves look horrible.

Yesterday I saw folks out on bottom land soil near the river with some machines I'm sure you'd recognize. I don't know what to call them. They had two kinds: the big "shakers" and then some smaller ones that almost look like they "vacuum" up or sweep up the pecans or gather them some other way. I've seen the shakers pretty often over the years, moving down our road on their way to Fred's or somebody else's place where they have a lot of pecan trees, but I haven't seen the other kind of machines before.

We're having a deer invasion at our house, too, and I have to watch out about venturing too far from the civilized portion of our land during the fall rutting season. Some friends stopped by on Saturday afternoon and as we stood in the yard talking, five deer (4 does and a little 7-point buck) calmly walked across the yard just outside the garden fence and walked off into the woods. We seem to have a lot more deer this year than we've had the last couple of years, but then we always have plentiful deer here. We're already having issues with spotlighters and the sherriff's deputies and wildlife officers can't be everywhere at once.

Dawn

I stopped by a pecan retailer earlier today and their prices have gone up significantly. I'd now say $9.00 per lb shelled out is a good price, and $10.00 is common. This place had cracked papershells costing over $3.50 per lb, and no natives left at the moment.

Looks like I will be raising my prices to keep up.

Dawn, Once we get to September the trees aren't really hurt by excess moisture in most cases. What really hurst the nuts is temps over 70 and relative humidity over 90% during especially June and early July. (This may sound normal, but is not as common most years as you would think. It's those days where we get moisture and no sun that are killers.) It causes scab to spread and make the nuts small or abort as the shuck blackens in July and Aug. Once the shells harden in late August, it is insects or lack of water that hurts them most. The foliage can also be hurt by scab and they can defoliate earlier than usual in September as a result, and that can hurt the nut fill and return bloom some.

Scott,

Guess the law of supply and demand is working.

We certainly had the excess humidity this year, and I hope we don't see that combination of high heat/high humidity again for a long time.

Our pecan trees did defoliate extra early.

Dawn

The good news for consumers is that a LOT of acres are being planted to pecans these days because of prices since 2004, so in 8 to 10 years there will be an increase in supply. Plus, the new varieties will be a little more productive than old ones. If China backs out of the market (and this is quite possible) then prices will plummet in the coming years.

If the government would stay out of it, then prices will drop eventually because growers are reinvesting their profits into new plantings. Funny how that always works out.