Pecan Growers Convention

“There is always something to learn.”

C E Hollis

In June Ron and I attended the Pecan Growers Convention in Madill, Oklahoma. It was the hundreth anniversary of the Pecan Growers Association so very special. It was hosted by the SAVAGE Equipment Company. There were classes in orchard care and much to learn and friends to see.

My favorite part of the convention is the Field day. We all get up early and drive out to an orchard. We start with visits over coffee and fruit and donuts. Every year we see old friends and make new acquaintances. It was raining this year so the hay ride around the orchard was canceled and most of the programs moved inside a huge barn. The barn housed equipment including a massive cleaner machine that sorts the pecans from any debris like sticks and leaves and hulls. I’ve never seen one so big. We have a smaller version on our farm.

Here everyone is watching the drones used to spray the tops of the trees. Pecans are sprayed with fungicides and insecticides to fight leaf mold and blight and weevils and aphids.

Pictured is one of the spray drones used by growers in their orchards to spray the tops of the tall older trees. We don't have one for our orchard as ours is a small and fairly young orchard. When Ron has to spray he uses a tank and sprayer pulled by his tractor. There is a lot of work in keeping an orchard up and running. Harvest happens in October after the first frost causes the hulls to split open and start dropping nuts.

This is part of the cleaner machine used to sort out debris. Later the nuts are sorted with a photo machine--a camera that takes hundreds of photos per minute and spits out any discolored pecans, pecans with holes  or cracks, or nuts with hulls attached. It is an amazing machine.

This is a friend named Becky Carroll who is retiring after years at the OSU Pecan Research station in Perkins Oklahoma. She will be missed as she is a fine teacher and appreciated by all the pecan growers.

There was a pecan cooking competition and the cakes and goodies were autioned off. Also the growers compete to see who grew the finest pecans. The reception was nice celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the Oklahoma Pecan Growers Association.

Ron went to all the classes he could. There are exciting classes such as aphid control, dealing with blight, fertilizing trees and spacing new trees, grafting practices, and such. I usually spend some down time at the hotel.

Besides the reception they held the yearly meeting where business is voted on and awards are given for the year Two years ago Ron won the state Grower of the year award.

All in all the convention was a sucess despite the rainy weather and we learned a lot and enjoyed ourselves.

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Then God said, “Let the earth sprout forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so.

Genesis 1:11 NASB

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