Pecans

The Pecan Harvest will be here near November. For those who aren't familliar with the process, I will attempt to explain how we mechanically harvest pecans in Keo.

First, we have a machine called a Tree Shaker that travels through the orchard and will clamp to each tree trunk and shakes all the pecans to the ground. The shake action is generated by 2 energy wheels in the shaker head that are weighted on one halt of the wheels arid turned opposing to each other with a v-belt and hydraulics. The shaker has sweepers mounted in front and behind each wheel. These sweep the pecans so the wheels don’t run over them and break them. The size of the tree denotes how many we can shake in a given time. Men go out and remove large limbs that have fallen during the year. Then we will move in with the Pecan Harvester. This machine is capable of picking up the pecans and light debris. Through a series of dirt chains and a big fan, the machine is able to leave most of the light debris (leaves and sticks) and dirt and small rocks in the field The pecans, with and without shucks, big sticks, rocks and clods go into a trailer pulled behind the harvester. The amount of pecans left behind depends on how well we have our ground prepared.

From the harvester trailer, the pecans are dumped into another trailer that delivers the pecans to a “cleaning plant” Here we have configured an array of machines to remove the shuck (hullers) from the pecans, take out the sticks, remove any rocks, and then through a set of fans that essentially weighs all the nuts and blows out pecans that are empty (the first fan) and then pecans that are only half full (second fan). All pecans are visually inspected to remove any that got cracked or any debris that might have gotten by. Finally into a box and are sold to customers that either walk into the Nut House or we mail them across the country.

For information about our First Annual Pecan Festival, click HERE

For information about the Arkansas Pecan Festival & State Pecan Pie Championship, click HERE