Pecan Farming 101

hey everybody this is Michael Waddell gonna give you a little bit on pecan farming 101 and if you look behind me right here this is pretty much the typical southern pecan plantation or farm we like to call this Downton Dixie because actually one of our favorite series was Downton Abbey and so this place is kind of our southern version of what they had over there I think but right behind me you'll see I got a bunch of targets out here so that's my number one job as a hunt for a living so I got to come out here and practice so not all orchards have a you know a 3d target setup out there but we do but when we bought this place the orchard was really grown-up so it took a lot of you know bush hogging and getting it up to par we had to fertilize it we had to start the spraying process to get to these trees walk back in shape these trees here that you see behind me most of these are Stewart's up on the hill I got slides seedlings I got a pecan called a moneymaker as well as a pecan called a May hand so a lot of different varieties took me a while to kind of figure out which ones are what and if you see these trees right here they're Stuart's probably one of the best money-making pecans a real Hardy nut that strand up again is really popular all over the south especially as you get down to South Georgia you know Thomasville Georgia in a little bit north up to about a couple hours north of that so I've learned a lot and I'm learning that number one it's called a pecan now I don't office pecan or pecan but I've learned everybody down south that farms for a living that makes a lot of money they say they sell pecans and I've seen the chicks some of them are big I'm trying to get there and I'm just going to show you how we do it but they call them pecans so if they're making that kind of money I'm gonna call them pecans too and you'll know why because this equipment ain't cheap I'll show it to you here's a few of the toys that make this pecan orchard work one is man I got an old beat-up old bulldozer I love that thing actually when I first bought it only had about six acres and it didn't take me long man I've come home bored on a trip might push down every tree I had so now I got a little bit more spread so I can use it to build roads and stuff and right here behind me is probably one of the most important pieces that we use this is during the spring and summer months there's a lot of spraying that goes on a peaking in farming and so there's a big fan in this particular sprayer and it blows the different kind of pesticides miticide fungicides up in the tree as well as foliage fertilizer you know like zinc is really important and there's a lot of different things you can actually get way up in the tree and you've seen some of these trees man they're way up there 150 foot tall and so I got a spray that spray way up in there so obviously I got more than just goes on the ground we got our own formula liquid fertilizer we've been using and you can see right here this is a water spout that actually I tap in and my dad and I use this to fill the big you know $1,000 sprayer fertilizer different sprayers hairs here is the peak end harvester here this is a really cool piece of equipment it's basically like a vacuum cleaner I just pull it right behind my tractor I'll shake the trees and I'll show you that here in a second and then we come and we pick up all the pecans with this piece of equipment they go in this particular hopper and then we dump them right into a cleaner too sitting right over here so y'all come look at this this is my cleaner we just pushed it back in its slot where it goes in the barn that from that harvester it dumps the load into here and there's a small elevator that runs up here and this particular cleaner here based on air flow and a big engine it blows out all the trash and all the pecans that might be you know have worms in them or to light or maybe just rot it and then they come out on the table you can sit here and you grade these out based on having people looking at them and just hand grading them out if there's rocks or sticks and then from there they go into a bucket and then we dump them into what we call super sacks and here is the final product of pecans now this is the last load we got this is a mixed bag of pecan you can see some money makers in there seedlings as a few Stewart pecans in there but this is the bag each one of these bags that you see here is gonna be around a thousand pounds up to 1200 pounds my dentist is so mad at me when he sees me doing that there you'll see a big old pretty Georgia pecan this particular pecan that's a sly I'm sorry that's a Stuart pecan but one of the better pecans to eat and that right there is a beautiful pecan so a lot of the pecans that you get that you put in your pies all across the country a lot of them come from Georgia so I'm proud to be a Georgia pecan farmer so this particular piece of equipment is the pecan shaker and I'm telling you when people ride by and they see this thing running all the kids freak out and everybody kind of likes it it's just a big huge beast of a machine with a big roll cage it's got a v8 engine and it runs off gas hydraulics that run this big grappler here that I can go up and down side to side tilt it any kind of different direction grab most any size tree and just shake the fire out of it so it's got a shake lever and you better hold on you'll go home at night and you shaking like it's like you've been at the disco so this is a really cool piece of equipment and it's really handy because when the pecan is ready to fall out you can get this hooked up and shake them out so you can harvest them so this is a step right before you actually run the harvester to pick up the pecans it's unbelievable to see what this thing can do and it's a big vital piece of equipment if you're in the pecan business and that's just a little bit about what we do and I'm still a rookie at it my wife and I are learning and we've been having a good time at this pecan farm and I've always thought pecan orchards are beautiful so it's been a blessing to own one and if you like this video about this pecan farm and stuff like that be sure to check out exmark calm slash backyard to find out more cool videos from other partners of Exmark and they're bringing a lot of different things on the rural lifestyle from lawn and garden all the way to pecan farming so y'all take care check out the link and I hope I will see y'all soon

Channel: Bone Collector

Views: 18,002

Rating: 4.9824562 out of 5

Keywords: farming, pecan, food, eating, tractors, equipment, heavy equipment, pecan farming, georgia, farmer, farm, pecan farm, exmark, mowers, lawnmower, backyard, rural, lifestyle, outdoors

Id: KpRo9ZwaLQE

Length: 6min 20sec (380 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020