Skills for Life: Pecan Farming | HGTV

Well, I'm just nuts, for one thing. [laughs] [music playing] I'm Eileen. And I'm Gene. Welcome to Yegua Creek Farms. Well, my mother's family were all farmers. So one of my childhood memories is of all the aunts and uncles out there with the cane poles threshing the trees for pecans. And I have, including myself, 15 of us cousins. And our job was to go pick up the pecans. Of course, now when we thresh the trees we use PVC pole. So we've come a long way. But it was also kind of fun in our first couple of years before we had our harvester and shaker when I put her in the bucket of the tractor and raised her up to get her up to the top of the tree to pick the pecans out of the top of the tree. I said, my bottom wasn't made for that tractor bucket. [laughs] We just decided that being somewhere in Texas with trees on the property and away from the Mid-Cities traffic was the place to be. And every place that we looked at seemed to have pecan trees on it. I was walking, admiring the trees one day. And I looked up at those trees. And I said, you think you'd mind if we came and stayed here for a while and lived here at this orchard? And those trees kind of went, well, we'll be here long after you. But you can come stay for a while if you want. So it just felt like being home. Harvest starts in October and goes all the way through January. The late harvest is the native pecans because they mature later. The native pecans are the trees that planted themselves, usually along creek beds. And you'll see they're a much smaller pecan. And this is a larger improved varietal. There are there over 1,000 different varieties of pecans, and this is one of them. And it came from a tree that was grafted. So the native pecans are the little tiny pecans that are very hard to crack. But they have a very high oil content. About 50% of a pecan is oil. So if you pressed a pound of pecans, you'd get half a pound of oil. [machine whirring] This is a pecan cracker that cracks about 50-60 pounds an hour-- nice pecan cracker. [rustling] So after they've been cracked, they then go to what's called the sheller. [rustling] Oh, they taste so good. You've got to try one. [bugs chirping] [sander whirring] When we got the pecan orchard and had these incredible resources-- specifically the wood-- available to me, it gave me another way to use the resources that were here at the orchard. I use them in a good way. This structure is our solar kiln. And we use the solar kiln to dry the lumber that comes from the milled pecan logs. We start with the rough-cut pecan boards, plane them to give them a smooth finish. And from those planed pecan boards we build a variety of products. It keeps me out of the kitchen. [music playing] As you'll see behind me, there are some beehives. Even though pecan trees don't require bees for pollination purposes because pecan trees are wind pollinators, for us they pollinate-- The dewberries! And the dewberries are a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry. And, boy, do they make yummy jam and cobbler. Yum. We also have wild onions, wild garlic. We have sorrel. And on the back fence, we have Mustang grapes. Mother nature planted all of these plants that we talked about. All you have to do is go out and pick off the fruit that mother nature has provided you. [music playing] The gentleman who lived here before called this native grove his cathedral because, when you get back there and you hear the silence and you see the beautiful trees, you feel like you're in church. And you really know there's something bigger than you that created all of this. A successful farmer means that you're going to leave the land in better condition at least-- or at least as good a condition as what you found the land when you got here. Success for us is the relationships that we built with our community, with the friends that we made as neighbors. And that to me is being a successful farmer. [music playing] No, I don't remember what I said. [laughs] You've got enough outtakes. [laughs]

Channel: HGTV

Views: 6,974

Rating: 4.96 out of 5

Keywords: yegua creek farms, elgin, texas, austin, pecan, farming, hobby, tips, hgtvHgtv, design, renovation, decorating, interior design, makeover, house tour, home, garden, home tour, remodeling, dream home, how to, how to fix, ideas, home restoration, gardening

Id: m81qVIUktow

Length: 4min 58sec (298 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 30 2018