When pecans ripen, they are harvested a pecan harvester. Pecan harvesters, like other seasonal laborers, supplement their income doing other jobs such as harvesting other seasonal crops, general farm work, and so on. A pecan harvester may manage a pecan orchard throughout the year, keeping the trees in good shape and performing maintenance tasks; on small farms, the farmer often handles harvesting and other similar tasks alone, without hiring help.
Preparing the ground beneath the trees is the first step in the pecan harvest. Pecans are harvested collecting them from the ground, which necessitates a level and clean surface for easy harvesting. Keeping growth trimmed under pecan trees all year helps, and a pecan harvester can mow, trim, and rake the ground clean in the weeks leading up to the harvest. It’s also crucial to remove any falling pecan leaves that appear as the nuts ripen.
When the nuts start falling in a small orchard, the pecan harvester collects them manually. Bending to pick up nuts hand or using pecan harvesting equipment, which usually takes the form of a scoop or bag on a pole, are both options. The nuts are picked up inside the device after the pole is run along the ground. In larger orchards, a pecan harvester may use a tree shaker to bring down as many nuts as possible at once, then scoop up the pecans with a small tractor.
Pecan harvesters are frequently involved in post-harvest processing. This includes sorting through the nuts to identify any that are damaged, as well as packing the nuts for storage. Pecans are usually packed in their shells and shelled later, with the help of a machine that pops the shells open and then separates the nuts and shells.
Even with a tractor, harvesting pecans is difficult. Harvesters may need to go out every day for several days to collect all of the nuts, and they will be out in weather that varies from mild to extreme depending on the year and the area. Pecan harvesting, like other types of manual labor, necessitates physical strength and endurance, as well as the patience to complete the task properly. Making mistakes during the harvest can lead to problems later on, ranging from rot on nuts collected too late to poor quality in batches of shelled nuts, which can lower the value of the nuts.