Louisiana Pecans - 2010 Harvest Bag
Cloutierville, LA (PRWEB) November 26, 2010
‘Tis the season of quality time with loved ones and delicious holiday treats. Traditionally scrumptious pecan pies are usually a delight on most Americans’ holiday menus. The Natchitoches Pecans, Inc. family and employees are proud to announce the arrival of the 2010 Pecan Harvest.
Harvest usually starts the first week or two in October, but this season was delayed because of "Mother Nature". "This is the latest season we have ever had", said Julie Swanson, manager and co-owner of Natchitoches Pecans. Despite the late harvest, Natchitoches Pecans has harvested an outstanding crop of quality, gourmet pecans for sale online and at their retail location.
Process of Pecan Harvesting
Once the green shucks of the pecans open and expose the mature pecan nut, they are ready for harvesting. A self propelled machine, the pecan shaker, is used to shake the mature nuts from each tree. Standing nearby one can feel the ground vibrate as pecans fall from the trees like rain. Pecans are then gathered from the ground at Natchitoches Pecans with a tractor-pulled mechanical pecan harvester. The nuts are swept from the ground and into hopper bins located at the rear of each harvester. When each hopper is full the pecans are dumped into a large dump wagon and then sent to the pecan cleaning plant.
At the pecan cleaning plant, cleaning and inspection occurs through a series of elevators and inspection tables. As pecans are cleaned of sticks, shucks, rocks, dirt clods, and such, the in-shell pecans are delivered to a pecan sizer. This round, tube-like size selector sorts according to size and diameter of the nut. Then they are bagged into 1500 lb Super Bags or smaller 50 lb bags. The next destination for the pecan is the shelling plant where they are shelled. The nuts are sanitized in a chlorine water bath and allowed to dry before entering the pecan cracker where they are cracked. From the cracker the nuts proceed through the "sheller" where the hard outer portion- the shell- is stripped from the pecan "meat". An aspirator sucks most of the broken shell from the pecan meats as the meats proceed to the pecan meat sizer. The meat sizer has various sizes of screens that allows the meats to be sized into pecan halves, extra large, large, medium, and small pecan pieces. The different sizes of pecan meats are collected into large drums. Sized meats are then ran across an inspection table for one final look to remove any piece of shell, bug stung or shriveled meat before being boxed into 30 lb cases.
Natchitoches Pecans offers a variety of tasty treats and gifts online. Their featured products are the gourmet fancy pecan halves, the in-shell pecans, and the cracked pecans packaged in novelty burlap bags. The gourmet pecans, pecan candies, and a variety of pecan gifts are available online.
About Natchitoches Pecans, Inc.
Natchitoches Pecans, Inc. is a family-owned and operated pecan orchard in Louisiana where duties are shared in bringing the crop to market, from scouting insects, fertilizing, pruning, and harvesting to minding the store each Fall. Mark Swanson sees to the everyday operations while his wife, Julie Swanson, takes care of Little Eva's Pecan Store and the website store. The company was established in 1987 and has been supplying the public with some of the highest quality pecans available. They take pride in having supplied the Louisiana Pecan Festival Country Store with top quality fresh pecans for the past 20 years.
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