2024 Comanche County Pecan Show
The last few years have been devastating for the Central Texas pecan industry. In both 2022 and 2023, we had extreme and exceptional drought and extremely high temperatures in Central Texas and Comanche County pecan orchards.
This coupled with a couple of winters with single digit temperatures, has been a rough time for our local pecan orchards. Not only have we seen crop loss, but also widespread tree loss in the area.
We estimate 1/3 of the pecan trees in the county have either died or been damaged beyond saving.
Just in pecan sales in Comanche County, we saw a drop from $24,172,000.00 in 2021 to $10,053,300.00 in 2023 due to lost production because of the drought and temperature extremes. This large loss of current and future income is not only devastating for growers, but also the local economy. The pecan industry has a long history of providing jobs and pumping money into the local economy; for an agriculture-based county like Comanche, these losses are very hard to overcome.
Despite all these negatives, we do have pecans this year and the local pecan show gives us a chance to showcase these pecans. There has been a Comanche County Pecan Show for more years than anyone can remember- it is an annual tradition.
This year’s show will be held on Tuesday, December 3rd at 8:30 a.m. at the Comanche Community Center with judging beginning as soon as we complete the processing of pecans.
Entries will be accepted from all pecan growers, whether you have 1 or 100,000 trees, BUT the pecans must have been grown during this year and by the person that is entering the nuts. Pecan entries need to be dropped off at the Comanche County Extension office by 5 p.m. on Monday, December 2nd. If you cannot get the pecans to us on Monday, please call and let us know what you will be bringing. It helps us to have all the entries already entered in the computer program before processing starts.
A pecan entry must have a minimum of 50 nuts and be labeled with a variety name, exhibitor name, address, and phone number. Growers are limited to one entry of each variety but there is no limit on the numbers of entries, seedlings, or native pecans. I encourage you to enter a sample of your best pecans in the show. There is no charge, and you might win a major award.
Here are some tips for selecting the best pecans for show:
■ Make selections from young trees because they usually produce heavier and bigger nuts than older trees.
■ Pick nuts from trees with a light pecan crop to ensure an above average kernel percentage.
■ Harves t pecans immediately following nut drop to prevent pecan kernels from rotting when soils are wet and to preserve a light color- sunlight darkens kernel color.
■ Do not alter nut appearance by polishing or rubbing.
■ Select nuts that are uniform in size because this is a judging criterion.
■ Keep your samples refrigerated until the pecan show.
■ Be sure your sample includes only nuts of one variety.
■ Submit a minimum sample of 50 nuts. Due to the extremely light crop, we expect entries to be very low. If you have just a single tree that produced this year, please collect a sample and bring it by.
We need everything we can get to have enough for a show this year. We can always use help during the processing portion of the show. If you are interested, give us a call at 325-3562539.