The last two years have been devastating for the Central Texas pecan industry.
In both 2022 and 2023, we have seen extreme and exceptional drought conditions in Central Texas and Comanche County pecan orchards. In Comanche County we saw income from pecans sales drop from $24,172,000.00 in 2021 to $11,348,700.00 in 2022 due to lost production because of drought. Unfortunately, we expect this year’s crop to be much lighter and sales to be much lower than even 2022’s low number. 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 and for an agriculturebased county like Comanche, these losses will be hard, if not impossible to make up.
However, the show must go on! There has been a Comanche County Pecan Show for more years than anyone can remember- it is an annual tradition. It is a great opportunity to show off one of the most valuable commodities produced here in the county.
This year’s show will be held on Friday, December 8th 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 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 6th. If you cannot get the pecans to us on the 6th, 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 number of entries of seedling 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 the show:
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Make selections from young trees because they usually produce heavier and bigger nuts than older trees.
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Pick nuts from trees with a light pecan crop to ensure an above average
kernel percentage.
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Harvest pecans immediately following nut drop to prevent pecan kernels from rotting when soil is wet and to preserve a light color- sunlight darkens kernel color.
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Do not alter nut appearance by polishing or rubbing.
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Select nuts that are uniform in size because this is a judging criterion.
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Keep your samples refrigerated until the pecan show.
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Be sure your sample includes only nuts of one variety.
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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.