Quote:
Originally Posted by cmac2012
I was exaggerating a mock hillbilly pronunciation of pecan. It's a really effective humor affect that I often use. 
Not sure what kind of pecans my grandpa had in his yard. I do know they were huge. The lowest branches were way too high for me to reach and I was a tree climbing foo' in that day. He would shell them by hand with a pocket knife. Saw it with my own eyes.
My dad was not a cowboy in his adult years but worked long hours with his uncle up until he was 15 and went off to work at the copper smelter in Morenci. His biological father died after his horse stepped in a hole while riding at speed out somewhere. Wasn't found for a couple of days and had serious complications, spinal damage, etc. Had been a foreman on a big ranch and a rodeo champion.
He told me that the land around Duncan and the Lordsburg, NM area was so sparse it would support about 5 head of cattle per section (640 acres IINM). I dunno, I suspect that working cowboys don't feel that they look that much different than a pecan farmer. If they have an attitude about it, F 'em I say. |
If your grandpa's pecans were very long and relatively skinny, they would have been Giant Mahan's. If there were larger than a native, but sort of fat, there are quite a number of varieties that fall in that category.
The Giant Mahan's don't seem to be as popular in a commercial orchard like they used to be for some reason. They seem to have been quite popular for individual planting in past years. I THINK that the Giant Mahan is not popular in a commercial setting because they don't go through the automated shelling equipment as well as the ones that have a more normal aspect ratio.
My SIL and BIL had a quite mature Giant Mahan tree in their yard that had been planted in 1940 when the house was built. In the early eighties we pretty much filled a short narrow pickup bed with grocery sacks off of that one tree.
Pecans as a crop are pretty unpredictable. Some years you will get a bumper crop like the truck load I described, and the next year, the crop might be very light. Unlike most crops, the reason doesn't seem to corelate with rainfall amounts. I think it has to do with pollination. Maybe Bot knows something about this.