Pecan Harvest

Sometime in December my dad and stepmother told us that they wanted to come visit us on their way to South Carolina at the beginning of January. When I asked why they were going to South Carolina, they said that they were going to spend a week harvesting pecans on the Farm. Right then I decided that I wanted to take the kids and go help harvest pecans too.

While I was in South Carolina for my grandma's funeral someone mentioned that all of the aunts and uncles were staying for the nut harvest the next week. I was even more sure that I wanted to bring the kids down for a day to help—a chance to spend more time with my aunts & uncles was not something I wanted to pass up. (One of my dad’s brothers and his wife weren’t able to come to the funeral in South Carolina—they have a grandchild with cystic fibrosis who had been hospitalized in Utah for emergency surgery and didn’t feel like they could leave him. Other than that, all of my dad’s living siblings and and sisters in law were at the funeral in SC.)

On Tuesday I loaded up Jason & the little kids (Josh decided he wasn’t interested in a day off if it had to be spent driving to and from South Carolina and working while we were there) and we started driving. Here’s a funny thing about me—I don’t like driving to the grocery store, but I don’t mind driving to the Farm. (Or the beach, or even Utah!) And I love having adventures.

We arrived at the Farm in time to have lunch and visit for a bit, and then it was time to get to work.

My grandfather was a man with a lot of foresight. When his older children were little he planted pecan trees—just tiny twigs—all around the perimeter of the yard. Today, almost 70 years later, those tiny twigs have become majestic trees that offer much needed shade in the summer and a bountiful harvest of pecans in the winter.

The day we were at the Farm we were harvesting from a small grove of nuts out in the middle of the cotton field. This land was not a part of the original property—it was land that my grandpa bought later when it became available. My dad told me that when they bought the additional land there was a sharecroppers house on it with 6-8 pecan trees around it. The sharecroppers house is long gone but the pecan trees are still going strong.

Jared & Jenna work near Ramona

Before we started picking up nuts we had to pick up branches. The trees are what are called “self-pruning” trees—they drop branches throughout the year. I’m sure this serves some important purpose, but I don’t know what! We picked up branches and dragged them over to make a pile for a big bonfire. Then we were ready to start picking up nuts.

I have never harvested nuts before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I was a little bit worried at the thought of stopping over all day long to pick up nuts off of the ground. It turned out that I didn’t need to be worried about that—there are tools made just for picking up nuts, and Ramona & the aunts had gone that morning and bought 5 more so that the kids and I would be able to all have one to use.

It was a cold day, and we were all bundled up in our coats and jackets with gardening gloves from Grandma’s huge stash. I was so proud to see my kids working so hard. Jason hauled branches for hours, and made a huge bonfire. Rachel, Jenna, and Jared hauled branches and then picked up nuts for several hours before they got tired and lost interest. I love these pictures of them working with their great aunts and Ramona. As we were driving home that night Jason said “I didn’t know your Aunts and Uncles were so interesting and so much fun!”

I worked and worked and worked. By the end of the afternoon my neck hurt from looking down for the nuts, and my back hurt from my neck hurting, and my hand hurt from pushing the nut-picker down on the nuts over and over again. But the physical discomfort was so much less than the emotional satisfaction of the day. For a while I picked nuts near my Aunt Pam and talked with her. My Aunt Pam is the only living daughter in my dad's family, and she is the one with whom my grandparents lived most of the time in the 10 years before they died. She has traveled from her home in Utah to the Farm in South Carolina several times every year, both to make sure that her parents were able to spend some time in their own home, and to make sure that the house and yard were cared for properly. I don’t think I ever had an idea of the enormity of that job until I spent just an afternoon harvesting nuts.

Rachel & Aunt Pam

After Aunt Pam I picked up nuts by my Aunt Diane for a while. My Aunt Diane is just about the cutest woman in the world. She told me with some amazement that she is 70 this year. I was shocked—and hope that when I am 70 I will be as much fun as she is. When I was almost 12 my family moved from Southern California to a small town in Arizona where Aunt Diane’s family lived. My dad got a job in Arizona and had to be there to start the job at the beginning of the school year; my mom stayed in California to sell the house. My dad took Margaret and I with him to Arizona so that we would not have to switch schools so early in the school year, and we lived with Aunt Diane’s family for 6 weeks. As a child this didn’t seem unusual to me at all. As an adult I know that having someone else’s kids live with you for 6 weeks is certainly a burden at some point, and I am grateful for her kindness to us.

Rachel working by Aunt Diane

Next I worked near my Aunt Debby. We lived near my Aunt Debby’s family for several years when I was a teenager, and then my parents lived near their family again when I was in college and a newlywed. They happened to be in Utah when Cindy Lynn was born, and came by our apartment to visit us the day that we came home from the hospital. (Which was before Cindy Lynn was 24 hours old.) My Uncle Mark had a new video camera and he videotaped my newborn baby and took the videotape to my parents, who were not able to visit until Cindy Lynn was several months old. My mom later told me that she watched the video until the tape wore out—thank you Uncle Mark! When I visited my parents in North Carolina I tried to always take a day to go to Aunt Debby’s house. My aunt & uncle always managed to make me feel like my visit was the most interesting and important thing that could have happened to them that day, and I cherish the memories of those times. One of my kids’ favorite stories is the story of why mommy got her first cell phone. I had never seen a reason for a cell phone—I’m kind of a technology idiot. One time we had gone to visit Uncle Mark and Aunt Debbie, and as we were leaving their house up in the mountains of western North Carolina I got turned around. After I’d driven with my three small children for 15-20 minutes I realized that we were going further up into the mountains instead of towards the interstate and civilization. I finally turned around on a small dirt road called something like “Ma Hog Waller Road” and prayed that I would be able to find my way back to their house for more directions. When I told my uncle where he had turned around, he had exclaimed in his fabulous southern accent, “Honey, that there is moonshine territory, and those people are likely to shoot you!” And then he got in his little truck and guided me back to the interstate.

A couple of months ago one of my friends mentioned that her nephew had stopped calling her “Aunt” and had begun to call her by her first name. When she told me that the nephew was 32 my first response was that he was old enough that surely this was ok. But then she asked me what I call my aunts & uncles. As I thought about it I realized that I still address all of them as “Aunt” or “Uncle.” And as I thought about it more, I realized that I have no desire to change that. Sure, I am a middle-aged woman now. I am certainly old enough to be “allowed” to call older adults by their first name. But my using these names isn’t just about propriety or even respect. Each time I call one of them “Uncle” or “Aunt” instead of using just their first name, it reminds both of us of the connection that we have. It reminds me that these are the few people who have known me for my entire life. These are the people who knew and loved me as a child, through my teenage years, and now I delight to visit with as an adult. And my afternoon working in the pecan trees just reinforced those feelings.

Late in the afternoon someone finally lit the bonfire and the kids had fun warming their hands by it and throwing in more sticks. We picked nuts and picked nuts and picked more nuts. Finally we could find no more nuts to pick up and the sun started to go down.

Jason had run to Walmart and gotten some marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate so that we could make s’mores on the bonfire. I hadn’t realized that we had burned all of the possible marshmallow-cookers, and so we ended up roasting our marshmallows on the tines of a rake. (I’m so glad that one of the headlines in the NY Times a few weeks later was about how eating more dirt was good for us….)


We ate our s’mores and then walked slowly across the bare cotton field toward the house, the little kids running and playing while I walked more slowly and enjoyed the beauty of the tree rimmed fields and the sunset on the clouds.


I was amazed to see how many nuts we'd picked up.

We picked up about 10 buckets, I think...

We spent a little more time with my dad & Ramona and then we got ready for the long drive home. The kids were all exhausted from the work they’d done—even Jason fell asleep within 30 minutes of getting into the car. I had a lot of time to think as I drove home, and I spent quite a bit of it grateful for the beauty of the day. Sure—it was a lot of work, and a lot of driving, and it was cold, and I had plenty to keep me busy at home. But I don’t know that I’ll ever have a chance like that again—to spend a day working side by side with my aunts, to laugh and joke and talk with them, to be the only grandchild there, and to let my kids get to know these wonderful relatives a little more.

My dad and his siblings had a family meeting this weekend to try to figure out how they are going to settle my grandma’s estate. I’m not sure right now what will happen with the Farm. Whatever happens, I am so thankful for this bonus of extra time there.