Welcome... to First Time Crackers

Here's What to Expect When You Bring in Your Pecans to be Cracked and Shelled

Make sure they are dry To test for dryness, crack a couple of pecans by hand and then snap the meat halves in two. If they snap crisply, you're ready to go. If they bend or crumble, they're still too green for the machines to crack properly. To dry pecans, spread them out in a warm place and let the sun do the work.

Sort by size Our machines are designed to crack by the the width of the nut size (medium - 13/16 in. through large - 1 In.), not the length. and mixed sizes will get mixed results. Sorry, we are not able to do a good job on small natives (12/16 in. or less in diameter); they are too small to get picked up properly by the cracker and they get smashed sideways, instead of cracked lenghtwise.

Clean Pecans No dirt clods, rocks, sticks, screw drivers, pliers, eyeglass lens, paper, snuff cans, church keys or tractor bolts; thank you. And pick out the pecans still in hulls. All too hard on our machinery. Also pick out any pecans with small holes. Those have weevil grubs in them, and you probably don't want grubs in your take home pecans. We certainly don’t want them in our machinery. If needed, we'll send you to the Timeout Station to clean things up, before taking in your pecans.

Crack-Shell-Blow This removes about 80% of the shell, leaving you with the remainder to pick by hand. But don't expect the output to look like grocery store halves; besides the 20% of the shells, you'll also get the broken pecan bits and pieces.

Percentage Returned When you bring pecans in we weight them for pricing. When you pick up, they are obviously going to weigh less, since much of the shell is removed. For paper shell pecans, expect around 30-40% to be returned. For the smaller natives, expect about 20-30% returned.

Quality Occasionally we'll have folks bring in small, hard native pecans and somehow expect those to crack out as large, golden, whole halves. Remember what your Mother told you about a sow's ear and a silk purse. That applies to native pecans, also.

Pick-up Promptly Once pecans are shelled, the oil starts to evaporate. Get into storage promptly to preserve the flavor. They will stay fresh in the fridge for a year; up to two years in the freezer. So please don't forget to pick up. We will dispose of unwanted pecans after 30 days.

Pricing - To crack, shell and run through the blower - From 1 in. down through 13/16 in. in diameter - $1.00 a pound. Most paper-shell nuts fit in here. From 12/16 in. down through 10/16 in. - $1.25 a pound. Smaller than 10/16 in. - $1.50 a pound. The smaller the nut, the more time it takes to process a pound of them.

Mahan Pecans. Sorry, we can't process Mahans. Due to their length they are too large to go through the cracker.