I’m out of the habit of shelling my own pecans. In these parts and with my ancestors—not just the distant ones, but also the immediate ones and their immediate kin—we carry deep pecan traditions and deep pecan love.

A Bucket of Love

My uncle walked in the back door carrying his bucket.

Arriving from Memphis, he bounced in with his bucket and a smile ahead of the other people and a pile of overnight bags in the car.

“They’re here!” Mom exclaimed, seeing him down the hall. When she spied the bucket, she clapped with delight.

“I stopped at that spot coming out of Mississippi. Looks like no one’s been gathering yet,” he said, holding up his bucket. Not some flimsy mop bucket or beach bucket. A sturdy white plastic five-gallon bucket, the one he kept in his car from August through December, just in case he spied some pecan trees along the way.

The Right Tools for the Job

I grew up in and around homes that had at least one dedicated pecan cracker. Not nut crackers. These are pecan specific, with a slide handle that closes at the perfect stopping point to crack the shell without crushing the nut.

Somewhere here—maybe in my garage—I have a clunky green one that was handed down to me. It’s heavy and mounted on a wood base that’s painted dark green. My mom probably painted it. I recognize the green from a wall in our past.

I’m not sure if shelling pecans is a habit or a tradition, but I am afraid we are out of this habit. Have we lost this tradition?

The Art of Shelling and Picking

We—recent ancestors included—didn’t just crack and shell our own pecans, we gathered them.

Some of us had our own trees, but they were never sufficient. Holiday tables require many sweet nuts. To supplement our stash, we had our eyes peeled year-round for pecan trees along roadsides, in ditches, off the highway—anywhere arguably public.

Come September, we knew the spots.

Everyone had at least one story of being shooed from under a pecan tree.
“Hey, you can’t take pecans here. This is private property.”
Arguably.

Arriving to visit a sibling or child or parent with a bucket of pecans was (and still is) love language.

• Bigger love: they’re cracked and ready to shell.
• Deep love: already cracked and shelled.
• Deepest, truest love: they’re cracked, shelled, picked clean, and bagged.

Still, some of us prefer to pick clean our own pecans. It’s an art. And I guarantee, back in the day, the church ladies knew who had skills. If you hung around long enough, they’d tell you, or you could wait and see for yourself whose pecan pies they avoided. Otherwise, you might bite into a slice of pie and find yourself chewing on a chalky pecan-shell membrane.

Pecan Love in Action

Even though my uncle arrived that day with uncracked pecans, this was deep love.

Those five gallons of pecans were fresh off the ground, questionably acquired, and offered with all the love and knowing. Brother and sister sat in the kitchen cracking, shelling, picking… sampling and smiling as they worked their way to the bottom.

They both had pecan standards. No shriveled or puny halves made the cut—only plump, oily, and sweet ones.

Losing the Habit, Forgetting the Love

We’re out of the habit of this love language. We don’t steel (or “rescue”) pecans from maybe-public places. Some of us can’t tell you where our pecan cracker is. Some homes don’t even have one!

We buy pecans in stamped store bags—cracked by indifference, packed by hands we don’t know.

The dishes on our tables have lost their backstory. Thinner, with less love and lore, our pies are no longer brimming with the pecans “I found on the highway coming in, just beyond the corner with the True Value…”

We empty store-bought bags into the mixing bowl.

I wish I had never started buying pecans in bags.
I wish I hadn’t let the tradition of pecan love fade.

Do you have a pecan or other food tradition in your family? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments.

©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2025.