Grover Soesbee dumps a bucket of pecans into the cracking machine. This machine will crack one pecan at the time, cracking about one pound of nuts per minute.

Clank! Clank! Clank! Clank! Clank! Clank!

This is the mesmerizing sound made by three pecan cracking machines in the back room of Carolina Grain. When you first encounter these incessant machines, it is rather interesting, but after listening to them for a few minutes, it makes you wonder how anyone can bear to work around them for very long.

Earlier this week, I stopped by Carolina Grain on Fayetteville Road in Lumberton to see what products they stock on their shelves to control weeds in farm ponds. I have learned that in addition to aquatic herbicides, this is a good place to find just about anything you need for your animals or for your lawn or garden. This is primarily a Purina feed store, but it is also a good place to ask questions about what you need to use to handle your livestock, lawn, or garden problems.

For a long time, Grover and Pat Soesbee, owners of this busy store, have been strong supporters of Cooperative Extension. I enjoy visiting with them, and when I do visit, I always learn a lot from them about what is going on in the county. They are always eager to help our 4-H youth that are involved in animal science projects, and they work closely with both the Livestock and Crop Promotion Associations in the county. Both Grover and Pat serve on Extension's Advisory Committees.

But to me, the fascinating part of their operation is their pecan business. During the fall of the year, their place is full of pecans. Although there are no commercial pecan orchards in the county, there are pecan trees everywhere. Many people have from one to several dozen trees around their homes and barnyards. Each fall when they pick up pecans from under their trees, many of them take them to Carolina Grain to sell. Grover, in turn, sells them to a major pecan processor in South Carolina.

In addition to buying pecans, they also crack pecans for their customers. While I was there, a steady stream of people came in with bags, buckets, or sacks full of pecans to be cracked. Others came in to pick up pecans, which they had left earlier to be cracked.

I walked to the back of the store to see the pecan cracking operation. Grover described to me how the cracking machines operate and how they are adjusted for different size pecans. He also demonstrated how the cracked pecans are placed in another machine that blows most of the trash and hulls into a big bin, allowing the freshly cracked nuts to fall into a container.

For most of the year, the pecan cracking machines just sit idle, but at this time of the year, they operate from the time the store opens in the morning until it closes at night. It keeps two workers busy filling the hoppers with whole nuts, adjusting and readjusting the machines, shifting the cracked nuts to the cleaning machine, and then placing them back into the containers they arrived in.

When whole pecans are placed in the hopper, they are fed one at the time into the cracking chamber. The clank you hear is the motor driven plunger that slams into the nut, cracking the shell while doing very little damage to the meat of the nut. The cracked nuts fall into a tub beneath the cracker. Each machine can crack about one pound of pecans a minute.

While I was there, I decided to buy a few pecans. I love the pecan pies my wife bakes, but we do not have a pecan tree in our yard. If I want pecan pies, I have to buy pecans. Then I have to crack them.

For years, I have used one of those old lever-type pecan crackers. Place one nut in the cracker, pull the handle, take the nut out of the cracker, drop it in a container, place another nut in the cracker. It takes like what seems forever to crack enough pecans for just one pie.

So I decided I would let Grover crack my nuts for me. He charges 38 cents per pound to crack them. In no time, all the nuts I had bought were cracked and placed in a larger paper sack for me to take home and pick out.

Believe me, I'll never use that old hand cracker again. This is definitely the way to get your pecans cracked.

If you have pecans to crack this winter, I suggest you take them to Grover. For a couple of bucks, he will crack them for you. Then, all you have to do is pick them out while you watch an ACC basketball game on television.

If you don't have any pecans to crack, stop by Carolina Grain anyway. You will be fascinated as you watch the pecan cracking operation.

E-mail address: Everett_Davis@ncsu.edu

Mailing Address:
P. O. Box 2280
Lumberton, NC 28359-2280

Phone: 910-671-3276
Fax: 910-671-6278

Date Created 04/21/06