Part 8

The Finer The Nut—The Greater The Demand

It is true that in Walnuts a condition has come about as in other nuts—that the increasing demand is for the finer, higher priced grades. What are the points of superiority that have led to this great increase in public demand? Why are old established black walnut trees less valuable as profit producers than English Walnut trees only a quarter as old and producing only a fraction of the quantity of nuts?

=First=—Thinness of shell and ability to get out the kernels whole.

=Second=—Superior flavor and food value.

=Third=—Attractiveness in appearance of the nut and of the nut meat when removed.

=Fourth=—Ease of keeping nuts for longer periods and using them readily.

Now compare the fine Paper Shell Pecan with the English Walnut on every one of these four points of public demand.

It is contained in a shell so thin that it is easily broken in the hands without the use of nut crackers. The partitions between the kernels average as thin as in the English Walnut, and the average person will, in less time, remove more whole kernels of the Paper Shell Pecan than of any other nut.

As to flavor and food value let such experts as Luther Burbank answer. (See Foreword, page 4.) Remember that his answer is certainly unbiased, for he is a patriotic native of California where America’s largest crop of walnuts is produced—and that State produces no quantity of Paper Shell Pecans.

As to attractiveness in appearance, of both the nut and the nut meat, you and your friends are the best judges. People who know both nuts have already handed in their verdict favorable to the paper shell pecan. In addition, the pecan has been endowed by nature with a shell which is air-tight—and therefore keeps many times as long without losing its fine flavor or becoming dry and tough.

“The Most Prized of All Nuts For Domestic Uses”

In Bulletin No. 30, of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., we read regarding Pecans: “In the course of time, however, as they are more widely grown, they will become the most prized of all nuts for domestic use, and it is probable that when the supply is large they will be preferred abroad to the best Persian nuts.”

IN OUR ESTABLISHED ORCHARDS stretch row after row of these sturdy, strong-trunked, well established pecan trees, which after severe pruning are forming immense heads with a profusion of nut bearing branches. ]

The Pecan—The Year-round Nut

=The pecan is the one nut suitable for eating the year round. And the present tendency is toward the year-round use of nuts.=

Another reason why the finer pecans are surer to maintain their high prices than any other nuts is found in the fact that Walnuts of the finest grades are being raised in quantities in California, Oregon, Washington and other States, and in England, France, Italy and South American countries—while the territory in which the Paper Shell Pecan attains its highest state of perfection is confined to a 40–mile radius in southwestern Georgia, embracing those portions of Calhoun, Dougherty, Lee and Mitchell counties, which are nearest Albany.

Is it any wonder that the former State Entomologist of Georgia, Mr. E. Lee Worsham, whose name is virtually always included as one of “the three big men in his line of endeavor,” wrote: “=In my opinion the pecan growers of South Georgia have the finest horticultural proposition in the United States=.”

“Among the Highest Priced Horticultural Products of America”

“Pecans of the second class bring $12,500 a carload. As a result of the superior merit of this class of pecans and the limited extent to which they are grown, they are now netting the growers in certain districts a value per volume of product ranking them among the highest priced horticultural products grown on a large scale in this country. Carloads weighing 36,000 pounds each were recently (Oct. 1916) shipped from the Albany district of southwest Georgia to Chicago brokers at 35c. a pound or $12,500 a car. These prices were for pecans of the second class, the firsts bringing still higher prices.” United States Congressional Record, Vol. 54, No. 22.

“What is The Paper Shell Pecan?”

Mention Pecan to any one who has tasted the improved paper shell variety and they will assume that you are talking of Paper Shell Pecans. For the person who cracks and eats paper shell pecans feels it almost a sacrilege to call the common wild pecan a =pecan=.

Yet there are thousands of Americans who have never tasted paper shell pecans, and who think of pecans only as wild pecans, grown largely in Texas.

Pecans are divided in three general but radically different classes, as the description and cuts below indicate.

=The ordinary wild pecan= is native to America. The earliest French explorers found that one of the staple foods of the Indians was this palatable nut which grew in the forests of the south, and in that portion of Mexico adjoining the Gulf States. Pecan trees in Texas and Louisiana have been found which were over five hundred to seven hundred years old—which were still yielding large crops of nuts.

Like the oak, no one ever knew a Pecan tree to die of old age.

There are in the Southern States wild pecan trees of which the records go back to the first civilization on this continent.

The pecan tree is so symmetrical and beautiful that it is called “The Queen Shade Tree of Many a Southern Home.” Its fruitage is so prolific that it is said to be “one of the most astonishing food engines in all nature, yielding literally barrels of nuts.”

“Your Pecan Is Superior To Our Walnut,” Says Burbank