Picking pecans

I have about a half-dozen pecan trees on the property, two that I routinely gather nuts from. It's a lot of shuffling through leaves and playing a wicked version of "Where's Waldo" only instead of a be-speckled geek in a striped shirt its brown striped nuts against a background of brown leaves.

How many pecans do you see in this picture?

Also, it's a lot of bending over and picking up. Fun for the first half hour, boring after that.

And then I walked into the local farm co-op this morning and saw this beauty:

It's a big wheel/basket contraption. On a handle! Roll it over the nuts you see (or don't see) and they pass between the wires and get trapped inside. When you get enough hold it over a bucket and spread the wires a little to shake the nuts out. I like this better than the ones I see at the big box stores because it's a heavier gauge wire - I saw some there last week and the flimsy wires were already bent from shipping.

This one is made by Duke Pecan. They don't have an online store but I did find this when I was tracking down info for a friend.

Please note, Duke Pecan knows nothing about this post. I happened to pull their product off the shelf at a retailer and liked it.