Linda Farmer, nee Sanchez, is actually not the farmer in the family. Her parents, James and Rita Sanchez, live in the tiny town of Midway (midway between Roswell and Dexter, NM) and do a little farming around their old-fashioned house. They keep a few chickens to control insect pests and, most importantly, have a beautiful big yard that "looks like a park", says Linda. Linda remembers helping her mom plant a few pecan trees many years ago "for shade" and says her mom had no idea the resulting yearly pecan crop would take up so much of their time.
Pecans are a winter crop. After the tree flowers, the nuts spend all summer developing in individual heavy husks. It is not until the first freeze (which occurs in late November to early December south of Roswell) that the outer husk pops open. A few weeks later the shell has hardened and the pecans start to drop to the ground. The crop can be adversely affected by unusually hard freezes that destroy the green nuts, or windstorms that blow them prematurely to the ground. James and Rita's ten trees can, in a good year, produce 200 to 300 pounds of shelled pecans, only about 20 to 30 pounds per tree on the average. When the nuts start to fall the couple, both in their seventies, pick them up every day and then start shelling. Each nut is cracked individually with a small hand-held nutcracker, after which James and Rita sit out on their long, screened-in porch and laboriously hand-pick the nutmeats and package them. It takes until spring to finish shelling.
Linda, a retired teacher living in Espanola, has been taking the pecans to the farmers' markets for her parents for about seven years now. The income from the sales is an important supplement to her parents' retirement income. Linda used to go down to her parents' house every two weeks and would always bring back a load of pecans to sell at the next market, but the high cost of gas has cut the number of trips she can make, so now she generally gets to the Los Alamos market once every three weeks. She enjoys Los Alamos for its good, comfortable location and scenery and the fact that it is not very far to travel from Espanola. She also likes the friendly customers and her visits with the other vendors. The best part, she says, is getting to help her parents and being able to provide fresh, hand-shelled nuts to the customers. Linda wants to make sure her customers know her parents' pecans are produced the old-fashioned way without any sprays. She is very proud of her parents for continuing to make their small, labor-intensive, top-quality crop of fresh pecans available to a lucky few. "As long as they are healthy and can keep doing it", she says, "I'll keep selling for them".
Linda will be happy to answer all your questions about her parents and the pecans when you meet her at the market.