I’ve never understood people going into crazy debt trying to buy Christmas gifts. For as long as I can remember, my mother’s way of buying Christmas gifts was that there was a huge change jar in the corner of the kitchen. Over the course of the year, change went into the jar. That change was the money used to buy gifts.

My grandmother, on the other hand, sold pecans. She has quite a few pecan trees on her property. It becomes a family affair really. First they are picked up off the ground and put in big buckets.

Pecans= Christmas money

Then they are cracked and picked out. “Picked out” is the process where all the non edible contents inside the shell of the pecan gets removed from the edible part of the pecan. This is done carefully so that the pecan itself is still in one piece. Then the pecans are rinsed and put in a big dishpan.

shelled pecans = Christmas money

From here, the pecans are put in baggies in one pound increments. Yes there is a scale but not where I took these pictures. They are then sold. The harvest is anywhere from 500-1200 pounds.

Pecan closeup.