Pecan trees bloom in the spring, usually in late April or early May, although the exact time depends on the cultivar. The trees produce separate male and female flowers on the same tree. The flowers rarely bloom at the same time, however; one tree must pollinate with another cultivar to produce a crop of nuts.
In general, pecan trees in Texas fully ripen during a seven-week period from early October through the first week of December.
Many of us had family members that used money from picking up pecans as a major source of their yearly income. It was always easy to tell who had been picking up pecans, from the stains on their hands. While I can’t lay claim to ever picking cotton, I picked up lots of pecans when I was a kid.
Below is the fascinating story about the Pecan Sheller Sweatshops in San Antonio.
Be sure to listen to the 4 minute audio clip that’s imbedded in the link below.
Angora Chronicles 
As many kids do, I chose which of my parents I liked better. (This is not very honorable, but it happens.) Early on I opted for mom. It’s not hard to see why my dad had a difficult time with his 3 sons, all of whom were teenagers during the 1960s in California. Dad was a natural Republican, mom an unthinking one. Dad just went further and further to the right as the 60s moved along. Mom just steadily voted Republican as she had been raised to do in a farming community in Minnesota. Boys, insofar as we who were too young to vote, leaned toward the other party.
My parents had met when he was the young manager of a supermarket after the war, and my mother was a grocery checker. That pretty much set up a “management / labor” thing at home. Dad moved between jobs and self-employment, eventually going bankrupt enough times that he became a salesman, and his salary wouldn’t support the family. Mom went back to work in a supermarket, and was required to join the union. That meant going out on strike every few years. She never joined the picket line or took strike pay. During those times, though, dad would go work as a scab.
When the marriage eventually failed of its own weaknesses (while I was in the Army), I chose mom’s side. I didn’t realize until about a decade later that my almost kneejerk reaction that “the workers and their union are always right” and “management are a bunch of sons of bitches” was based on antipathy to dad.
Thanks for a labor story.
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Thanks for you story.
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I plucked a few in my time an can remember the dark grean thumbs an fingers from starting the season too early
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