Southeast Kansas and northeast Oklahoma are known for crop diversification. Anything from cows to corn, sows to sorghum can be found but there’s yet another crop that’s often overlooked:

Pecans.

According to Bill Reid, who heads up Kansas State University’s Pecan Experiment Field near Chetopa, in a 20-mile stretch from southeast Kansas into northeast Oklahoma, there are nearly 9,000 acres of pecan groves.

Although that’s a drop in the bucket on the national level, they are very profitable acres for diversified producers in both states.

And, not unlike other crops and forages across the area, pecan groves are equally affected by the mischief of Mother Nature.

“Last April the freeze that killed thousands of acres of wheat and set the fescue back also affected the pecan harvest,” Reid explains.

The good news, the researcher says, is that the year after a crop killing freeze is usually a record year.

“After a freeze, pecan trees make up for the crop that they didn’t have the year before by producing more nuts,” he says.

That, however, won’t be the case for all trees this year. In December, many of those, were hit by a devastating ice storm.

“After the ice storm 50-60 percent of the canopies of the trees were lost,” Reid says.

As if losing the canopies and the production of this year’s nut crop isn’t enough, cleaning up the aftermath of the storm will be very time-consuming.

“The only way to clean up the fallen limbs is with tractors with loaders or a skid steer,” Reid explains.

At the K-State Pecan Experiment Field, all the limbs are being pushed together, piled and burned.

“That’s really the easiest part of the clean-up operation,” he says, noting that some of the trees at the 80-acre facility are 90 years old.

Pushing up and burning not only has to be done to get rid of the downed branches, the ground has to be cleared in order to be able to harvest the crop.