Blog entries

Rio Grande Organics Pecans Used In New Breakfast Cereal......

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:48:27 +0100

We are happy to update our customers that you can now enjoy our organic pecan pieces in a new breakfast cereal from Natures Path. The cereal, Flax Plus Maple Pecan Crunch, is a combination of toasted flax flakes and granola made with organic maple syrup and organic pecan pieces. It tastes as good as it sounds, and better still it is made with only certified organic ingredients! We hope you will try a box todaRead More...

Pitching in for a community cleanup day.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 08:00:00 +0100

Recently, Rio Grande Organics helped to organize a community cleanup day...and boy were we surprised by the number of people who turned out to pitch in!!

On February 23, 2008, over a hundred people gathered in the small town of Quemado, TX to pitch in and help cleanup the town. We filled up two garbage trucks with the litter that was picked up, and we re-painted the stands at the community baseball field. Many Rio Grande employees gave up their Saturday to participate!

As you Read More...

As 2007 draws to a close...

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:00:00 +0100

Every so often, a season on the farm ends with the general agreement that "we won't see a season like this past one perhaps ever again in our lives....." Our Crystal City orchard received over fifty inches of rain during the growing season; on average we receive twenty one inches of rain during the entire twelve month year. Over a ninety day period beginning in late April, it rained or misted almost every single day.

For a non-farmer, rainy weather is little more than a nuisance duriRead More...

Pecan Entomology 101.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 07:00:00 +0100

People often ask us what it takes to grow pecans organically. One of the first subjects that an organic pecan grower has to master is an understanding of the insects that attack the pecan tree and the young nuts.

First shown is a nut that has been growing on the pecan tree for about six weeks. The mass of material at the base of the nut is called "frass"; it is actually feces left behind by a pecan casebearer worm as it chewed its way into the young nut. The worm is now inside the nutRead More...

Winter work.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0100

Many people are under the impression that winter is a time of rest for pecan farmers.....the reality is that it just may be our busiest time of the year!

It is now late March, and our pecan trees have not yet started to put out their new leaves, a process we call 'bud break'. The pecan tree will start to flower and put out it's pollen producing catkins very soon after bud break. The actual pecan nuts start to form in late April, and they will be growing and developing on the tree for Read More...

The adrenaline begins to flow...

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 07:00:00 +0100

It's harvest time in Crystal City, and Rio Grande Organics gears up to get the precious pecan crop harvested before any weather disasters strike.

Check out how our harvest season gets under way as our tree shakers move into action. This machine clamps ahold of the tree, and uses a powerful hydraulic engine to shake the tree vigorously. The ground under this tree is littered with pecans that have just been shaken off. Note the sweepers in front of and behind each wheel; these devices gRead More...

A long, hot summer.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 07:00:00 +0100

Most of Texas is suffering from severe or extreme drought. We are very thankful for the irrigation systems that water our orchard.

First here, we see a picture of our nutlets back in early April. Someone once asked, “What does it take to make a good pecan?“ The answer is that it takes plenty of sunshine, plenty of water, and some method for keeping the destructive insects and fungi off of the developing nuts and leaves.

One of the questions that we are most frequently asked isRead More...

The drought of ‘06.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 07:00:00 +0100

The Houston Chronicle had a short article today about the ongoing drought that stretches across much of Texas. The writer attempted to gauge the economic impact of the drought; it is thought that the direct economic losses to farmers and ranchers could be as high as $4 billion, with a possible indirect impact on rural economies of as much as $8 billion in losses.

The National Drought Monitor indicates that most of south Texas currently falls into the worst drought categories: D3, whichRead More...

Planting for the next generation.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 07:00:00 +0100

The pecan trees we are planting this winter will start to bear nuts in 8 years, and they will reach full production in about 16 years. We hope we're around to see that...

The young pecan tree shown in image one is putting on a big flush of new growth. We use borders along the tree row to flood irrigate each strip of new trees. This land was precision leveled with a GPS system and large earth moving equipment before the trees were planted. This ensures that the irrigation water and theRead More...

Oil on the plate.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 08:00:00 +0100

The recent holiday season was once again a feast of epic proportions; copious amounts of food and drink, endless hours of televised sporting events, and a healthy dose of guilt free marathon mall foraging. For most, the enormous quantities of food are plainly a metaphor for the greater abundances of life, such as career, family and material wealth. It is unlikely that there are many among us who are content to accept that a wealth of nourishment is cause for great celebration, or even that thRead More...

Harvest diary.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:00:00 +0100

Harvest Diary:

Sunday, October 9th - The early October rains have kept us out of the orchard until today. We had hoped to begin harvesting on September 28th, but wet ground and harvesting equipment don't mix very well. The tree shaker and the self propelled sweepers tend to sink in and create big ruts. To harvest pecans one needs hard, flat dry ground.

By noontime, the bright sun had burned off enough dew to signal that the 2005 harvest could finally begin. A whRead More...

The Katrina Threat.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 07:00:00 +0100

Hurricane Katrina produced wide bands of rain and high winds, and the threatening weather from the massive storm stretched all the way to South Texas.

Dark, ominous clouds from Hurricane Katrina move over the pecan orchard. The pecan limbs are already heavily loaded from the growing weight of the nuts. High winds and rain increase the strain on the limbs, and can in fact cause 70% or more of the crop to be lost.

A sky, such as the one in these images, at ten o'clock in the morRead More...

Fifty days until harvest!

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 07:00:00 +0100

We are entering the critical 'water stage'; this is the period during which the pecan nuts will stop growing in size and kernal development reaches a maximum.

Take a look at the first image below. The nuts are now almost full size; the critical formation of the kernal is taking place inside the hard shell. Interestingly, the nut center at this time is almost completely liquid, similar to water.

Robert Sandner is the guiding force behind the transformation of this pecan orcharRead More...

As the nuts grow....

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:00:00 +0100

The pecan trees have set a nice crop; it is up to us to bring it to fruition...

With the start of summer upon us, we appear to have a good nut set on our trees. The insect pressure in our orchard, which is always one of the big threats to reduce the crop, is very low at this time.

The first image below shows one of the larger clusters that we have in our orchard, with a total of six nuts. Most of our clusters have two or three nuts. If all of the clusters had five or six nutsRead More...

Early pecan growth.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Mon, 16 May 2005 07:00:00 +0100

Our trees have already set their nuts; here's a detailed look at the process...

The first image shows a healthy spike with six nutlets (five visible and one partially obscured). All pecan nuts form on the terminal end of a branch; we like to see three or four nuts per spike. Six nutlets may be an early indication that this tree will have too large of a nut load.

It is important to note that there is no insect damage on these nuts. The first insect to attack our trees is the peRead More...

A long winter.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 07:00:00 +0100

Call it the "winter of our discontent".

A fledgling organic farming operation commences, a first harvest of pecans comes in, and energy is flowing through all who are connected with the enterprise. Every challenge is met with the determined force of pioneers; a solution will be found to overcome any obstacle. The pecan crop is small, by conventional standards, but the market is strong and anxious buyers are willing to deal with the new, unsophisticated supplier.

With tireless woRead More...

Economic realities.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 08:00:00 +0100

Economic realities....

The drive into the Quemado Valley on the road that heads north out of Eagle Pass, Texas offers a puzzling array of pastoral images. Snaking along the high bank of the Rio Grande River on a bluff about 200 feet above the water, the road winds for twenty miles through typical Texas desert scrub brush. The grassless, rocky land is dominated by thorny brush, consisting primarily of mesquite and huisache. One of the first scenes to appear as you descend into the vallRead More...

Rocks, sticks, and dirt.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 07:00:00 +0100

As is the case with many things in life, the art of harvesting pecans is really the process of getting rid of that which is not a pecan. When a tree is shaken by our hydraulic "lobster claw", all sorts of material comes flying out of the tree. Nuts, leaves, and dead branches fill the sky the moment the shaker starts its violent back and forth motion, and within seconds the ground is littered with a wide array of trash and treasure.

We are novices in the pecan business, and the start oRead More...

The harvest looms.

bob@riograndeorganics.com — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 07:00:00 +0100

Nature has evolved many different strategies to wreak havoc on a pecan orchard. A sudden hailstorm is nature's equivalent of running the orchard through a paper shredder. Green nuts, limbs and leaves litter the ground after a rain of golf ball sized hail has pummeled the trees. It is beyond ironic that chunks of ice can fall from the sky here in the Quemado Valley when the ground temperature is hovering around 100 degrees. We are certainly fortunate that this has not been our fate this year.