D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
July 2009
LIFE IN THE SOUTHWESTGoing Nuts
Sometimes it takes a superhero — or several — to plant
a pecan grove.
By Susan Baker / Photos by Dominic Roybal
Apparently, pecans are the new chile. According to what I've seen lately, I would say pecans are the "it" crop of southern New Mexico. On my commutes through the southern Rio Grande valley, I have noticed more and more pieces of farmland being laser-leveled and precisely divided into grids for the planting of new pecan orchards. Rows of young pecan trees girdled with white have gradually replaced crops in fields where I used to see alfalfa, or onions, or even wheat. Where cotton was once king, and chile has reigned over an annual festival complete with not just one but two queens, slight and unassuming pecan saplings are replacing fields of immediate-gratification green with the promise of future canopied splendor.
 |
Photo by Dominic Roybal |
As I drive along the valley, I imagine it transformed into a forested, shady corridor. I think of Stahmann Farms in La Mesa, where even at the height of summer's heat the cool darkness under the majestic pecan trees beckoned to me as a child with dreams of living among the geese next to the ancient lava outcroppings.
Well, who says dreams don't come true? You see, I recently became a pecan farmer. I had some spare "acreage" that wasn't under cultivation — the back part of my one-third acre lot in the Hatch Valley — so I put in a pecan grove on the idle land. Okay, there are only six trees, but the definitions of the words "orchard" and "grove" are not quantifiable, so I'm choosing to call it a grove. The saplings are just sticks, really — one inch in diameter and about four feet tall — and set against the bare dirt. My new pecan grove is hardly even noticeable. The trees won't produce for a few years yet. Nonetheless, I have visions of cool shade in my own grove on a hot summer's day, someday.
This is the part where you would be laughing your head off, if you knew me at all. I am the person who has rock-and-cactus landscaping in her yard because that is just about all I can keep alive. I am notoriously inept at yard work; therefore, I am the ultimate xeriscapist. I keep only plants that can survive on intermittent waterings. All the older trees in my yard have roots down to the water table, which is thankfully near the surface where I live, and my small plot of grass does well or poorly, depending on the amount of rainfall in any given summer. I have a "yard man" who occasionally cuts the grass and rakes leaves, and I must be his least-troublesome account. He used to suggest putting in some more intensive landscaping, but now that he knows me better he just pleads with me to water what I've got every once in a while.
So wherever did I get this notion that I could keep a pecan grove happy? And why did I even want pecan trees? It's not as though pecans aren't available around here. In December, my brother usually gives me pecans from his trees, and my neighbor Ralph sometimes brings me pecans during good production years, which I repay by baking him a pecan pie. A couple of days after I took Ralph the last pecan pie I baked for him, he offered me some more pecans.
"Don't you eat the pecans, Ralph?" I asked him.
"Can't," he said. "Don't have enough teeth," he added, using his tongue to point to the few he has left. Naturally, I felt bad. What good were my pies to him? But Ralph told me that he had scraped off the pecans and put them in the blender until they were finely chopped, then sprinkled them back onto the pie to enjoy. No, I am not making this up.
It had to be Ralph who started this whole idea of my own personal pecans — because if you think my yard is bare, you haven't seen his yard yet. Salt cedar dominates, but over in the corner, unnoticed by me until Ralph pointed it out, is a short and scrawny pecan tree that puts out pretty good-sized pecans. I don't think Ralph even owns a hose, so I can't say I've ever seen him watering, but he claimed to have gotten two grocery sacks of pecans off that thing.
It was that one-tree harvest, and the subliminally rooted image of new pecan trees being planted in the valley every year, that got me thinking: Ralph's getting these pecans off that tree? Well, hey, maybe I can be pecan-independent! I could be the benefactress of pecans to those not fortunate enough to have their very own pecan tree! I could be my own supplier of nuts for pecan pies, nut bars, Christmas baking!
So in January I asked another neighbor, Beto, who has a pecan orchard and who grows and grafts saplings, to come over and give me an estimate on how many trees would fit on my back lot and how much he would charge me for putting them in. In February he brought over a buddy and a few beers and they got down to measuring. Beto said I had enough room for eight trees.
Now, at this point I was inquiring casually, just to see if it was feasible, with no real idea of when I might get around to actually acquiring trees. I had a vague idea that pecan trees must be put in during the spring, but hadn't yet settled on putting them in this spring. Plus, I had other things on my mind: I had just become engaged, and I was feverishly planning a rather short-notice trip to Japan with my step-mom.
I was still sorting my Japanese souvenirs when Beto's wife called the day after I got home from Tokyo in March to ask me, in Spanish, if I still wanted pecan trees. I said "S" in my jet-lag-induced exhaustion. I think I was still processing thoughts in Japanese, where hai ("yes") can indicate acknowledgement rather than acquiescence, but 10 minutes later Beto was out in my backyard digging the first hole. Confused, I went outside — I thought we were still in the negotiating stage of this project!
"Wait a minute, seor!" I said. "How much are they? What kind are they? How often do I have to water them?" He gave me a price for only six trees, because he had expanded his own orchard and these six were all he had for sale. Then he named the type of pecan tree. I knew nothing of the names of what are known as "improved" pecan cultivars, which range from a whole slew of Native American tribe names to saints' names to proper names; between Beto's accent and my ignorance on the subject, I had a hard time making out what he was telling me. First I heard the name as "Western Slide," which sounded like a line dance. I asked him to repeat it, and the second time I heard "Western Sky." Very poetic, I thought, but I suspected that I was not understanding the name correctly. I asked him if he could spell it for me, which was a silly question to ask of a man who doesn't speak much English. He held out his hands in a helpless gesture. So I left him digging the holes for my new trees and went inside to check my bank balance, and to consult with that which provides more answers in this universe than the Oracle at Delphi: the Internet.
Before Beto finished digging the second hole, I was able to ascertain that we were dealing with the pecan cultivar "Western Schley," which is pronounced like "sly" with a "shhh" sound at the beginning (and which was exactly what Beto had been saying to me all along). It's the variety most recommended for our area, I learned, and should be watered every couple of days when it is newly transplanted. Since I have neither a well nor irrigation rights from the river, I started thinking about putting in a drip system for keeping the trees watered through the summer months, if I wanted them to produce anything besides comments from the neighbors.
The following week I went to one of our local home-improvement centers to pick up the items I would need to install a drip system. I parked in front of the Lawn and Garden section that these places open seasonally, thinking I would surely find everything I needed in that one department.
A young man who was sweeping up asked me if I was finding things all right. When I asked him where I could find root stimulator, he went to a phone installed at the end of the row and paged someone from on high. The voice that called back suggested aisle 32, inside the store. The fact that this youth had to call from a land-line for information marked him as a flunky. The real players at these do-it-yourself chains wear a cell phone on the hip, which they whip out at a moment's notice if they have to call for backup. The more times an employee's phone rings or buzzes, the more sought-after he or she is, and the more power the person wields in the home-improvement hierarchy. This mere foot soldier had nothing but a broom.
I went inside and found the root stimulator, but still saw nothing that looked like a drip system. Another young foot soldier I found among the air conditioners appealed once more to the heavens, then directed me to Plumbing, where I was to speak to "Pat." I began to feel as if I were on a mission: "Go to aisle 15 and ask for Pat."
A woman wearing a store vest who was sorting something on aisle 15 answered to Pat, and I began explaining the situation to her. My yard man had suggested a somewhat convoluted plan to run the drip system off of a frost-free spigot next to the carport. I hadn't gotten very far in describing the plan to Pat when she backed away a couple of paces, hand on cell phone, and with a completely straight face said, "I think we'd better call Plumber Dude on this one. I'm just Toilet Girl."
Plumber Dude! Toilet Girl!? Were these the superheroes of DIY World? Toilet Girl rang up Plumber Dude and in a jiffy an older man missing several teeth and wearing a beat-up ballcap came shambling down aisle 15 toward us. My mental image of a "Saturday Night Live" butt-crack-baring Plumber Dude was quickly replaced by a Yoda-like wise warrior with a gurgle in his voice. As Toilet Girl relayed my request to him, Plumber Dude's phone immediately began to ring and he quickly checked the number, mumbling about someone he had promised to call back, before replacing the phone in his hip holster. No doubt he thought he would straighten out Toilet Girl and me with a couple of pointers and then be on his way to bigger plumbing predicaments.
He started off by grabbing a few staples of drip-system installation — half-inch hose, 360-degree bubblers — as he asked questions about the pecan tree placement, absent-mindedly tidying merchandise that was out of place. He picked up a box that he was rearranging and drew a diagram of the trees on the side of the box with a black Sharpie. Wait a minute, Plumber Dude was a veteran — shouldn't he work without a net?
"May I?" I took the Sharpie from him and crossed out his diagram, replacing it with my own. The diagrams looked a bit like football plays, as we circled trees and drew arrows from the spigot to the line of scrimmage. Plumber Dude's interest in my project picked up a little, and what had seemed like a tendency toward OCD now became multi-tasking prowess. He made notes to replace merchandise that was out of stock, while calculating how many end caps and compression tees it would take to complete the drip system and simultaneously trying to sell me a $13 gadget to punch holes in the drip hose.
"For $13, I think I'll use a screwdriver," I said.
"Number-two Phillips head fits perfectly," Plumber Dude said with a smile as he silenced another call on his cell. "Just be sure not to push too hard, or you'll go all the way through the hose."
When I mentioned the frost-free spigot plan, Plumber Dude shed the last vestiges of his shuffling-old-man disguise and sprang into superhero action. He crossed nimbly to the next aisle to rip a new frost-free spigot (which he pronounced "spicket" in the Western fashion) from its packaging to assess the possibilities. Toilet Girl had wandered away to help another customer, but she came zipping back to check our progress at the sight of Plumber Dude wrestling with the frost-free spigot. She was apparently taking her apprenticeship seriously.
Plumber Dude dismissed the plan to bypass the frost-free spigot underground as too labor-intensive. He decided instead on a "Y" connector, a pressure regulator, and an adapter for the half-inch drip hose. The only adapter in stock was in a torn package, which was NOT acceptable by his standards, so after Plumber Dude spotted the boxes of new merchandise he wanted on shelves high overhead, he flew away to get a ladder, answering his phone as he left.
He came back maneuvering a monstrous ladder and quickly ascended, handing the boxes down to me. He methodically went over everything I needed as he ticked it off his mental list and placed all of it in a now-empty box, before sending me back to aisle 32 for the "Y" connector. Plumber Dude seemed well-pleased with our new plan, and swatted away another incoming call on his phone as he subtly morphed back into his good ol' boy disguise.
He smiled shyly when I thanked him and briefly took off his cap to scratch his head, or was he tipping his hat to me? Toilet Girl, who had turned back into Pat, called out, "Good luck!" as I passed her on the way to aisle 32.
Eighty-five dollars' worth of materials and two days later, I stood in my pecan grove and drew a diagram of the new plan in the dirt with the toe of my shoe for Yard Man — handing off the mission from one superhero to another. Then, my task as superhero liaison complete, I went inside as Yard Man starting digging the trench for the hose.
After all, that's not my area of expertise — I'm just Computer Chick.
Epilogue: Five of the six trees are doing well; the sixth one doesn't seem to be taking, despite applications of root stimulator and fertilizer. Beto, Yard Man and I are all stumped, but it may lead to my branching out and planting a fruit tree in its stead.
Susan Baker is a bilingual native of the Southwest who grew up in the Rio Grande valley, very near the point where New Mexico, Texas and Mexico come together. She loves travel, writing, language and cats.