Oglethorpe Feed and Hardware Supply has added a pecan cracker-sheller — just in time for pecan season.
The machine is available during store hours and until the end of the season. It costs 75 cents per pound to use and can process 10 pounds of pecans per minute.
For those unfamiliar, a pecan cracker-sheller is slightly different from a basic pecan cracker.
“It’s like a pecan cracker that’s one part of the system, and there’s conveyors that take the pecans to the second part of the system which is a sheller,” said Danny Sanders, owner of Oglethorpe Feed and Hardware Supply. “It cracks the pecans first, then it shells the pecans and cleans them.
“It’s not necessarily clean halves that come out, like the ones you buy at the grocery store, but there’s not too much cleaning up to do with them.”
When a customer brings pecans into the shop, the staff will weigh them and begin the process. As long as there isn’t a line, it should take no longer than a few minutes.
The store will also buy pecans, depending on the type.
“There are typically three different sizes of pecans: that’s seedling pecans which are very small; your average pecan, which is the Stuart; and paper-shell, which are longer and wider,” said Blake Howard, the pecan cracker-sheller operator. “For Stuarts, we give $1.25, and if you have seedlings or paper shells, we give 75 cents. If you have a mixture of them, we do 75 cents as well.”
Oglethorpe Feed and Hardware Supply is the only place in the county that has this pecan-cracking system. While the shop has offered a pecan cracker for over a decade, this is the first time it's incorporated this more complex system.
“What we have now is a more modern machine that is air-operated, and it uses air pressure to crack the pecans,” Sanders said.