A pecan place

Right now, pecans are falling to the ground all over the Permian Basin.

And that means it’s time to harvest those nuts, take off the shell and put them in a pie for the holiday table.

To get those pecans shelled properly, local pecan tree owners have a new outlet at C & M Pecans, a fully licensed pecan processor that recently opened in Gardendale.

"Last year, we watched as everybody shut down their processing plants," said C & M Pecans co-owner Chris Watson, who shares the lead of the business with his wife, Margaret. "When we found out that none of them would reopen, we started asking around and bought some equipment."

C & M Pecans officially opened on Halloween.

Just in time to catch the annual pecan harvest. Pecan trees grow naturally all over the Permian Basin — especially near Monahans in Ward County — and there are a few pecan orchards dotting the West Texas landscape.

Getting those pecans ready to be eaten, though, can be a risky business.

"Pecans grow outside on a tree, and typically, they’re harvested after they fall to the ground," former Pecans International owner Dan Boggs said. "Anything else that’s on the ground can contaminate the pecans’ outer shell."

Crack that outer shell — like most people do after they harvest pecans from a tree in the yard — and the bacteria from anything on the outside can contaminate the nuts.

Animal waste. Bird feces. Whether or not the pecans have been washed, those bacteria can cause e-coli infections and food poisoning.

For that reason, Boggs said, local homeowners who harvest their own pecans should always wash the outer shells in an extremely mild bleach solution.

Or you can take the pecans to C & M Pecans, a company filling the void left by several area pecan processors who have shut down in the last couple of years.

Rather than having the pecans "cracked" — simply cracking pecans does not require a processor to have a license — C & M shells pecans and packages them in the commercial halves and slices most people are used to eating.

But C & M Pecans can crack shells, too.

The key is that any pecan shelled by C & M Pecans has been sanitized before it gets back to the customer.

"C & M Pecans is the only licensed processor in the area that I know of," Boggs said. "And I wouldn’t recommend an unlicensed processor, because it’s important that they sanitize all the pecans that go through the plant."

Before anybody has a chance to eat anything that might prevent them from eating the pie.