A pecan harvester is someone who harvests pecans when they ripen. Like other seasonal laborers, pecan harvesters supplement their work with a variety of other work, including harvesting other seasonal crops, general farm work, and so forth. In some cases, a pecan harvester may manage a pecan orchard throughout the year, keeping the trees in good condition and performing maintenance tasks; on small farms, the farmer often handles harvesting and all similar tasks independently, without hiring staff to assist.
The pecan harvest starts with preparing the ground under the trees. People harvest pecans by collecting them from the ground, which means that the ground needs to be even and clean for easy harvesting. Keeping growth trimmed under pecan trees year round helps with this, and in the weeks leading up to the harvest, a pecan harvester can mow, trim, and rake to clean the ground. It's also important to clear the falling pecan leaves which tend to appear as the nuts ripen.
For a small orchard, when the nuts start falling, the pecan harvester collects them manually. This can be done by bending to pick up nuts by hand, or with pecan harvesting equipment which usually takes the form of a scoop or bag on a pole. The pole is run along the ground, and the nuts are picked up inside the device. For larger orchards, a pecan harvester may operate a tree shaker to bring down as many nuts as possible at once, and run a small tractor through the orchard to scoop up the pecans.
Pecan harvesters are often involved in processing after harvest. This includes picking through the nuts to identify nuts which are in poor condition and packing the nuts for storage. Pecans are packed in their shells and shelled later, usually with the assistance of a machine which pops the shells open and then separates the nuts and shells.
Harvesting pecans is hard work, even with a tractor. Harvesters may need to go out every day for several days in a row to collect all the nuts, and they will be out in weather which can vary from mild to extreme depending on the year and the area. Like other types of manual labor, pecan harvesting requires physical strength and endurance, paired with the patience to do the job properly. Making mistakes during the harvest can lead to problems in the future, ranging from rot on nuts collected too late to poor quality in batches of shelled nuts which may drive down their value.