Bears Butt really like candy bars…sometimes…but especially pecan logs.  A candy bar with a nugate center completely covered with pieces of pecan nuts!  MMMMM.

I don’t go out of my way to find them in the store and I don’t always buy them when I find them, but once in a while the urge to eat one over takes my better judgement and I have to have one.  Just writing this is making that urge a bit stronger.

Pecan trees are native to the United States.  Did you know that?  Me either.  But my intense research has located the place where the most pecan trees are located.  Our very own state of Georgia!  I thought Georgia was the peanut state!  And they do grow a lot of peanuts in Georgia, but they also have a bunch of pecans.  One source said they produce nearly 100 MILLION pounds of them in a year!  THAT is a BUNCH of pecans.  It’s no wonder they make pecan logs.  The same source said that in just one city in Georgia, Albany I think it said, they have over 600,000 pecan trees!

I really got involved with my research on this one and found out that pecan trees can grow really tall.  Like 130 ft tall!!!  That is 43 Yards Tall!  Can you pass a football that far?

Ok, so pecans are native to the U.S., in my research I found nothing about how they harvest all those nuts.  So, I’m assuming there are nut harvesters that have really tall ladders and climbing gear that skinny up the trees and out on the branches and pick those little bad boys.  What I also assume, is if they are out on the limbs, they would be holding on with one hand while picking with the other, so they must just drop the nuts to the ground.  It all makes sense to me.  How do they get paid?  Probably in nuts.  After all, anyone crazy enough to climb a 130 foot tall tree to pick a nut would not require a whole lot of worldly goods.  Just thinking about what the ground would look like while I was hanging with one hand in a 130 ft. tree and looking down makes me a bit dizzy.  Please someone, I need a bag of that stuff the pitchers use to grip the ball for my “holding” hand.

Pecans are full of pretty good stuff for our human bodies.  My research says they are really good to help lower our bad cholesterol levels, almost as much as medications do.  It only takes a handful of them to do as much as the medications.   So I ask, if you have a high ‘bad’ cholesterol level, why pay for medication, just eat a bunch of pecans.  They are pretty good tasting.  Watch out for the salted ones and stay away from the pecan rolls (they are mine).

So, why have I done so much research for you today?  Well, it’s National Pecan Day on April 14th!  Am I nuts?  Why hasn’t someone come up with Pecan Nut Butter?  I’m getting tired of  Peanut Butter.  I’ll tell you who is nuts!  It’s those guys that climb up and pick those pecans!  That’s who is nuts!

Bears Butt, a wealth of short term knowledge

April 2012