Arizona Pecan Orchard

The pecan farm has a colorful history. Joseph Kennedy and J.P. Morgan founded it in 1915 with the plan of growing a plant that is a source of rubber. There were fears that the Germans might cut off the sea lanes, blocking imports of rubber.

The farm changed hands a couple of times before the Walden's bought it out and experimented with the land. The original cash crop, in 1948 was cotton. In 1976, Walden experimented with a number of nuts and fruits but what thrived best were grapes and pecans. He chose pecans because they had a longer window of harvest and they could be harvested by machine.

The orchard, located in Sahuarita, AZ is the largest irrigated orchard in the world. The lanes next to the lines of trees are the irrigation lanes. They are pretty green now (usually just dirt brown) becuase they were flooded with water for 21 days in May. This will be repeated in the fall and for ten days in the summer. Pecan orchards are water intensive. [In AZ, water priority goes to mining first, agriculture second and people third.]

The orchard spans 6,000 acres and has 106,000 trees. Pecan trees can live for hundreds of years and are only found in the southern and southwestern parts of the United States; nowhere else in the world.

I've been trying to wait for a blue sky to shoot the orchard but the sky has been grey, especially in the morning, from smoke brought in on the wind from a large wildfire south of the border in Mexico. I got tired of waiting.