By By GREG KATSKI
Community Editor
A small, unassuming, uniquely shaped nut will help save Christmas for many families in eastern North Carolina this holiday season, according to local produce sellers Tina and Andy Cartwright.
The Cartwrights have been buying local whole-shell pecans by the pound at their produce market on U.S. Highway 264 east of Washington since the beginning of October.
In return, sellers get cash up front from the Cartwrights, who have been buying pecans every picking season for more than 30 years.
“It keeps area folks with somewhere to get money,” Tina Cartwright said.
Cartwright said the numbers and types of sellers have changed since the economy started to slide during last year’s picking season. She said it’s not unusual for people to drop off a 1,000-pound haul of pecans at one time.
The Cartwrights accept pecans from about 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. They weigh and bag the pecans at their produce market, where the bags are stored until several prominent pecan shellers from across the Southeast pick them up on a weekly basis.
The Cartwrights receive a small cut off the top of what the pecan shellers pay, but the Cartwrights get more gratification out of helping their neighbors.
“One of the main reasons we buy them is to help local people this time of year,” Andy Cartwright said. “I’ve had people come along and say, ‘If I didn’t have this money, I wouldn’t stay warm tonight.’”
The Cartwrights also point people searching for pecans in the right direction.
“A lot of people that have been laid off come by and ask where pecan trees are,” Tina Cartwright said.
Following the nor’easter that swept through eastern North Carolina several weeks ago, pickers have been bringing in big hauls of pecans, she said.
“People have been coming from all over — Aurora, Swan Quarter, Hobucken,” she said.
Some pickers could be spotted under pecan trees on Beaufort County Community College’s campus during the height of the storm, snatching nuts off the ground as howling winds slapped their faces.
Those dedicated pickers got the best of this season’s pecan crop, but many more could be seen under pecan trees around Beaufort County in the days following the storm.
The Cartwrights said that this season’s crop has been particularly blessed, considering that rain, usually damaging to pecans during the pollinating process, didn’t come until after the nuts were ready for picking.
With the nor’easter and several more severe storms sweeping through the region, the nuts have fallen right into the backyards of many area residents’ homes.
“The blessings are there if you want them,” Tina Cartwright said. “Pecans fall right around Christmas. It’s in God’s plan.”
Many more people are keeping the pecans they pick and providing their loved ones and friends with a Southern favorite, pecan pie, during the holidays.
Kerri Woolard, a service writer with Motor Parts &Equipment on West Third Street in Washington, has been shelling pecans by the pound for locals since Nov. 2.
This year, Woolard, who is allergic to pecans, has shelled 1,544 pounds of pecans using a homemade shelling machine built by Eugene Elks of Chocowinity.
“We haven’t had anyone upset. They’ve all cracked good,” she said.
Anyone who wants their pecans shelled may bag his or her pecans and drop them off at Motor Parts &Equipment between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. The nuts are shelled for 25 cents a pound, according to Woolard, who weighs each haul, records them in a log book and totals the cost. After the nuts are shelled, they are bagged, the bags are taped by Woolard and ready to be picked up.
The shelling service not only serves the public well, but it keeps Motor Parts &Equipment going during the slow winter months, Woolard said.
“We make some good money out of it,” Woolard said. “It’s been real slow business-wise, so it’s a good side thing.”
She said the shelling business started picking up around Thanksgiving. She expects it to remain steady through Christmas.