f
two pounds of white arsenic and a pound of caustic soda to a gallon of
water, if applied from an oilcan with a spout in an open circle chopped
in the bark so as to girdle the tree, will usually deaden it in a short
while. Within the year nothing is left but pecan trees. These are
watched carefully for production and shelling quality and, if not
desirable, or standing too thick, are removed for greater spacing for
permanent trees.

Today, only the smaller pecan trees are top worked, either to named
varieties or to selected seedlings. Due to changed conditions of market
and labor, the native pecan has come into its own. The pecan sheller
buys 90% of the native pecans. He will pay only a few cents more for the
big paper-shell. The native pecan is as staple as butter and eggs. Every
produce man buys them for the shelling plants. This leaves the big
paper-shell to seek a special market at an advertising cost. Due to the
small differential in the wholesale price of the native and the
paper-shell, the larger native trees are no longer top-grafted but are
encouraged in every way for heavy production.

Thus, when creek and river bottom thickets are opened up to sunshine and
air, nothing left but pecan trees properly spaced, and this on land
usually considered worthless, these trees will quadruple in production
and pay a handsome return on a $200 per acre valuation. This is a real
and altogether possible two-story agriculture to those who are fortunate
enough to own undeveloped pecan timber land. Many of our members have
beautiful groves redeemed from the wild with bounteous crops of nuts
overhead and cattle grazing on enriching cover crops underneath. The
pecan means a lot to the farmers of Oklahoma. The average yearly tonnage
is about 16,000,000 pounds, with a peak production of 30,000,000 pounds.
This amounts to an average of $2,000,000 annually, with a peak of
$5,091,000.

I want to show you what it means to some of our members to develop their
native pecans, either as natives or grafted to improved varieties. The
proceeds from one lone pecan tree in Mr. Skorkosky's cotton patch paid
the taxes on his farm several different years. Thus encouraged, he
redeemed a small thicket, added a few nursery trees of paper-shells,
about ten acres in all, which now often makes a return equal to the rest
of the farm. Mr. Kramer paid $1,000 for 10 acres, with part in seedling
pecans. He sold $1,000 worth of pecans several different times