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All for Pecans, Pecans for All


By Mitch Steichen D


Dick Hoffman, owner of the family-operated Hoffman Pecan Farm, has been expanding the business since 1964. Below: The farm offers top-of-the-line products in many flavors. Photos by Mitch Steichen


ick Hoffman looks off in the distance, taking in the vast array of pecan trees running along the horizon. As the wind sweeps across the pasture in front of him, you can almost hear a few pecans tumble from their perch, bouncing across tree limbs.


“I started with 60 acres and the pecan trees that came with that orchard in 1969,” Dick, a member of the Central Rural Electric Cooperative (CREC), said. “Now we have 164 acres and 1,000 trees, all along the bottom there. You could say the operation has grown a bit.” Hoffman Pecan Farm, located just east of Stillwater, Okla., has indeed grown over the last 40 years. Today, the operation includes not only Dick and his wife, Jean, but their three sons, Chris, Glenn and Donnie, their wives, children and grandchildren. “It’s a complete family operation,” Dick said. “Our kids have been involved from the beginning. They help with harvesting, cracking, shelling, sales, Internet orders and cus- tom grafting.” Dick’s son, Chris Hoffman, manages the transportation department at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, but comes back to help on the farm as often as he can. “My brothers and I have full-time jobs, but we’ll help on weekends and days off, whether it’s harvesting or selling pecans,” Chris said. “It’s something that keeps the whole family involved and working together.” With all the services and products offered from their store and farm, the Hoffmans stay busy during both on and off seasons. Their operation allows them to process pecans at an incredible rate, both for the customer and for their own storage. “Our machines allow us to process over 2,000 pounds of pecans a day, with each of our two machines capable of cracking 500 pecans a minute,” Dick said. “In the farm’s best year we cracked over 100,000 pounds of pecans for customers and sold 30,000 pounds on the retail side of our store.”


Harvesting and shelling pecans make up only part of the business. Because pecan trees


Hoffman Pecan Farm - 7104 E 32nd Ave., Stillwater, OK 74074


Retail hours are Monday-Saturday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.


More information can be found online at www.hoffmanpecanfarm.com.


Contact Dick Hoffman at 405-372-3583 or hoff- manpecanfarm@gmail.com


26 WWW.OK-LIVING.COOP


can be difficult to grow from seed and still ensure quality, Dick offers grafting services. Grafting is a process that takes a portion of an existing pecan tree with favorable charac- teristics and bonds it with other trees to produce more desirable pecans. “We’re very involved in collecting grafting wood through the spring; we provide cus- tom grafting to other growers,” Dick said. “We offer many varieties to those growers interested in trying out some different pecans.” Testing varieties and working toward their final product has led the family through some demanding seasons. Previous summers in 2011 and 2012 hit the Hoffman Pecan Farm especially hard. Dick said they lost numerous trees, some yearlings and some over 50 years old. “It’s been difficult for the entire pecan industry across Oklahoma with the back-to-back droughts,” Dick said. “We’ve heard some producers reporting tree losses of as much as 20 percent. Our farm lost a lot of production to the hot, dry weather but we’re hoping to make a comeback this season.” One improvement that has helped the Hoffman farm during the drought is its irriga- tion system.


“One of our irrigation systems powered by CREC has really helped our production,” Dick said. “We have 150 trees irrigated off of one well through our drip irrigation


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