It's been five mostly hot and dry years since then, and the orchard held up its end of the bargain, until this year, when the combination of heat and drought killed half of the farm's 3,000 trees. The orchards were also visited by the pecan nut casebearer -- twice -- and not at the times when they normally show up. Gene said the second infestation might have actually done the orchard a favor by making the loads lighter, because the trees weren't in any shape to handle heavy loads.
"It's been terrible," he said. "There's dead trees all over the orchard. I'm not going to replant right away until we can see two things -- one, is the capacity of the wells enough to support the 1,500 trees we have left and I'm waiting on some indication that there's going to be a change in the weather pattern."
Statewide, the pecan harvest is expected to be down by anywhere from 40 to 60 percent this year. A normal crop is about 75 million pounds and this year's estimates have been as low as 30 million pounds with the drought and heat bearing most of the blame. The market has expanded dramatically in the last five years because of the exploding market in China, where the people have taken to heart studies showing significant health benefits to pecans.
The orchards are managed without the use of chemicals; they use zinc sulphate for weed control and compost tea instead of fertilizer. They not only sell the pecans but also trail mixes, breads, granolas, pies, pecan oil and dozens of other food products that mostly feature Yegua Creek pecans. They also turn the wood into cutting boards, canes, walking sticks, Christmas ornaments, mulch and firewood.
"We use everything, except the leaves," Gene said.
It wouldn't be quite accurate to say that the Niswanders were drawn to the farm. It's way out past the near the Williamson and Lee County lines, in the middle of many farm-to-market roads, and they got lost twice trying to find it the first time.
The actual property used to be the community of Siloam, and the old farm house was once the post office. Yegua Creek runs through the property, and trees closest to it, even though it's dry now, have survived the best. The grass there is green in response to some recent light rains. The land slopes upward with the soils becoming sandier near the top; that's where most of the trees died this year.
"I may thin out some of the trees we have left anyway," Gene said. "The density we have now is about a 35-foot center between trees, and the current theory out of A&M is that centers should be 50 feet."
Gene moved to a large ranch on the Canadian River in the Panhandle when he was 8 and vowed when he that he would get back to that way of life someday. He worked as an accountant for many years and Eileen worked at Lockheed-Martin. They looked at property in the Hill County, high atop a hill actually, with a panorama of cedar trees below; Eileen is allergic to cedar.
Looking east of IH-35, where the cedars aren't so abundant, they found the property on Yegua Creek.
"There were two kinds of listings," Eileen said. "There was property with trees and there was property without trees. We looked and looked and didn't know what we wanted to do, and this place, which we both loved, stayed on the market. Finally I said, 'Okay God, I'm listening to you.'"
