Best Way to Pick Up Pine Cones

A friend of mine, Kevin, recently had his 5th surgery in 2 years. Fortunately or unfortunately he lives on 10 acres of land.  The unfortunate part of that living situation is that he is surrounded by pine cones.  There are pine cones to the east, west, south, and north. Every time he goes outside to pick them up his spirits are dashed when he soon discovers that hundred more dropped on the property in a matter of a few days. It is enough to drive a fella crazy - especially one who cannot afford to risk further injury by picking up pine cones.  So he asked me if I have any solution to his dilemma.

Well I have good news for Kevin and everybody else who has a problem with those annoying pine cones.  There is an easy and inexpensive pine cone picker upper that will put an end to your anguish - in some cases we are talking about physical and mental anguish. It's called the Large Nut Wizard or the Holt Nut Wizard and it's the perfect solution.

Large Nut Wizard

The Holt Nut Wizard is the perfect pine cone picker upper.  It is a cylinder shaped wire basket attached to a pole.  All you have to do is roll the wire basket over the pine cones and they are instantly captured inside the basket.  No need to bend your back or pick up the annoying pine cones with your hands.  So, Kevin, save yourself the trouble and aggravation, get yourself a Holt Nut Wizard, my friend.  It's your key outta Pine Cone Hell! (Your best bet is to get the Nut Wizard from Lawn-Gardening-Tools.com - they offer free shipping and have great prices.)

An Easy Decision: Cracking Pecans at Home with the Duke Pecan Cracker

We live in a complicated world, full of complicated people in complicated times.  Even technology - complicated.  For those of us who love pecans, I have a perfect product that is simple in every possible way.  In fact, to state it simply, it works and works well.  All it does is crack pecans and other soft to medium shelled nuts.  It's the Duke Pecan Cracker.  A great thing about the Duke Pecan Cracker is that it is inexpensive, at less than $20. 

Duke Pecan Cracker

Officially known as Duke's Easy Pecan and Nut Cracker, the Duke is made of steel.  Well all know who's going to win a battle between steel and pecans - steel wins every time.  The Duke crushes pecans but does not obliterate them so you will get clean nut meat out of each and every cracked pecan.  The Duke features a comfortably designed handle so you can crack pecans all day if you'd like.  A reversible cracking cup allow you to crack pecans of various sizes, as well as other medium and soft shelled nuts.  For example, the Duke is the perfect nut cracking machine for English walnuts. Unless you need a pecan cracking machine that will allow you to crack pecans in large quantities, the Duke Pecan Cracker is the way to go.

So if you are a pecan lover looking for simplicity in your life, start with Duke's Easy Pecan and Nut Cracker.  Hey, even the decision to purchase the Duke - simple.

The Holt Nut Wizard: The Ultimate Nut Picker Upper

Picking up nuts need not be such a chore if you have the right nut picker upper tool.  Today we want to review a nut picker upper tool that every nut harvester should have in his arsenal - the Holt Nut Wizard.  The Holt Nut Wizard lets you pick up all sorts of nuts.  And speaking of arsenal, the Holt Nut Wizard is also an ammo picker upper that is capable of picking up  bullet shell casings and other small items such as golf balls and fruits - all without straining or bending your back.  It is both effective and inexpensive.  So today we are going to explain in detail how and why the Holt Nut Wizard works and how to select the appropriately sized Nut Wizard for your needs.

The Nut Wizard comes in five different sizes - extra small (11" cylinder), small (12"), medium (14"), large (17"), and the new extra large Nut Wizard for picking up pine cones.  Although each Nut Wizard is capable of picking up nuts and seeds, each Nut Wizard is designed to be more efficient at picking up a particular sized nut.  So depending on the types of nuts you are trying to harvest, you may need more than one Nut Wizard.  For example, the 12" Nut Wizard is designed for harvesting small and medium sized pecans while the larger 14" Nut Wizard is for large pecans. The extra small, 11"inch Nut Wizard is the best nut wizard for acorns.  It is recommended for picking up small acorns, black, live, post, and scarlet oak, or pistol shells.  The extra small Nut Wizard can also pick up larger items in small quantities. 

The 14" Nut Wizard picks up nuts, seeds, fruits, or balls between 1" and 2" in diameter; we recommend it for very large paper shell pecans, red oak, chestnut oak, hickory nuts, golf balls, chestnuts (not the burrs) large swamp oaks, shotgun shells, reusable paintballs and medium sized fruits.

The 17" Nut Wizard is not only a black walnut picker upper, but it is also a pine cone picker upper that is also capable of picking up sweet gum balls, apples, oranges, lemons, citrus fruits, hedge apples, (osage-orange tree), and magnolia seed/flower heads.  So there simply is no good reason to harvest nuts without the Holt Nut Wizard.  It is an effective nut picker upper tool that you will not regret purchasing.  And your back will surely be grateful and pain free.

Shucking, Cutting & Creaming Corn at Home with the EZ Creamer.

I don't know many people who do not love corn.  By the same token, most people I know find it difficult to process corn.  I am writing this article for those folks because, with the right corn processing equipment, it is quite easy to shuck corn, cut corn, and cream corn right in the comfort of your own home. 


My favorite tool for processing corn is the EZ Creamer Corn Creamer. The EZ Creamer does it all: it is not only a corn creamer machine, it also shucks corn and cuts corn kernels.  The EZ Creamer works through the use of three cylindrical tubes, with each tube having been specially engineered to perform a specific corn processing task.  There is a tube for shucking corn, a tube for creaming corn and a tube for cutting corn.  You will need a household drill capable of 1,600 RPM to properly use the EZ Creamer. Additionally, if you picked your own corn, cutting the corn cob ends is much more efficient using a specialty cutting board, such as the EZ Chopper Corn Cutting Board.

Once you have your drill, using the EZ Creamer is a breeze. Simply drill the specially designed corn cob screw into one end of the corn cob and place the other corn cob end into the appropriate processing tube while the drill is rotating the corn cob.  For instance, if you have not already shucked your corn, you would start out by placing the rotating corn cob into the shucking tube.  Within literally a few seconds you will experience perfectly a perfectly shucked corn cob.

After you have shucked the corn, you can continue the processing by either cutting or creaming your corn.  If you do not like creamed corn, you should use the cutting tube to cut the corn kernel off of the cob.  Once you have cut the corn kernels off the cob, you may want to utilize this additional step  to make your corn even more nutritious and delicious.  If you go ahead and run the corn cob through the creaming tube, the EZ Creamer will extract all of the corn "milk" from the cob.  That milk will add tons of flavor and nutrients to your corn! By adding this additional processing step, you have the best of both worlds: hard cut, firm corn that is not creamy with delicious corn "milk" that you would ordinarily get only with creamed corn.  On the other hand, if you love creamed corn, simply place your corn in the creaming tube and enjoy.

The bottom line here for home harvest automation lovers is that the EZ Creamer is an amazing tool for processing corn at home.  It is easy, fast and quite inexpensive.  So I highly recommend the EZ Creamer for corn processing.    

The Basics of Home Harvest Automation Part 1: Nuts

So you had a huge nut harvest this season and you need to gather and preserve your harvest.  Although you may think there are a number of ways to go about preserving your harvest, truth is there are only two: the wrong way and the right way.

It is important that home harvesters become familiar with the ways to make their home harvesting easier and more efficient.  With the right tools, home harvesters can save time and money and, most importantly, effectively and efficiently preserve their harvest. For instance, I am astonished at the number of home harvesters that still have not heard about the Holt Nut Wizard, a simple, effective and inexpensive tool for conveniently picking up pecans and other nuts.




Holt Nut Wizard

The Holt Nut Wizard allows home harvesters to pick up pecans and a variety of other nuts from the ground, such as English Walnuts, Black Walnuts, Mocker Nuts, Chestnuts, Beechnuts, and Hickory Nuts.  The Nut Wizard is simply a oval shaped basket composed of thin metal wires.  The basket is attached to a handle, which allows you to simply roll the basket over your harvest.  When the basket is rolled over the nuts, the wires open up and capture the nuts inside.  If only more home harvesters knew that they could avoid the arduous, back breaking task of picking up nut one by one, they would gladly get their hands on one of these things.

Make no mistake about the Holt Nut Wizard: it works like a charm.  This is no gimmicky nut picker upper.  It comes in five different sizes so you will need to select the size that is appropriate for the type of nuts you are going to harvest.  Home harvesters that are serious about picking up nuts will need to add the optional Nut Wizard wire dumper, which allows you to easily open the wire basket over a buckets so that the basket will easily and conveniently release the collected nuts.

Once you have gathered your nuts, the next step is doing something with them - either using or selling them as is or cracking them.  For many home harvesters that means selling the nuts.  Because shelled nuts are considerably more valuable than unshelled nuts, it usually makes sense to shell them.  This is where harvest automation comes into play with your nuts.  There are a variety of nut shelling tools that will help the home harvester efficiently and conveniently shell his nuts but the tool that you select will depend on the type of nuts you want to shell.  If, for instance, you are shelling pecans, The Electric Pecan Cracker is the only true option, unless you want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a commercial grade pecan cracker. 




Electric Pecan Cracker/ Kinetic Kracker

The Electric Pecan Cracker, also known as the Kinetic Kracker, has been around for decades but it is now manufactured in Texas by a company known as Southern Gardening Tools.  The Kinetic Kracker is a pecan cracking prodigy; all it does is crack pecans - pecans and nothing but pecans.  The Electric Pecan Cracker features a built in sensor that can sense the amount of pressure to apply to each pecan and a motor that turns at 26 RPM that is capable of cracking  that's 1,560 pecans per hour.  You will not find this kind of pecan cracking mojo anywhere else unless you buy a commercial grade cracker.  So when it comes to harvesting your own pecans, the Kinetic Kracker is the clear and undisputed choice.  But, of course, if you are needing to harvest some other kind of nuts, you will need to consider other nut cracking tools.