Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Jim Hendricks

Herald correspondent

ALBANY — It’s been two decades since there was a celebration in Dougherty County for pecans, a crop that the county leads the state of Georgia in producing.

That situation will be rectified on Oct. 27 when Sunnyland Farms, itself a national leader in mail-order and online pecan products sales, hosts its first Pecan Festival from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m.

The event will mark a special anniversary for Sunnyland.

“We’re hoping it’s going to turn into an annual Sunnyland Farms event,” Staci Willson said. “We’re going to combine it this year with our 70th anniversary celebration. We’re really just opening up Sunnyland Farms and our pecan groves to the public so they can see what it takes to bring tree-to-table pecans.”

Willson said the festival will be a family-oriented event, which is in line with the philosophy of the fourth-generation family business at 2314 Willson Road. Staci Willson’s husband, Alex Willson, is COO of Sunnyland, founded by his late grandparents, Harry and Jane Willson, on the Willson family farm.

“It will feature family-friendly festival-type carnival games, food trucks, pecan-related activities such as a pecan pie cakewalk — we’re so excited about that — bouncy houses, face painting, all of that,” Staci Willson said. “It’ll be in conjunction with hayride tours on our 1,700-acre farm during harvest.

“This is a very rare opportunity to see the pecan harvest closely. The shaking and all of it you’ll be able to see first-hand.”

And while it’ll be close to Halloween, visitors at one point may feel like it’s more akin to the Thanksgiving or Christmas season.

“We’re also opening up our candy plant,” Willson said. “You’ll see everything in action, from the chocolate pecans being dipped to the pecan pralines being made, and you’ll be able to ask questions and really see how it all comes together. You’ll see how you end up with pecans on your table.

“We’ll also have a retail store set up at the end of the tours so there will be free goodies, free samples and all of our products for sale.”

Willson said the festival will recognize the impact the tree nut has on the community.

“It’s going to be a nice family event celebrating agriculture and celebrating the fact that the pecan industry is so prevalent in the area,” she said. “It’s just celebrating pecans. It adds so much to the area. It’s what the area is known for, and not to mention, we haven’t had a pecan-related festival (in Albany) since the 1980s.”

Celebrating pecans, however, once was an annual fall tradition in Albany. In fact, an Internet search will turn up several pecan-related websites that erroneously refer to the National Pecan Festival as being a a still active annual event. The last National Pecan Festival was in 1988 — 20 years ago this fall. In 1989, the weekend autumn festival was expanded to cover a 10-day period and was rebranded as Fall on the Flint, a festival that washed away with the Flood of ‘94.

It’s easy to understand why there would be an assumption that Albany would have an annual harvest festival celebrating pecans. Dougherty County is the perennial leader in Georgia pecan production and borders two of the state’s Top 4 pecan producers. Georgia has been the nation’s No. 1 pecan-producing state since the late 1800s.

According to the University of Georgia Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development’s Farm Gate Value Report for 2016, the most recent report available, Dougherty County has 16,500 acres of pecan trees producing a crop with a farm gate value of $42.6 million, accounting for 12 percent of the state’s total pecan production.

Mitchell County, adjacent to the south, was second with a Farm Gate Value of $36.4 million produced on 16,137 acres, and Lee County, just to the north, ranked No. 4 with $27.2 million worth of pecans produced on 10,500 acres.

Overall, Georgia had 158,905 acres devoted to pecans with a Farm Gate Value of $355.9 million, 47.8 percent of the state’s overall Fruits & Nuts value of $745.2 million. Pecans that year ranked No. 9 among the state’s commodities, accounting for 2.6 percent of the statewide Farm Gate Value of $13.7 billion.

Sunnyland’s festival is “celebrating the area’s strengths,” Willson said. It’s also a chance to see what’s going on with an industry that’s a major contributor to the county’s economy.

“I don’t think a lot of people realize there are so many different varieties of pecans,” Willson said, noting Sunnyland has more than a half-dozen varieties. The growing Chinese market, which prefers larger in-shell nuts, has changed the industry, as has a food trend that’s much closer to home.

“The farm-to-table movement has changed the industry,” Willson said. “People want to know where their products are coming from. They want to know that they’re coming from a family farm that celebrates its employees and tries to give back to their community every chance they can.

“Agriculture is being so appreciated now with the home-grown movement. There’s so much agriculture in this area — peanuts, pecans, blueberries, you name it. With that appreciation, it will hep the local economy. It will help with the farmers getting the recognition they deserve. People … want to know where the products come from, and that’s what we have to offer.”

Willson said organizers hope that in addition to becoming an annual event, the festival will become a regional tourist attraction like the National Pecan Festival was.

“It’s really a celebration of Albany and what it has to offer,” she said. “So many people come out here and say, ‘I didn’t even know you were out here,’ and they live 10 miles away. We want to change that.

“I want people in Thomasville and Tifton and Americus to say, ‘We go to Albany every year for the pecan festival and it’s awesome.’ We just want people to come and have a good time.”

Contact freelance writer Jim Hendricks at [email protected]. Follow JimEHendricks on Twitter.

Stephanie Schupska/UGA