I spoke to Holt Oliver on August 6th to get an update on Oliver Pecan after the recent flooding. This information came from that meeting.
The Oliver family has been in the Pecan Grove area and Elm Grove area since the 1870s. A lot of family land was affected, but luckily not many houses were.
Many of the Pecan Bottoms that they have been harvesting for about three generations were greatly affected. There were trees lost, especially young trees. Luckily most of the trees in that area are mostly very mature trees, from 50 up to 150-200 years old, and able to withstand the waters. They did lose a little bit of crop, pecans falling out of trees, from wind and rain. The biggest issue was cleaning up the debris that washed through town that belonged somewhere else, branches, and maybe a few trees that were weak and dying and just fell over.
The trees are looking well and apparently liked the water coming through. It didn’t sit too long because it was moving so fast.
No houses were affected; a lot of the work to be done was getting other people’s cattle and horses back to them. Livestock was coming down the river and was finding high ground on their property. They were wrangling and holding cattle for some of the other producers here in the county and trying to find a way to get them back to their owners once the fences were rebuilt.
There is not a fence standing in Pecan Grove. Everybody is caring for everyone else’s stuff until they can get fences back up. Holt said they were very lucky that losing a well house was all that was lost. They have to get the pump fixed, and put a cover back over it. The flood damaged a lot of the trees, but most of them were mature enough to withstand it. The ones that didn’t make it were on their way out anyway; the drought had weakened some of the trees I asked if the wind storms and hail storms in June hurt the trees?
Holt said the pecans were strong because of the heavy spring rains. Pecan trees self prune so when the winds/hail storms came, it just helped to prune the pecan trees. It helped the trees maintain quality.
The Oliver’s have pecan groves and cattle. They were able to return the lost cattle that took refuge on their land. However, the land just down the river still has about 13 head of cattle with no known owner. The ear tags got rubbed off and washed off in the flood.
Holt noted that down by Buchanan where the river ends and leads into Lake Buchanan, the cow carcasses just piled up. The cattle producers in the county have had a very rough go of it.
Cow producers are having a tough time; just putting fences back up is extremely expensive.
These floods have really been tough for ranchers. As time permits, we will do our best to update you on ranchers in the area and how they are doing.
See article on Millican Pecan.
See article on The Great San Saba River Pecan Company.