MEET THE PRODUCER

meet the producer EDWARD HICKSON

Galah’s first featured Producer is my husband Edward Hickson, who grows pecans in the Dumaresq Valley on the New South Wales–Queensland border. I promise I’ll cast the net wider for future issues, but for now, please forgive me. I can’t help it, I think he’s great.

He’s really into sniffing soil. A handful from this paddock under the young trees, a handful from that paddock with the older trees, and then—he’s running now—another handful from over there under the gumtrees where it has never been cultivated. ‘Smell it Annie, isn’t it good?’ he asks, as he lifts his soil-filled hands to his nose and breathes in deeply. And I swear to you he partly closes his eyes as he inhales the rich hummus smell.

Ed Hickson grows pecans on the alluvial soils of the Dumaresq Valley, 80 kilometres west of Tenterfield. It’s a new industry for the district, and it’s been a steep learning curve for the former cotton farmer; however, he is determined, a little obsessive and not afraid to wait.

Pecan trees are slow to mature and need about seven years to produce nuts. You plant a pecan nut in its shell into the ground and, like magic, a pecan tree grows. Onto these baby trees you graft certain varieties that can pollinate each other with the wind. Pecans are relatively new to breeding, which means the varieties grown now are very close to ancient heirloom varieties. In late autumn a tree-shaking machine vibrates the trunks with such controlled force that the nuts pop off the trees like confetti.

Out where we live, they don’t need pesticides or fungicides. The longlived trees are majestic and, if we let them, they’d grow more than 30 metres tall. But Ed will prune them with giant spinning saw discs mounted onto tractors to keep them at 10 metres to optimise yields. You don’t want all the energy going into the height of a tree; you want the energy going into the nuts. This is one of the many things he has learned since planting the first lot of pecans seven years ago. >

Words & photographs

Annabelle Hickson

‘THERE’S A REAL INCENTIVE TO TRY TO GROW PECANS THAT TASTE BETTER AND HAVE MORE NUTRIENTS AND ARE ORGANIC, EVEN IF IT COSTS MORE. YOU CAN MAKE A BUSINESS OUT OF THAT BECAUSE YOU CAN ACCESS CUSTOMERS WHO ARE WILLING TO PAY.’

‘I always wanted to do a permanent crop. It’s such an interesting, longterm project where you have to use water efficiently, design and build infrastructure and maintain a living farm that goes on living for 100 plus years,’ Ed tells me over tea and scones (not really), while our daughter Daisy takes notes (really).

Ed has become obsessed with soil and microbiology. There are farmers who’ve been thinking about soil health for a lot longer than Ed, but he’s making up for lost time, experimenting with composting and soil biology.

One method he’s trialling is the Johnson–Su bioreactor, where you create a mini universe of bacteria and fungi in a large container through aerobic composting, which you can then use to inoculate farm soils.

‘I’m at the tip of the iceberg, but there is this whole new science behind soil health running in parallel with the science about the gut biome. The idea of having healthy, resilient crops through healthy soils, rather than relying on chemical and synthetic inputs, is immensely appealing.

‘From a business sense, I like the fact that pecans are a higher value product. I’ve always been in commodity agriculture where you’re racing to the bottom, trying to grow as much as you can as cheaply as possible. There’s a real skill in that: using water as efficiently as possible, maximising yields. But with the pecans, I think there can be a different model.

‘There’s a real incentive to try to grow pecans that taste better and have more nutrients and are organic, even if it costs more. You can make a business out of that because you can access customers who are willing to pay for better products. Connecting with consumers, for the sort of farming I did before, was almost impossible, at least at my scale. You had to go through a lot of middlemen. Whereas with pecans, it’s not prohibitively expensive to access consumers directly and as a result you can be rewarded for delivering a quality product.

‘But mostly I just love the idea of an orchard, of being able to walk around in it, enjoy it. That is the real reason. Then you try to convince yourself with all the smart reasons as to why you are doing it, but don’t tell my bank manager that.’ n hicksonpecans.com

APÉRO PECANS

50 g butter 2 tablespoons caster sugar 2 rosemary sprigs, leaves chopped 2 thyme sprigs, leaves picked 2 tablespoons fennel seeds ½ teaspoon dried chilli 2 teaspoons sea salt 500 g raw pecans

Melt butter and sugar in a large frying pan over medium heat. When the sugar has dissolved, add the herbs, fennel seeds, chilli and salt and cook for a minute or so. Tumble in the pecans and continue to cook, stirring, until the nuts are coated and toasted. Perfect with an aperitif before dinner.