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www.shelbyinfo.com Our 43RD Year • Issue No. 8 • February 26, 2026
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Shelby’s Pecan Shop has been cracking nuts for three generations By Alan Hodge Pee-cans. Pee-cahns. No matter how you pronounce it, the nut of the Carya illinoinensis tree is a fixture in many food recipes and snack dishes. Getting the flesh out of the pecan shell by hand can be a tedious chore involving everything from a hammer to picks that look like dental tools. A variety of other gadgets make the job a bit easier but still time-consuming and that’s where Shelby Pecan Shop comes to the rescue. Becky Hord is the current Pecan Shop owner and chief nut-cracker. She’s the third generation of her family to run the business. “In 1987 my uncle Steve Allen visited some cousins who had a pecan shelling business in Americus, Georgia,” she said. “He got the idea to do it in Shelby and bought three shell-cracking machines from them.” The current Shelby’s Pecan business is still at 304. N. Post Rd. across from Elizabeth Baptist Chuch, but the building the nuts get cracked in has changed.
The works of one of the vintage nut processing machines.
The ladies running five (loud) machines. (Photos by Alan Hodge) and her daughter Amanda James from all over. “We have cusPecan Shop owner/operator Betsy Hord and daughter tomers from places Amanda James get set for another Saturday of nut like Brevard, Casar, cracking. Note the dates and rates for the shop on the York, and Gaffney,” sign behind them. Hord said. “We also “He ran the business in a little block have customers who house until the state widened the road bring them from the coastal and tore it down in the late 1980s,” said region.” Hord. “He passed it to my grandfather, Where do the customers H.C. Allen, who ran it in the garage in get their nuts? our current house there until he died in “Most of them are from 2000, then I took over.” trees people have in their Pecan shells and tidbits end up here. Folks bring their pecans to Hord yard,” Hord says. Incidentally, there are 18 pecan trees on Hord’s property. Hord estimates they process from 1,200 to 1,800 pounds of pecans on a typical Saturday during the November to March shelling season. The charge is fifty cents a pound. Customers drop the nuts off and come back later to receive their pecans sans their shells. The way the pecans are prepared is fascinating. Inside the garage are five machines- including the three Meyer Automatic Edible Nut Crackers that Uncle Steve bought- that have hoppers on top. The nuts are dumped in there and by a mysterious mechanical They don’t make nut crackers like this See PECANS, Page 10 anymore. Another box of nuts destined for the sheller.
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