San Saba's Pecans Are Coming In

The pecans are on the ground in San Saba. A café in Tilden that the Frio River tried to take in July is serving chicken-fried steak again. Up in the Panhandle, Borger opens a 50-year-old time capsule at noon today. And Friday night, from Canadian to Refugio, Texas played football.

San Saba, county seat of San Saba County, calls itself the Pecan Capital of the World, and this is the time of year it earns the name.

The first pecans of 2026 showed up early. On Sept. 8, Edward Flores walked into the San Saba News & Star office with a handful of soft-shell natives from the Hibler Orchard. "It's looking to be a good season," he told the paper.

The numbers back him up, mostly. Texas A&M AgriLife puts this year's Texas crop around 39 million pounds, up from 32 million last year. Growers in the Tri-State association are guessing higher, about 42 million. Wholesale lots were selling for more than $2 a pound early this year, getting close to $3.

The catch is August. It was hot and dry right when the kernels were filling, and Monte Nesbitt, AgriLife's pecan specialist, warned that "shriveled, malformed kernels can hide inside normal-looking shells." Scab and casebearers didn't help. Diesel and fertilizer haven't gotten cheaper, either. A bigger crop doesn't always mean a better year for the family running the shaker.

And it is families. Millican Pecan says its people have been harvesting from their "Mother Orchard" in San Saba since 1888. Oliver Pecan calls itself sixth-generation, with about 40,000 trees, its own shelling plant and a candy kitchen on West Wallace Street. In September, Oliver was posting photos of Pawnees, an early variety, splitting their green hulls. Later varieties like the Prilup fall well after that. In the Hill Country, the drop usually runs October through December, which puts the heart of it right on top of Thanksgiving.

If you're buying for pies: go to the source. The farm stores in San Saba sell new-crop pecans in-shell and shelled. Crack a few before you buy a sack. Oliver's store is at 1402 W. Wallace St. (Highway 190 West). Great San Saba River Pecan Company, half a mile west of town on 190, lets you pick your own November through January.

The best pies this Thanksgiving start under a tree in a place like San Saba.

Last week we told you Borger, up in Hutchinson County, turns 100. The ceremony is today, Monday, Oct. 26, at noon in Crawford Park on Main Street: a centennial plaque, the 1976 time capsule dug up and opened, a new one buried, and lunch in the park. Nobody has said publicly what's in the 1976 capsule. (Though you saw our guess that there’ll be at least one bicentennial quarter!) We'll tell you what else they found in next Monday's edition.

The Bulldogs, meanwhile, lost at home to Levelland 41-18 Friday

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Friday was Oct. 23, and 589 games were on the board across Texas. Here are six from places that don't get on the 10 o'clock news much:

The game to watch this Friday: Carthage at Gilmer, Friday, Oct. 30, 7 p.m. September's MaxPreps small-town No. 1 at No. 15, same district.

If your team played Friday and we didn't list it, reply with the score and your town. We read every one.

In July, the Frio River came up into Tilden. Alan Brown, who owns Max's Cafe, stacked sandbags with friends and family and wrapped concrete blocks in heavy plastic. County crews helped build the wall. "At one point we had eight pumps and they were running wide open," Brown told KIII, and a vacuum-truck crew from Crystal City that happened to drive by stopped to pull water out. It still got in, about a foot of it, The Progress reported. They put in a new floor, friends held a sausage-wrap fundraiser, and Max's reopened Aug. 7.

That's how a town treats a place it can't do without. It was Ray's until 1948, when Max and Maria Quintanilla bought it, and it stayed in the Quintanilla family until it closed in June 2015. Brown, a former McMullen County teacher, bought it. When he opened it back up that October, he kept the cooks. "When he bought the restaurant, he bought us too," cook Sallie Loza told The Progress in 2019.

What to order: chicken-fried steak, enchiladas or carne guisada. Save room for the chocolate meringue pie.

When to go: Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.; closed Sunday. 3047 Highway 16 South, Tilden.

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This week's ask: Youth weekend is this Friday through Sunday. If there's a hunter 16 or under in your family, send us one photo from the stand, the truck or the cleaning table, with their first name and your town. Deer or no deer. The best ones run here Monday, Nov. 2.

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See you next Monday.

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