How Picking Piñon Nuts in New Mexico Became Big Business

During boom years of piñon drop, late-summer Gallup transforms into a massive center for piñon commerce. Gigantic signs outside of gas stations, restaurants, and trading posts advertise that they are buying piñon. Vans toting brokers from outside of the region park along Highway 602 and set up tables and chairs with their own handmade signs: “BUYING PINON.

The farther one gets from piñon epicenters like Gallup, the higher the price gets for the raw product from a picker. Adeky has heard of pickers going as far as Flagstaff, three hours away, to sell their product to a buying middleman. Often, getting out of the hyper-localized piñon epicenter into drier, less piñon-dense regions immediately gives sellers the upper hand to earn more money on the transaction. But more often than not, folks who pick are seeking same-day cash.

A scale in Ellis Tanner’s shop dedicated to weighing piñon, though he says the market is down compared to previous years.Even though retail prices for piñon are high and pickers can earn a decent sum per pound, Tanner clarifies that trading piñon doesn’t always equate to hefty returns on his investment, especially for the labor of drying, curing, and cleaning nuts. “If we make a 20-25 percent margin per pound, we’re doing a grand-slam home run.

“My first memory of piñon is my grandmother shelling it by hand for me when I was 5 or 6,” says Adeky, smiling. “I would go with my grandmother to herd sheep and we’d bring piñon for long drives.” In the fall of 2020, Yazzie decided to experiment with the products in her storefront by picking, roasting, and bagging her own piñon to sell alongside jewelry and crafts. “Most of the piñon sales were to Navajos — we really love piñon.” But Yazzie also sees piñon as a way to show a loved one a piece of home while they are far away. “My sister lives in Austin and I’ll send her piñon as a present because she doesn’t have access to it there.

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