08/26/2026
New Mexico passed a law in 1987 about what you are allowed to call a pinon
Pinon is the one crop out here that nobody plants and nobody gets to schedule. The trees put out a real cone year on their own timetable - the old rule of thumb is every seven years, but groves do not consult each other about it and the whole thing comes down to winter snow and spring rain. When a stand goes off, the road shoulders fill with parked trucks and the bedsheets come out. Spread one under the tree, get up in the branches or take a stick to them, then spend the rest of the week getting pitch off your hands.
The cones do not give the seeds up until after the first frost, which is why this is an October errand and not a summer one. Roasted, in the shell, off a folding table on a roadside: somewhere around forty dollars a pound. Which is precisely why the Legislature passed the New Mexico Pine Nut Act in 1987 - somebody was buying cheap imported pine nuts and selling them to you as New Mexican.
Where do your people pick, and are you telling?
