Westward Bound: Sightseeing in Las Cruces, NM

Today we visited Stahmann's Pecan Store...the largest pecan grower in the world! We had been seeing all of these trees on the sides of the road and they were all lined up kind of like Christmas tree nurseries in New England. And they were flooded with water, so we figured that they were cultivated but we didn't know what kind of trees they were. After looking through our brochures, we discovered the Stahmann's Orchards as a local sight to see and the trees looked just like the ones we were seeing on our drives. The website is:

http://www.stahmanns.com/pages.aspx?id=&docid=93

The employee we talked to when we visited the store was very informative. He explained how they have shakers that shake the pecans off of the trees in November (which we will definitely go back and watch!). Then there are huge rakers that rake the pecans (and leaves, branches, etc) into rows, and then vacuum trucks that vacuum and separate the pecans from the leaves and branches. It was a very interesting process!

Our next stop was the Rio Grande Winery, that was highly recommended by a local artist we had met in Mesilla yesterday. The owner, Gordon Steele was very friendly and very helpful to these two wine newborns (Ed and me!)! He's been working on this vinyard for 5 years but only started selling his wine about 7 months ago! We tasted probably 10 different wines and he answered all of our questions! We were the only 2 customers there for about 1/2 hour and then another couple came in. It was very nice having him to ourselves to talk us through the wines! We walked away with 4 different bottles of wine and will definitely return there to stock up before we leave Las Cruces in December!