Organic Pecans in Australia: The Story of Place and the Historic Las Piedras Orchard

Australia’s oldest pecan orchard, grown the right way.

Junction View, Queensland

Las Piedras (Spanish for “The Stones”) is Australia’s oldest pecan orchard. Established in 1965 by American expat and pecan pioneer, the late Dean Stahmann, the land is exactly as the name suggests: rocky, hard, honest country in the foothills of the Main Range. This is not easy soil. But it is the right soil. Deep roots, perennial trees, patient stewardship. The kind of place where pecans make sense.

The soil is a mix of deep, rich, stony loam. Pecan trees love well drained but fertile soil, and Las Piedras has it. The property also has reliable underground water, which matters because pecan trees need a lot of water in summer. Winter here delivers real cold. Frosts sweep through the valley, which deciduous trees need in order to complete full dormancy, reset, and bear good fruit. And come summer, the heat arrives. Being far enough west of the coast means hot, dry summers which produce exceptional fruit quality without the fungal pressure common on the coastal strip. Unlike heavy coastal soils, these stony loams limit waterlogging and reduce root stress, which supports better nut quality and flavour. If you understand the land and the orchard, then you can understand why pecans grown this way are different.

The orchard began conversion to organic practices in 2007 and attained organic certification in 2010, the same year it was acquired by the Huston family who established Organic Pecan Enterprises. Warren and Christine did not just buy a farm; they inherited a living, perennial system with decades of root memory.

In 2017, they built an on-farm cracking and processing facility. Before this, the orchard only grew and harvested the nuts. After harvest the pecans were trucked to Moree for sorting, cleaning and drying, then shipped back to Toowoomba for further processing. Bringing all processing home eliminated that long transport loop, improved quality control and allowed the Hustons to keep every step from tree to pack on their own land. Today, every pecan is grown, harvested, cracked, dried, sorted and packed on the farm at Junction View. This means the time between harvest and packing is as short as possible, and is the reason the Huston’s pecans taste genuinely fresh.

If you understand the land and the orchard, then you can understand why pecans grown this way are different.

What most people do not realise about pecans

Pecans are an extraordinary health and climate crop. Each mature pecan tree produces significant oxygen, draws carbon from the atmosphere, and locks it back into the soil. This orchard of around 2,200 trees is not just a nut farm. It is a perennial carbon bank.

Pecans are also nutritionally one of the most dense and protective wholefoods in the tree nut world. They are naturally high in monounsaturated fats, antioxidants and plant compounds. They fuel the body the same way olive oil does: with fat that is structurally supportive rather than inflammatory.

And pecans suit Australia. They handle heat. They handle dry spells. Their root systems go deep. Pecans fit this country in a way almonds and other irrigated soft tissue nuts simply do not.

The tragedy is that most Australians have only ever tasted stale imported commodity pecans. Fresh Australian grown organic pecans are a completely different food. Different in the way they taste, smell and feel in the mouth. When pecans are cracked, dried and packed on farm, you can taste the difference.

Did you know?

Pecans and walnuts are botanical cousins. Both belong to the Juglandaceae family.

A pecan is not a nut in the botanical sense. It is a fruit, specifically a drupe.

Pecans evolved to produce energy dense oils for wildlife. Those same oils now nourish humans.

Pecans hold their flavour inside the kernel. If you crack a fresh pecan, the aroma is immediate.

When pecans go stale it is not the flavour that changes first, it is the oils oxidising. Freshness is everything.

Australia has the climate pecans want, yet most pecans sold here are still imported.

Australia should be growing its own pecans, not importing them.

What makes Australian grown pecans special?

They are grown for flavour and quality, not commodity volume.
Australia has the right climate: hot summers and cold winters that pecans evolved to thrive in.
Shorter supply chains protect the integrity of the oils, which means better flavour and freshness.
Your money supports Australian farming families, not foreign commodity pools.
No import blending. No stale stock. Just pecans grown here in Australia.

Why the Huston family keeps going

For Warren, the real joy of farming is the season itself. The orchard is a forever changing canvas. Winter brings the stark beauty of bare trunks, fog drifting low across the block, ice on the grass after a hard frost. Then budbreak begins and tiny new leaves appear. Catkins and new nutlets form. Spring fills the orchard with pollen and bees. Summer becomes a lush rainforest atmosphere. Then autumn arrives with its harvest and the trees surrender their leaves. It is the full cycle of life, visible every year.

Australia demands resilience, and the Hustons know it. They have farmed through floods, droughts and bushfires. They keep going because they believe that feeding Australians real, nutrient dense wholefood is a responsibility that matters, especially for their own grandchildren.

“Christine and I feel compelled to help provide healthy food for all Australians and particularly our grand children. This is why we are Certified Organic Farmers. We think manufactured chemicals are not good for our health or the health of our environment. We have 2200 mature pecan trees and each tree in a year can produce enough oxygen to keep 1 to 4 people alive for that year, plus together they produce 65 tonnes of pecans and transfer over 100 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere back to our soil. This is our motivation and what keeps us going. Pecans are amazing trees.”

— Warren Huston

For the Hustons, this is the work:

Healthy soils. Healthy trees. Healthy people.

A family not just farming for today, but stewarding a legacy orchard for tomorrow.

And the pecans speak for themselves. Rich. Sweet. Buttery. Aromatic.