Could New Mexico become known for something more than green chile? The first annual Pecan Festival hopes to “put Las Cruces on the map” by promoting the local pecan industry.
The festival was a three-day event held at Young Park from April 12-14. With playgrounds, live music, food trucks, and enough local vendors to rival the Las Cruces Farmers Market, the event was marketed as fun for the whole family. Organized by Kristen Worthington, there were four different pecan farms and growers present at the event, in addition to a host of other local business owners.
“We’re the largest pecan producing county in the country,” said Sean Worthington of Worthington Farms. “I did the math one day and it’s about 17% of the pecans worldwide are grown in this valley. It’s a big deal. So, we wanted to bring kind of awareness to the population and kind of show off our products.”
Each product was pecan-related in some way, from chocolate covered pecans to oil, lip balm and jewelry; even some of the food was smoked with pecan wood. All of this was crafted in hopes of not only having a festival to draw people to Las Cruces, but to promote an important local export, as well.
“It’s a big deal for New Mexico and a lot of people don’t even realize what all the industry does,” festival organizer Camille Plante said. “It supports so much, so we want the community to be educated and learn beyond green chile, which we love, and that’s part of who we are as New Mexicans. We want to put pecans on the map, and we really want to take this festival to the next level and give our community something to celebrate every year.”
In addition to promoting the pecan industry, the festival and local farms partnered with Plante’s nonprofit organization, the Wee Warriors. Founded in 2018, the Wee Warriors project supports New Mexican hospitals and families with medically fragile newborn babies. Profits from the Pecan Festival were donated to the project.
“I think that it’s important to know that the Warriors project is serving a very underserved population,” Plante said. “There’s not a lot of resources here medically. We want the state to start paying attention. We only support New Mexicans and we want the Warriors project to really thrive along with this industry.”
Tickets for the event cost $10 for general admission and $7 for senior citizens. Students and first responders received a discount, while children under the age of 10 got in for free. There were also $50 tickets available for guests to enter the VIP tent, which included a free drink ticket and the opportunity to judge a food tasting competition.
The competition took place on Saturday, April 13, during which judges were given 15 different pecan-based foods from local chefs. Tasters then had to rank the dishes out of 10 in several different categories to pick three winners. The event drew around 40 people, including local citizen Susan Austin, who is already thinking of recipes to enter the challenge herself next year.
“I think it’s nice for the city of Las Cruces to kind of embrace some of these kinds of festivals that embrace what Las Cruces is about,” Austin said. “That it’s not just chile. We have a great beer culture here. We got a great pecan culture here. We have a great culture here that I think the city of Las Cruces needs to celebrate.”
