TEXAS NEIGHBORS | WINTER 2019 By Jennifer Dorsett Field Editor How do you eat your pea-nuts? Boiled? Salted and roasted in the shell? Or maybe in a bottle of Dr Pepper, little salty nuggets of goodness floating in the fizz? Peanut farmer Landon Nichols likes to keep it simple. “My favorite way to eat pea-nuts is raw,” Nichols said, as he brushed the soil off a field-fresh peanut and cracked it, popping the kernels into his mouth. “I think they taste a little fresher, kind of like a raw vegetable.” Growing peanuts in Texas may sound nutty, but the Lone Star State is actually the second-larg-est peanut grower in the U.S. be-hind Georgia. The underground crop thrives in the sandy soils of the Texas Panhandle Plains. Nichols, a fourth-generation Bailey County farmer, has been in the business for 19 years. He started out growing cotton and corn and began growing peanuts in 2009. He said growing peanuts, like any other crop, is a gamble. But diversification of his farm has been a good strategy. “We had some rough years, and cotton prices were kind of fluctu-ating, so we decided we needed to try something else,” Nichols said. “It worked out pretty well for us. The price has kind of gone up and down, and we had a few years that were difficult. But I’ve enjoyed raising peanuts.” Growing a product that is consumed across the nation is a point of pride. Nichols is always happy to talk to road-side visitors who pull over to ask questions when they see the crop being harvested. “The processor roasts them and ships them all over the United States and all over the world,” he said. “When we’re harvesting, people will always stop by and want to get a handful or get a bag to boil or cook or roast. It’s kind of neat to have people just stop by and be interested in something straight off the farm.” WWW.TEXASFARMBUREAU.ORG