"We have had our last ride," read a statement from executive director Billy Bolton, as AL.com reported in March 2026, when the Alabama Pecan Festival announced it had closed for good after nearly 40 years in Tillmans Corner. WKRG covered the closure the same week. For decades, early November meant the festival grounds at W.C. Griggs Elementary.
That November date is now open. The pecan event left on the southwest Mobile County calendar is in Grand Bay, at a store on Dawes Road that has sold pecans since 1925. Its festival was on the calendar for last Saturday, Oct. 24, and that timing matters. Alabama's pecan harvest typically runs from October through December, so the festival fell in the first weeks of the season. Most of the season is still ahead, at the store and in your own backyard.
Forty years in Tillmans Corner, two in Grand Bay
The Tillmans Corner festival's goodbye did not give a detailed reason. AL.com's coverage carried the organizers' statement that "Running a festival is not easy," along with thanks to the sponsors, vendors and volunteers who kept it going. Lagniappe also reported that the festival would not return.
Grand Bay's event is much newer. In 2025, Dees Pecan Co. held a celebration on Oct. 25 for its 100th anniversary. This year Mobile County's events calendar listed the Second Annual Grand Bay Pecan Festival for Saturday, Oct. 24. The listing set a 9 a.m. start at Dees, 5960 Dawes Road, and promised food trucks, arts-and-crafts vendors, pecan-themed activities for kids and free admission.
So one long-running festival ended and a second-year festival in Grand Bay is the one still standing. The schedules are different too. The Tillmans Corner festival ran in early November, and its 2025 edition opened on a Friday evening, Nov. 7, according to a Fox10 preview. Grand Bay's festival comes in late October, closer to when the first nuts start falling.
A store built around the season, open past it
Dees Pecan Co. is one of the oldest family businesses in Grand Bay. Its company history says Dewitt and Myrtle Dees opened it in 1925 as a small mom-and-pop store and later grew a shipping department that served all 50 states. The business went to their daughter Marylyn in the mid-1980s and to their grandson Mark Hatchett in 2001. When Fox10 visited in 2025 ahead of the centennial, it spoke with co-owner Kelly Ross.
How the store's calendar has changed is a big part of its story. Under Marylyn, retail pecan season ran from October to January and ended whenever the pecans sold out. Since 2010, the store has been open year-round. The October-to-January window still makes sense, though, because that's when fresh-crop nuts come in. Dees advertises fresh-crop pecans in several varieties, and what's available changes with the season.
The store's FAQ fills in the rest:
- Hours: Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The FAQ isn't dated, so call (251) 865-6626 before a special trip.
- Pecans: In-shell pecans, shelled halves and pieces, plus sweets.
- Best-selling candy-coated pecan: Honey Glazed, which the store describes as honey and butter poured over fresh pecans.
- Coffee: Butter Pecan is the top seller and Bourbon Pecan is second. Both also come in K-Cups. The FAQ says the smell most shoppers notice when they walk in is fresh coffee, brewed daily.
- Honey: Raw local honey.
Online stock goes up and down. Recently the store's 1-pound shelled Pawnee halves were listed at $17.49 and marked sold out. If you need a set amount of halves for holiday baking, it helps to shop the store in November instead of waiting until the week of Thanksgiving.
On the national supply picture, the USDA's October 2026 crop report, released Oct. 9, forecasts 301.3 million pounds of U.S. pecans this year. That's up 6% from 2025. Improved varieties make up 286.8 million pounds and native or seedling pecans 14.5 million. The report gives figures for Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma, but not for Alabama, so it says little about this year's crop on Gulf Coast trees.
The pecans in your own yard
Plenty of Grand Bay lots have an older pecan tree. For those homeowners, the season after the festival happens in the yard. Guidance from Alabama Extension, published in Specialty Crop Grower, lays out the steps between the shuck splitting and a bag of pecans in the freezer:
- Watch the shuck. A pecan is mature once its shuck starts to open. Most homeowners just let the nuts fall on their own.
- Dry the early ones. Nuts that fall early in the season may still need drying. Spread them in thin layers on raised screens, or put them in small mesh bags, somewhere well ventilated, at room temperature and out of direct sun.
- Do the snap test. After about two weeks, a dry kernel should snap cleanly when you bend it.
- Store in-shell nuts cool and dry. Unshelled pecans keep best somewhere cool and dry.
- Refrigerate or freeze shelled nuts. Keep shelled pecans away from air and light. Extension notes that properly frozen pecans can be thawed and refrozen for up to two years without losing texture or flavor.
Freezing stretches a backyard crop well past harvest. Nuts that fall in late October, get dried by mid-November and then go in the freezer can still be pie filling well into next year. With harvest running into December, a single backyard tree can keep dropping nuts for weeks after the festival.
Where the old festival's pies went
The festival's pecan pies are set to come back at a new event. In its closing message on alabamapecanfestival.com, it said the same pecan pies would be sold in the fall at a new event at Tillman's Corner Senior Center, 5863 Nevius Road in Mobile, and the sales would support the senior center. WKRG reported the same plan. As this post goes up, the festival's site still says only "in the fall," with no date, hours or price posted. The Southwest Mobile County Chamber's community calendar doesn't list it yet either. If those pies were part of your November, check the senior center or the festival's site over the next few weeks.
If Dawes Road runs low
Dees is the Grand Bay stop. When a particular cut sells out, two family pecan farms across the bay also sell straight to the public:
- B&B Pecan Company, 16151 Greeno Road, Fairhope, (251) 928-9031. A family-owned farm that sells retail and by mail order, with pecans year-round in-shell, cracked, as halves, as pieces and candied.
- Underwood Pecan Farm, 302 Highway 59 North, Summerdale, 251-943-8056. Its online store lists a 1-pound bag of shelled halves at $15, a 1-pound bag of pieces at $14 and a 5-pound bag of halves at $72.50.
Underwood's 5-pound bag works out to $14.50 a pound, which is 50 cents less per pound than its 1-pound bag. That matters if you're buying for a full season of holiday baking. Prices on all of these sites can change, so check before you go.
If you have a pecan tree, you know the nuts keep falling into December. Dees Pecan Co. opens at 9 a.m. Monday through Saturday at 5960 Dawes Road, and the coffee will already be brewing.
If you're a Grand Bay homeowner wondering what an older lot with mature trees is worth these days, or you're looking for a place with room for a pecan tree of your own, Jessica Nguyen would be glad to talk it through. Schedule a Free Consultation and we'll go over what's selling around Dawes Road and Grand Bay Wilmer Road this season.
