St. Helena Island Praline Bars - Oh My!
An island with a deep rooted connection to pecans through its agricultural history and its historic plantations. The Great Pecan Wars were serious business!
St. Helena Island is a magical place on the South Carolina coastline, just a few miles from Beaufort, where African American men and women have farmed this land and fished this water for centuries--first as plantation slaves, then as freedmen. It's now one of the last communities on the East Coast that hasn't been swallowed up by development and tourism.
There was a time when I lived near Colonel Rathbun’s Brickyard Point Farm on Lady’s Island. He grew some of the finest pecans in all of Beaufort County.
Living near Brickyard Point Farms meant two things: beautiful views and a front-row seat to Colonel Rathbun’s nightly tactical warfare.
When I met him, the Colonel was locked in a high-stakes, midnight standoff with the local deer and raccoons—critters who clearly viewed his pecans and vegetables as an all-you-can-eat Lowcountry buffet. Every morning, he’d recount the previous night’s skirmishes with the intensity of a four-star general, while the raccoons were likely back in the woods, patting their bellies and planning their next heist.
One afternoon, the Colonel marched up with the triumphant grin of a man who had finally outsmarted Mother Nature herself. He announced that the “Great Pecan War” was officially over. His secret weapon? High-tech surveillance? Electrified fencing?
Nope. A portable radio.
He simply marched out and plopped that little radio right in the middle of the field, cranking up the volume. Apparently, the deer weren’t fans of local talk radio or 40s swing, because he swore it scared them halfway to Beaufort.
There’s just something delightful about the image of a band of masked raccoons approaching a vegetable patch, only to be thwarted by the sudden, tinny sound of a weather report or a catchy show tune. It turns out, in the battle of Man vs. Nature, sometimes all you need is a good signal and some static to reclaim your crops!
