Harper's Pecans

Harper Miller is your average seven-year-old: she is excitable and talks in a hurried way about subjects she cares about, she makes silly faces into the camera during the zoom interview, she creates her own poses for this article’s photoshoot. A perfect day is one that is sunny, with a little wind, spent playing with her younger twin siblings and her friends—even better if she’s meeting new people and selling pecans by the bucketful.

Since 2020, Harper and her parents–with the help of some of her other family members–have operated a full-on pecan business from their home in New Orleans, selling packaged pecans, apparel, and accessories. Her parents, LaCour and Aubry Miller, entrepreneurs themselves, came up with the idea for Harper’s Pecans the day Harper was born. “Every year [we want to show her] the benefits of hard work” and about money, explained her dad, LaCour. 

In 2020, Harper turned five years old, and her parents felt that she could start learning and taking on responsibilities in the endeavor. “When we started this company, I was so excited,” said Harper. “My mom taught me when I was five, and she always taught me because I want to have a business like her. I want to be a worker, a business worker!” Half of Harper’s earnings go toward her college fund, and half go toward savings. Whenever Harper wants something, her parents try to frame it in terms of pecans sold: if she wants a new toy, they have her think about how many bags of pecans she would have to sell to be able to buy it, for example.

“We crack them, and we put the bad ones in a bowl, and we put the good ones in another bowl.”

—Harper Miller, on her process

“Every year the intent is [that] she does a little more, until she’s eighteen when it’s completely run by her,” explained Harper’s mom, Aubry. “Every year it gets a little more in-depth, which she handles. It’s just been a really cute teaching tool. Right now Harper helps with picking, sorting, the cracking a little bit, and of course the selling. This year, we’re talking about having some friends help, but she has to pay her friends, [so she’s] learning about compensating people who work for you.” 

Harper loves bringing in her friends to assist; Aubrey says they are some of her biggest supporters. “All her friends have the merchandise,” she laughed. “You’ll probably see kids wearing it around New Orleans.”

Harper’s pecans hail from a pecan orchard at Old Hickory plantation in Pointe Coupée. The property’s history includes eras as a cotton plantation, a sugar plantation, and ownership by Zenon Ledoux, a cotton farmer and Second Lieutenant in the Battle of New Orleans under Andrew Jackson, for whom the plantation was named.  Up until the Civil War, the plantation was also home to as many as seventy-seven enslaved people, whose forced labor maintained the agricultural functions of the property. 

LaCour’s ancestors purchased Old Hickory when it went up for public auction in 1888, and it has been in the family ever since—though never lived in. From 1936–1957, the house and property were used as a schoolhouse for African American children in Pointe Coupée, before being left empty for a decade and a half. It was Harper’s great grandfather who, in the 1970s, ultimately restored the house, which is now used as the family camp and summer home. He is also the one who planted the pecan orchard at Old Hickory, ushering in a new era of history on the property. 

During their first year, Harper and her family spent hours picking pecans by hand like people did in times past, but now hire a local business to bring a machine that not only shakes the pecans off of the tree, but also gathers them up off the ground. After that, the family runs the pecans through a cracking machine. In their first year using this method, they enlisted the assistance of local pecan entrepreneur Evelyn Gaspard, who welcomed and acquainted them with the ins and outs of pecan prepping. 

[Read about another kidtrepreneur, Noam "Kiki" Naquin, in this story from our March 2021 issue.]

The greatest labor of love and most time-consuming step comes next: sorting and separating the pecans by hand. No machine can accomplish this as well as careful fingers. Harper explained the process: “We crack them, and we put the bad ones in a bowl, and we put the good ones in another bowl.” During the fall months leading up to Harper’s pecan sales, her whole family pitches in. “All of the grandparents last year would get sacks of cracked pecans and they would take them when they were watching television and help separate and go through them,” Aubry laughed. “It’s Christmastime, there’s a lot going on, so every spare moment we’re all sorting pecans.” 

Aubry operates the two PJ’s Coffee shops on Magazine Street, so once the pecans are ready she advertises when Harper will be at the stores. She sells pecans and merchandise, such as hats, shirts, water bottles, tote bags, headbands, and soon, lip gloss. “The funnest part about my business is selling,” Harper said. LaCour laughed. “She’s a talker, she loves talking to people.” 

You can learn more about when Harper will be at PJ’s selling her wares by following the two PJ’s Coffee Magazine Street Facebook pages, or you can order online at harperspecans.com.