FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Late last Wednesday night was a loud windy one in Fairhope, causing power outages early Friday morning at Point Clear and large rolling whitecaps on Mobile Bay.

The wind shook hard the limbs and branches of the dozens of trees representing many varieties that are located on the Marietta Johnson Tree Trail at the downtown campus of Faulkner State Community College.

With the power outages also came nature’s bounty, just in time for Thanksgiving.

Edgar Redlich, 81, was there by 6 a.m., slowly rolling a football-shaped device around the campus under the pecan trees to reap the harvest.

“We’ve got an oak in our yard and heard the rattles on the roof all night,” he said. “So we know today’s a nut day.”

By 10 a.m. he was still at it with a large bucket of pecans to show for his efforts.

From a distance, Redlich looked like he was sweeping a metal detector through the leaves looking for lost coins.

But up close, it was clear he was looking for a different treasure, and with something more low-tech, befitting the pecans nature had knocked to the ground.

“My son, Ray, got it for me so I don’t have to bend over,” Redlich said of the tool called a “nut wizard,” which held a number of pecans like bingo balls rolling in the cage. “It does the job.”

Redlich was born in Austria, but moved with his parents to the United States in 1956. He and his wife, Maria, moved to Fairhope from New York City about 10 years ago.

“They moved down here and just fell in love with (the city), and the pecans were kind of a side treat,” said Liz Redlich, their daughter-in-law, who also lives in Fairhope. “You can just pick them off the ground.”

But Edgar’s work was not done. After taking the pecans home, he had one big job left to do.

“I’ll be cleaning them up and putting them out to dry,” he said, of shelling the pecans and separating the rotten ones from the bunch.

Then Maria would finally take over, making the famous Austrian pastry, Linzer schnitten, or slice of Linzer, with the pecans.

More commonly known as the Linzer Torte, it’s the oldest known cake in the world, according to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, with the first recipe dating back to 1653. Named for the Austrian city, Linz, the cake, cookie or tart, is made with a very short, crumbly pastry of flour, butter and ground nuts.

“They’re very much in demand,” Liz said. “She makes enough so everyone can have some. My daughter’s husband loves them, and we send some to them.”

It sounds great, and Maria said she guesses she might need to make some more this year, but isn’t this an awful lot of work? At least the gathering of pecans could be streamlined. Why not run up to the store and buy a few pounds of shelled pecans?

“I’m retired,” Edgar says. “I need to work. I have a heart condition. And they’re not cheap. And they’re just laying there. At least it’s using what’s there.”

A few miles outside of town, another man is using what’s there but on a larger scale — and with a little more equipment. But he also knows the history.

“The ‘Easy Stick’ was invented in this building,” said Clarence Bishop, co-owner with his wife, Sandra, of B&B Pecan Co. on Greeno Road .

He said the first “nut picker-upper” — what looks like a long wooden tuning fork on the end of a handle — was invented in 1956 by Sandra’s father, Calvin Brown. He and his father-in-law went into business that year, opening a pecan orchard business that now has 50 acres, 1,500 trees and about 20 employees this time of year.

“This is the best thing that’s ever been invented,” Bishop said of the newfangled “nut wizard” that Redlich used that morning. “It set the world on fire when it came out.”

But you can tell he also has fondness for the older model. He still has some of the 10,000 that were made and shipped out in boxes for 59 cents or two for a dollar.

“They’re also good for other things,” he said, reaching up and scratching his back with one.

His pecan business that grows, harvests, shells and packages a mountain of pecans is a flurry of activity from October through Christmas Day, with the ringing phones of employees taking orders, machines in the next room cracking pecans, and customers choosing among the wide variety of salted, candied and dozens of other pecan delicacies.

There are also 50- and 100-pound bags of pecans waiting to be shipped in a back warehouse and a large freezer where the pecans not sold by Christmas will be stored.

“It’s the No. 1 nutrition there is,” Bishop said, showing a graph from the USDA ranking nuts for their health benefits. “Pecans today are the best nuts of all the nuts in the world.”

Out in the orchard, Bishop’s son, Doug, is driving the “shaker” to one of the trees full of pecans. Behind him another employee is waiting in the “harvester” that will come behind and gather the pecans after they’ve been shaken from the trees.

Once the tree starts shaking, pecans start falling quickly to the ground in a haze of leaves hovering in the air.

The rain helped me a little but not enough, Doug said, of the late rain that came recently during one of the worst droughts in years. His father said they’d only be getting about a 50 percent harvest this year.

As Clarence walks back from the orchard, he talks about what his favorite pecan dishes are in a story probably told a 1,000 times over the years.

“Which way do I like ‘em best?” he says. “The first one in my mouth. I’m eating and sampling them all the time every day.”

Bishop said his is the last of a business in the county that once had seven or eight like his. But he’s survived because he knew the importance of the retail market and putting pecans in tins, the ones you get at Christmas; the ones you enjoy opening.

His farm started much smaller. While he was in Korea in 1953, his mother bought him 5 acres for $1,375. Today, that small area of his farm is where the largest trees are.

Back on the Faulkner campus, Redlich is also carrying on an ancient tradition. But also with a modern eye for the future.

“It’s very rich,” he said, patting his stomach and smiling. “But I have to watch how much (Linzer schnitten) I eat.”