Author: Nuttygrass

I'm a nut and grass farmer, EMT, Firefighter, and world traveler. I love a good laugh and a great adventure!

Get back to me…

Many of you may have already seen this video.  It’s been passing through facebook, social media and many ag outlets, and blogs for awhile now.  But I just wanted to share it once again on here.  I think the message is very interesting and so much of it is what I feel many times I come up against those who don’t want to listen to my side (the farmer’s side) or get so narrow minded they forget about the big picture.

I hope you enjoy the video, My favorite quote,

“Yeah get back to me.  I know you will, and when you do, we the farmers will stand amused at your little rant; before re-saddling, closing the harvest door, picking up the shovel and washing out the stalls and getting back to what we do, which is maintaining you, the people who would have us not be.  Yeah so get back me.”

Bower’s Family Farm, Photo Friday

This week I thought I would put some pictures on here from my friend Marie Bowers.  She is a 5th generation farmer from down in the southern part of the Willamette Valley here in Oregon.  She is also a blogger and is the one who convinced me to start this darn thing in the first place!  You can check out what she’s up to and subscribe to her blog at http://www.oregongreen.wordpress.com

2013-08-15-09-00-02-11150820_506955766051027_732837584_nHarvest equipment out in their yard, taking a break from the long harvest days.

521642_500355160044421_2095358135_nAfter a tractor broke down the Bowers got creative…good old farmer ingenuity.

1185557_509507765795827_1758755521_n64511_510322359047701_857600573_nThe grass seed is in the barn after harvest and ready to be cleaned, bagged, and sold!

1234082_516982931714977_1484003312_nAnd now it’s time for planting next year’s crop!

Thanks Marie for letting me share some of your photos and for sharing your love for farming!  And like I said you should definitely check out her blog!  One of my favorite posts has a ton of videos about grass harvest, a nice way to see what’s going on at her farm!  You can click here to see the post.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

One More Harvest Left

We have one more crop to harvest here at Kirsch Family Farms.  Hazelnuts. I get asked a lot of questions about hazelnuts when I tell people that we grow them on our farm.  I usually can figure that I will get three common questions.

1. Where do hazelnuts grow?

2. How do you get them out of the trees?

3. Where do all the hazelnuts go?

So here are a few answers for you….

1. Hazelnuts grow on trees in orchards. Many times you will hear me and many other farmers refer to them as filberts, but don’t be too confused hazelnuts and filberts are the same thing.  The closest thing I’ve heard to a reasoning for the double name is that the tree is a filbert tree, but the nut is a hazelnut.  Don’t ask me why it has to be so confusing, it’s just the way it is. The trees can live for an extremely long time so you will see all sorts of sizes of trees.  Right now in Oregon there is a big boom of planting going on, so most commonly people will see baby trees being planted versus older orchards.

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2. The hazelnuts or filberts fall out of the tree naturally when they are ripe and ready for harvest.  Usually we have to count on a storm or two to blow them down and get the last bit of crop out of the trees.  Last week for instance we had a HUGE rain, it knocked a lot of nuts down.  But it’s still a bit early for a lot of the crop, so not everything is down yet.  In a few weeks I would guess we will get excited and get out there to pick up our crop.  I will post lost of pictures about this process but until then you can check out when I wrote last year on how we harvest.

Harvest from Start to Middle

Hazelnut Harvest, The Rest of the Story

 

3. Majority of our hazelnuts are exported, mainly to China.  They love them over there as a snack food.  Actually just like we eat pistachios, after they have been salted and cracked, that’s how the Chinese like to enjoy Oregon hazelnuts!  The US market is also growing and growing as hazelnuts are found to be a very healthy snack food item.  Plus they are great in many different kinds of recipes from desserts to main dishes!

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This is also an exciting year since we are harvesting our baby filbert trees for the first time!  After 4 years of watching them grow and grow we finally get to see some production off of these little guys!  Hopefully we will have some good news to report soon!

262112_747476613819_3819296_nThese are our baby trees just two years ago!