Category: Hazelnuts

What We’re up to on Our Farm

For today I’ll just give you an update on what’s going on here in Oregon.  We’re having some incredible fall weather, foggy mornings, sunny afternoons and chilly evenings!  Basically it’s the best time of year here and we’re taking advantage of the lack of rain and getting quite a bit done!!

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We have only one more field to get worked down before we get it marked out to plant filberts.  We plant in the fall and then crop in between the rows to get a little return on our land while we wait for a hazelnut crop to come (4 years is about how long it takes).  Below is an example of a 1 year old orchard with crimson clover in between the rows.

262112_747476613819_3819296_nWe are also working on getting our established orchards pruned up to be able to take out half the trees next year.  Our older trees are 23 years old, and hazelnut trees love to have room to grow so that they can produce more and more.  So because of the size of our trees, we are going to be taking out half of them.  This may sound counter intuitive, but it does work out in the end.  We did this to another orchard a few years ago and the first year we lost half the production, the preceding years though it slowly caught up and this past harvest we broke even. I’m guessing that next year this orchard with only half the trees could out produce those where we haven’t thinned yet.  In a way it’s like pruning your roses back, just on a much larger scale!

As for me….due to my post from last week.  I’m on light duty, only allowed to lift 10 lbs for the next two weeks.  (Do you know how many things on a farm are OVER 10 lbs??!! Basically everything!!)  So I’m working on next year’s budget…a necessary evil of farming and good business.  Anyhow hope everyone is having a good Monday so far and if you’re not having this great weather…aka Midwest states…I’ll try to send some your way!

More Hazelnuts, and Planting

We are splitting our time right now between getting the hazelnut crop all picked up off the ground, and getting next year’s perennial ryegrass crop into the ground.

I’ll start with the end of our hazelnut (or filbert) harvest.  We are picking up the nuts from our smallest trees.  The trees are only 4 years old, so they don’t produce like the larger and older trees, but it’s still exciting to have our first crop to pick up ever!  They say that once you start harvesting your trees, the crop will double every year, so next year the row should be twice as large!!  Since I posted a ton of photos of the harvester, here are some of the actual sweeping of the nuts into rows.

008011In this photo you can see he has gone down one side, the sweeper with the brush on the end does a great job of grabbing all those nuts.

010Like I said, it doesn’t look like much, but every nut adds up!

012And finally you get a row to be picked up by the harvester.

Also I have gotten a few questions about our cabbed tractor that is used to harvest…yes it’s very nice to have a cab and no I don’t feel like a wimp having a cab haha!  Here for example is what I looked like when we had no cab…10318_589581412069_5698124_nAnd here is how I feel about being much cleaner and much happier with a cab!!

???????????????????????????????Really can you blame me??!!

We have also been planting perennial ryegrass.  We plant the grass with a John Deere drill, on 12 inch rows.  The planter has nozzles on the back that go over the rows and spray charcoal down over top of the row that you just planted.013014The charcoal serves two purposes.  Not only does it contain a little bit of fertilizer to get the plant some umph to get it up and growing before winter, but it also deactivates certain herbicides that we can spray over top to keep the ground around it clean, and not kill off what we want to grow.

015This is the sprayer that I use to apply the herbicides after planting.  With crops grown for seed it’s incredibly important that you keep weeds out of your field.  And since we are growing a crop that will stay in the ground for a number of years, it’s even more important that you start off the field with a clean slate.  Weeds will inevitably come in, but the sooner you can stop them from growing or kill them off the better you are and the more likely you will be able to save on sprays in the future.

Just like in your own yard or garden, it’s easier to kill unwanted pests when they are small or before they come out of the ground than when they are two feet tall and going to seed to spread and spread.

We finished up planting last week and are still working to get all the hazelnuts in, which should be wrapped up this week.  Phew…I’m sure we’ll be bored by the time this week is over…what to do next??  Trust me, on a farm there is ALWAYS something!

Hazelnut Harvest

As promised I finally have some photos to show of what hazelnut harvest looks like here in Oregon.  We finally got some good drying weather around here and were able to get out in the orchards and pick up most of the nuts, we still may run back for a second pick but it feels good to get most of the crop up off the ground and into the processor.  The whole harvesting process is pretty simple….it’s really as easy as 1, 2, 3ish….more like steps 1 to 8.

  1. Allow all the nuts to fall naturally to the ground, we don’t use a tree shaker.wpid-20130916_093351.jpg
  2. Use a machine called a sweeper to sweep the nuts away from the trees and into rows that look like the photo below.012
  3. Drive the harvester right over the top of the row.  0404. The harvester uses a belt to pick up the nuts into the harvester, then they go over a dirt chain that allows dirt and small debris to fall through. 028 Here’s a look without the covers on the harvester of the inside belts.  035 5. Followed by a large powerful fan that blows all the lighter material out,029 6. Followed by another chain that moves the nuts out of the harvester and into a wagon. You can see it was a bit muddy while we were out there!0177. Once the wagon gets full you have to unload it into totes using two more belts (you can imagine all the moving parts on this sucker…let’s just say there is a LOT of greasing to do everyday!)041
    Sorry this video is actually pretty terrible, I was trying to take a picture of the unloading process and instead this is what I got…sorry, but hope you get the jest of it!
    020Here’s a photo of the whole long train of a harvester.
    8. Once in the totes we dump them into a truck to be hauled into the processor.0450469. The processor in less than 8 days will have the nuts cleaned and dried while still in the shell, at this point they are pretty well preserved and won’t mold or go bad.  They can be stored and shipped very easily.

We finished all of our acres up in just three long days, mostly days of sunshine so we can’t complain.  We should head back out next week to get a few more into totes, the price looks great this year so it’s worth spending a little more money in fuel to put a few more nuts into totes.

So although our last harvest of the year is wrapping up, we are still hoping for some good weather to get more grass seed planted and fertilizing done.  The fall is just beginning and for farmers in this area we don’t stop to take a breath usually until winter is in full swing.