Category: Uncategorized

In the times of a pandemic, wildfires, flash floods and distance learning, we are also starting our final harvest of 2020. It is finally time to harvest hazelnuts at Kirsch Family Farms!

The filberts fall naturally from the trees when they are ready to be harvested. This year “naturally” meant they fell due to 50 mile an hour winds during a crazy storm we had a few weeks ago. Which brought wildfires and us being thankful our trees didn’t get burned to the ground.

Which led us to last week when we were thankful that the flash flood that came through skirted mostly to the west of us and didn’t float the nuts down into the drainage ditch. Meanwhile we are thankful that our harvester driver, (ahem…me) is super unreliable due to navigating pick ups and drop offs from 75 different places for my three children with this new “learning” that we’re currently doing because of the pandemic. Hoot our oldest son summed up life very well in this photo which is so far my favorite…I hear ya buddy…right there with ya!!

All dramatics aside, so far this year is looking good for our hazelnuts and we do actually have a ton to be thankful for. As for the rest of it, well…like many of you, we are ready for this year to be over!

Those of you that have allergies in Oregon know that they can hit almost year round. And for many of you that means stuffy noses and itchy eyes in January or February! So what the heck is polleninating that time of year in Oregon….hazelnut trees!!

Hazelnut trees have catkins that hold all their pollen. As they start to mature the catkins begin to elongate and open up. When we get a little sunshine here during the winter they release pollen like crazy! I’m talking clouds and clouds if you drive by an orchard at the right time of day!

But we also help alleviate those pesky allergies, we collect the catkins and then extract the pollen for allergy tests and medicines. Pretty awesome!!

A little random farming information for today!!

Also happy birthday to this little farmer! Mildred Clara is 2 today!!

Squash is one of my favorite crops, not only is the end product delicious, it’s also so beautiful to see all this squash!!

Just acres and acres of bright orange!!

Until the harvesters show up that is. Then the smashing, tumbling, and separating begins.

These harvesters grab the squash, tumble it around to separate the seeds from the meat, and then dump into a truck to be taken for cleaning and drying. After they are all clean and dry the seeds go to be roasted and seasoned and then show up in the snack food aisle as pumpkin seeds.

This all makes for some very ooey gooey fields afterwards. Which for some reason doesn’t seem to bother our farm kids one bit!

While squash harvest in and of itself is cool, getting to share it with our family on our family farm makes it pretty special. It gives me great pride to be standing in a field looking at something that we grew, we took care of and now are harvesting…and to be sharing all of that with the 4th generation on our farm, well…it just checks one more box on the list of “Why I Farm”.