Tag: Hazelnuts

Summer Workers

School is out for the summer, and while we have camps and a few fun outings planned, most of our summer is full of work on the farm.

This week was a juggle of childcare so I got to take the boys out for a few hours to work with me. We checked a few (very tall) tall fescue fields and headed out to a newly planted orchard to count trees. We planted a number of new baby hazelnut trees this past winter, and most are looking great, but there are a few dead ones that will need to be replanted.

So Hoot, Auggie and I headed out to do some tallying. A skill Auggie was very proud to have learned this year in kindergarten.

This spring and moving now into summer has been a struggle with the weather and rising costs. It’s a very uneasy time to be a farmer with all that has hit us this year that is out of our control. But it’s also just really amazing to get to be outside, teaching your kids all about what you love to do and seeing how much they love it also!

Someday these summer workers will be full time around here….probably (as I’m told often) before I know it!

Hazelnut Harvest Time….almost!!

It’s just about time to go harvest our hazelnuts (or filberts as we like to call them). We have been getting some good windy rainy storms blowing through our area, which has knocked down a lot of the crop out of the trees.

We wait for the nuts to naturally come out of the tree, no shaking required. But it’s always a bit of a guessing game as to when to harvest. Too early and a lot of nuts will fall after you sweep them into rows, causing you to run over a lot of your crop. Too late and you risk worse weather and rain storms that make for very muddy, very wet and very frustrating harvest.

We usually go through the orchards two times, get the bulk at the start then finish up after some more have fallen. It’s not an easy crop to harvest this time of year, but hoping for a good fall with some nice weather windows to get the job done. I guess all in all, it always gets done, just depends on how dusty or muddy you are at the end of the day!

Still in the Orchard

Well folks…I’m still out here.  Getting closer to done everyday, but still here for now. 

I took a few photos of what we are pruning on our trees. Our goal is to make them look more like a tree first of all (hazelnuts like to grow as a bush naturally) and secondly we are pruning to get growth. 

Before:

And after:

These trees got very stressed their first year due to a very dry and hot summer.  So we are now going in and getting rid of a lot of the stressed wood and making room for lots of growth. 

I promise I will have more to post on rather than just trees soon…hoping to be out of this orchard soon!  

On another note it looks like we are getting a pretty good stretch of spring weather coming up!  So hold onto your hats…there are going to be farmers running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to catch up!!  Which means lots of stuck tractors in muddy fields, lots of impatience, lots of longs days…but man it’s sure going to feel good to get out in that sunshine!!!!!!!  

Personally I’m looking forward to not wearing 17 layers by the end of today! 

Happy Friday!