‘09 Harvest Continues…with a glimpse to the future.
Wow, it has been a busy week and a half! Since my last post, when we knocked the almond trees, we’ve been working like mad in the orchard getting ready to actually harvest, pick up the nuts off the ground!
Blowing almonds
After knocking the nuts off the Nonpareil trees (every other row), the first thing I needed to do was blow the almonds off the Carmel rows (alternating with the Nonpareils) so I could irrigate them while the Nonpareil variety was drying on the ground. The trees are very thirsty as long as they have the nuts still on them.
Briden raking
Zech, Caleb, and William helping rake.
Then the boys helped me rake a lot of the areas that are too tight or too difficult for the sweeper to get to. After six days of drying on the ground, the almonds were ready to be swept into windrows. We hired our neighbor, Jerry, because he has a small sweeper that fits down our narrow rows.
The sweeper moves the bulk of the nuts, but many of the almonds get caught around the trunks, in small holes in the ground, and sitting in the crotch of the trees, so we have to go through the orchard and hand rake and pick by hand to get the rest.
Rebecca raking - a California farm girl!
Little William (3) likes to help, but I think he does more damage with a rake than good! He does like to play Mr. Quality Control Inspector though…
Rebecca came across this rare, very unusual almond, a double kernel shaped like a butterfly.
Double "Butterfly" Almond
Finally, we had the orchard ready, and called the harvest crew to come with the pickup machines. The new, modern equipment is really fascinating to watch. They work so fast and efficiently.
They load our nuts into a truck, and off they go to the hulling and shelling plant to have the hulls and shells removed, and we’ll get them back in large wooden bins in a couple weeks.
…if you’re interested in a glimpse into the future at Briden Wilson Farm, we’re preparing to remove part of our orchard this fall/winter. The trees are getting old and many are diseased, many are tipping because of rotting roots, and some are just dying. We are strongly considering putting in the new orchard and farming it organically. The area where we live makes that very difficult because of our weather conditions and certain pressures from pests, but we really want to give it a shot. I know many of our customers are interested in organic product, and to be honest, since we live in the middle of our orchard, we would prefer it too.
Here’s the beginning of the process…
August 27th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
So what happens at the hulling plant? Is heat used in the hulling process?
August 27th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
The hulling plant is pretty much just mechanical and wind - no heat, to remove the hulls and the shells. The most heat our raw almonds are subjected to is from the sun when they’re still on the trees! Maybe I can get a video of the almonds in the plant too. The huller is very similar in concept to a combine used in a grain field, it just happens to live in a building.
I’m still hoping to get some actual sprouts going for you. I thought your photo of the “sprouted” roasted almond was very interesting. I think we might have some more experimenting to do.
August 27th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Enjoyed the pics/movies of harvest. It seems best to term almond harvest as controlled chaos - everything is flying everywhere with every step. Hopefully your yields will be high this year!
January 21st, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Tom, I’m thrilled to read that you are going organic. When we still farmed almonds, prior to retirement, we farmed organically, but never applied for certification.
We found that leaving a strip of weeds surounding much of the orchard to offer a place for bugs to go instead of the trees helped and so did the praying mantisses we had in huge numbers because we did not spray during dormant and other seasons of the year. Over the years, their numbers really increased greatly and they did a lot of good work.
When having our almonds hulled/shelled, checking the nuts, we had a very low percentage of pest damaged meats.It was well worth having an orchard look a bit unkempt with its weeds surrounding it. :-)(Oh, it also saved money on the maintenance because we didn’t have to pay for chemical pestcontrol.
I love your Vanilla Raw Almonds.
Wishing you success and thanks for going organic.
Margarete