Home Grown Almonds Blog

I absolutely love this time of year, the almond hulls are splitting and exposing the shells inside allowing them to dry and harden.  They start taking on the nutty flavor that we all love so much, and have less of the “green” flavor as they dry out.

William came with me this morning when I went [...]

We are celebrating!!  The US Bureau of Reclamation has finally determined that enough water has been stored in Lake Shasta to provide partial water allocations to agricultural users served by the Tehema Colusa Canal.  The water disctrict that we are in, Colusa County Water Disctrict, has been allocated 40% of our normal allocation.  So, here [...]

I just spent a week up in Oregon at Young Life’s Washington Family Ranch.  What an amazing and exhausting week with high schoolers!  Coming home to the farm is always good - I feel so at peace when I’m at home, in my orchard.  Taking a walk through the orchard, I found the Non-pareil almonds [...]

One morning last week, I was out changing the irrigation zones in the almond orchard, and three of my boys showed up, Briden (7) and Caleb (5) on their bikes, and William (3) on foot.  They love to race to see who can turn the most valves on/off for me, but the big boys let [...]

I’ve been busy removing trees that have died recently. It isn’t fun work, but at least we get firewood for next winter. And any branches that still have some leaves or nuts left on them we feed to Rebecca’s milk goats - they love the treat!
Quite a few of the trees are getting diseases, some [...]