While nature is at work, we’re continuing to sort and clean almonds from the last harvest, most of them to package up raw. We’re still making our roasted almond butter in small batches so that our customers get only the freshest, highest quality almond butter. We’re working on making Raw Almond Butter (in the second picture below), but it’s been tough to get the texture workable. As soon as we’re happy with it, we’ll add it as an option to our website too.

Most of our time has been consumed with cleaning and sorting the almonds after harvest. We also added several new flavors to our roasted almond lineup, and a very exciting new addition, Raw Vanilla Almonds. In the orchard, we’ve done minimal pruning, and my mom has helped out a lot with “poling;” that’s when you knock the “mummies” (nuts stuck on the trees that didn’t come off during harvest) off with a pole. This is our best defense against the Naval Orange Worm moth, the worst pest we have in almonds.

The scheduling didn’t work out this winter for the tree grinder to make it to our orchard like we hoped. The portion of the orchard that we were going to remove to start our new organic orchard is still standing. We are going to charge ahead with the transition to organic anyway. Originally we were going to just farm them organically, but because so many customers have asked, we are looking into certification. We’re just getting started now and it’s a three year process to receive the “certification.”

The rains have been sporadic this fall and winter, with just enough precipitation to bring some very foggy weather. That is, until this past week. God has seemingly opened up the floodgates! The past few days have brought rainstorm after rainstorm with several inches of rainfall. Cold rainy weather is never fun to be out and about in, but we are extremely grateful. Hopefully the snow-pack is building sufficiently in the Sierra Nevada mountains to fill up our reservoirs this spring and summer.

Here is a quick video I shot today while William (my youngest son) and I went for a ride through the orchard to take a look after the latest round of rain. Unfortunately the rain came with a strong south wind, taking a few of our trees over.

The trees are apparently anticipating the coming spring, because the buds are already beginning to swell.

The buds are starting to swell.

The buds are just waiting to pop!

In the News: Our farm was featured in the Davis Food Coop Newsletter this month!
Davis Coop Newsletter

For those of you who haven’t been to the website for a while, we have great news: Free Shipping for all orders over $30!! For those of you who ordered within the past few months and took advantage of the free shipping, you may have noticed the minimum increased from $20 to $30 to qualify for the free shipping. UPS increased their rates at the first of the year, and the shipping costs were just too much for us on the small orders. Yet, we couldn’t give up on the idea…we still wanted to offer the free shipping to you all. Our hope is this will have the least impact on you because we know the free shipping helps out a lot.

Rebecca and I wish you all the best as this new year continues to unfold. We’ll be bringing more updates very soon as the season gets underway.

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…

The process of shaking the almond trees is still referred to as knocking because before the days of big machines, the trees were literally knocked by hand with rubber mauls.

Briden with a maul knocking almonds by hand.

The actually knocking/shaking of the trees goes pretty quickly.  Each tree is shaken for only a few seconds, and it’s like a shower of almonds falling to the ground.  It really is fun to see in action.  If you watch closely, you can actually see the branches raise up (even though they look like a blur) as the weight of the almonds (still inside the shells with the hulls attached) is removed.

Next we’ll be raking, blowing, and sweeping the almonds into windrows so they can be picked up by the harvester.  Harvesting almonds and irrigating the trees during harvest is a very manual process.  The almonds need to stay dry while they’re on the ground.  If they get wet, they will become discolored, and can even get moldy if allowed to stay wet for too long.  Harvest demands long hours of tedious labor, but the reward is worth it!  Who wouldn’t be satisfied with a handfull of fresh crunchy almonds?!

Almond tree shaker in action.

The nonpareil almonds ready to be knocked.

Briden "knocking" an almond tree with an old fashioned maul.

My boys have been helping me get the orchard ready for the shakers and harvest equipment to go through the rows of trees.  Another large nonpareil tree fell over just a few days ago, so I tasked the younger boys with knocking the almonds off by hand so I can cut up the tree and move it out of the way.

Within a few days I should have photos and videos of the harvest in action, so check back soon!

William came with me this morning when I went out to check on the progress of the Nonpariel hull split, and he LOVES to pick them off the tree (even before they’re ready), crack them open, and eat them fresh.  I couldn’t resist capturing a short video of him picking one and struggling with his tiny fingers to break into the shell.

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 we are, cleaning the filter for the canal water and having a little fun.

We’ve been drawing from our small well to irrigate this entire growing season which has been a major challenge.  This is going to be a HUGE relief!  Finally we’ll have water pressure for a shower again!

The hull is the outer “fruit” of the almond, but really isn’t suitable for human consumption.  It is a good source of carbohydrates/sugar, so the hulls are sold to dairy farmers and other livestock producers after they are separated following harvest.  The hulls begin to split as the nut/shell on the inside reach maturity and are begining to dry.  As the hulls dry out, they open up to expose the shell inside.  Look closely and you will see the “seam” in the almond hull begining to split in the photo below.

I picked a couple to open up so you can see the mature, yet undried nut meat.  They are edible, but the flavor is very different than a dried nut and slowly transforms into the almond taste that people are familiar with.  They have a sort of “green” flavor to them.

I’ll be posting more photos in the near future as the nuts mature; things happen fast from this point so check back soon!

Tom

I ran back to the house and grabbed the camera, hoping to capture one of these moments.  I’m afraid the innocence of the these years with my young children helping me in the orchard will pass far too quickly.  While I was videoing William, we came across a beautiful Non-Pareil almond tree that had been blown over.  We did have a bit of a north wind a couple days before, but I really didn’t think it had been that strong.  The trunk must have been weakened by a disease or something, because it was a large, strong looking tree, loaded with almonds that would otherwise be ready for harvest in about two months.  Loosing such a big tree that is still producing so well is so sad for me.  I see diseased trees die, which is unfortunate, but to loose an otherwise healthy tree is especially hard for me.  Oh well, this is just part of farming.  You take the good with the bad.

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 from soil borne pathogens, and some from air borne that enter through external wounds. Unfortunately, this is typical for an orchard that is as old as ours - approximately 23 years.