Home Grown Almonds Blog

It’s finally here!  Today we “knocked” the first variety of almond trees.

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.
The actually knocking/shaking of the trees goes pretty quickly.  Each tree is shaken for only [...]

We’re just a couple days away from “knocking” the first variety of trees.  The nonpareil almonds are dried enough so we can shake them off the trees.  They will finish drying on the ground before we sweep them up and harvest them.
My boys have been helping me get the orchard ready for the shakers and [...]

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 [...]