It's harvest season

Aug 2

Harvest has officially started. We are moving and shaking on the farm. We started on Saturday by test shaking a few rows to make sure they were shaking clean and get any kinks out. Sometimes the nuts can stick to the limbs if they aren't quite ready to harvest or if they are too dry. But we are having good luck with shaking so far and a majority of the nuts are shaking right off. We like to service the equipment in the off season and make sure they are mechanically all healthy. So once we start up, hopefully we don't have too many major issues.

shaking tree

Monday, we started shaking in full force. Nuts look clean and good, but we will know better yield numbers once they are loaded up in trailers headed to the huller or better yet, once they are run through the huller.

We are still mowing the orchards and we will continue to until all the soft shell variety fields are mowed. Soft shells are the California classification of varieties, typically we start with Nonpareils and Sonora. The soft shells are very porous and allow for more exposure to insects. The soft shells are the first to harvest so we want to get all those fields mowed first to keep the shakers going. We don't want to slow down the shakers by not having fields that are cleaned and ready to go. Because of the limited amount of man power on our farm, the mower operators become our sweeper operators. So once we are done with the majority of the mowing, we will start sweeping. Everything is in full swing!