Spring
2003
Our English walnut trees, variety Hartley, are 19 years
old (in 2003) and we now have leaf canopy closure in most of our 8
acre orchard. Our first commercial harvest in 1991 was only 450
lbs/acre. As our trees grew, the harvests have increased, but to our
surprise, in alternate years, harvests can be quite low. In 1997 the
harvest was a whopping 1,700 lbs/acre, but less than half that the
next year. Other orchards (and many nut crops and wild nuts such as
acorns) have similar "mast effect" patterns. 1999, was our
largest crop, 16,000 lbs, 2000 was smaller, abt 12,000 lbs and 2001
was a disaster with a late spring freeze-- virtually no crop at all.
However, our 2002 crop was our biggest ever, nearly 17,000 pounds,
and this year looks quite good but not as big as last.
We are a Registered Organic Grower with the state of California [#57-0075] and use no pesticides, herbicides or manufactured fertilizers. Our organic crop is certified by California Certified Organic Farmers, one of the largest organic certifying organizations in the world. We rely on a nitrogen-fixing leguminous cover crop and organic composts to maintain soil fertility and on mowing to keep weeds under control. This past year our cover crop helped reduce mowing chores until mid summer, then Sam got lots of tractor time. This year has not required any huge capital expenditures and our organic wholesale buyer, Dixon Ridge Farms, for the bulk of our crop (sales through this web site are only a small, but important and growing, part of our farming business) is awaiting our harvest. Sam is getting used to retirement from the graduate ecology faculty of the University of California at Davis and he has become more than just a "gentleman (i.e., money-losing) farmer". One of his favorite activities, when not driving the tractor, is hiking in the hills west of the Capay Valley.
October 2003 As I (Sam) write this paragraph, in mid-October 2003, I look out my office window at a huge crop of walnuts-- not a record but there will be plenty. After the 2001 complete crop failure followed by last years record crop and our first paycheck as a certified (not merely registered) organic grower we are just about out of the redink category. Our minimum package size will continue to be 5 pounds. We will not be offering walnuts in the shell as we have found proper storage for in-shell walnuts beyond our capabilities-- they require large amounts of cold storage space. We also are offering neither garlic nor lavender-- those experiments, while successful and fun in botanical terms were less than successful in a business sense-- the effort was exhausting! However due to a huge demand we will continue to offer "walnutty granola" although at a more realistic price-- former pricing did not cover our material costs, much less labor!
13 May 2004 It's been a busy winter and spring but most of the chores are now behind me and I look out on a green, leafy orchard undulating in todays mild southern breeze. The first chore of the winter (actually, late fall) is sowing the cover crop of vetch, clover and Medic legumes but this year I was determined to repair the old Tye seed drill first. This necessitated finding the parts-- Tye dealers seemed to have dried up in this part of California. And the repairs weren't simple, once parts came, but finally I got the crop sowed-- late, not until January. Then I had 25 bare root saplings to plant, replacing mortality due to deep bark canker (caused by the bacterium Erwinia rubrifaciens). This meant first putting my three-point tractor-mount backhoe into service and removing the dead trees, some over a foot in diameter. This device puts quite a strain on the lower linkage and, during the first tree removal, I heard a loud crack and the 3/4" cross-shaft holding the links had snapped. Another repair job. I removed dead and planted new trees all winter long, then switched to repairing irrigation headers and sprinklers as the rains ended and the soil began to dry. Finished the irrigation repairs but had to mow the waist to shoulder high grasses (the legumes had not germinated well) first. Switch from the back hoe to the flail mower on the old John Deere and flail away-- takes about 4-5 hrs to mow each direction in my 8 acres, but the first mowing is always slow. Finally the first irrigation, about a month ago, just as trees are putting out first male and, a few days later, female flowers (these are wind pollinated and are not showy like insect pollinated flowers; the leaves come out a few days after the flowers). Then back to tree planting. Anyway, yesterday I planted the last two saplings, though there are still some big, dead trees to be removed-- I'll wait until the roots rot and soften a little. Now it's just mow one weekend and irrigate the next until harvest time approaches next September. And I've got time to do some hiking in the beautiful N. California woodland hills which surround our valley.
19 November 2004 Finally all the autumn chores are done-- harvesting, hulling and drying and shelling. We shipped over 8000 lbs to our wholesale processor and sent over 1000 to our organic shellers, Maichel Ranch in Yolo, California. Tuesday I picked up the shelled meats and yesterday began packing them in 5 lb. lots for labelling and shipping. Today, a trip to the Post Office as soon as I finish this note. We mailed out flyers to our previous customers a week or two ago and have seen quite a few orders already. This year we have revived the "gift pack" of 3 lbs walnuts and 1 lb of walnut-rich granola for $25.00-- it was very popular in past years and many people asked about it. We're looking forward to your order-- it'll usually be shipped within 24 hours of receipt.
2 November 2005 The orchard is mostly bare of walnuts, as of yesterday, and is ready for the gleaners-- Caroline's grad students from UC Davis will come this weekend. And there is plenty to glean-- the orchard badly needs ground planing and pruning, so my work is far from done this year. A rough ground surface and some high grass around the trees always leaves lots of nuts for pick up after the machine sweeper and vacuum. The web page is now revised for this year-- a good days work on the computer-- my shoulders ache as if I had been raking-- and I've added the granola recipe to the recipes page.
I hope you are not dismayed by the price increase ($6/lb --> $7) but the general price of walnuts, and especially organic walnuts, is up this year. Probably attributable to the discovery that their alpha-linolenic acid content, which can be (arguably?) metabolised to omega-3 fatty acids, are heart-healthy. I'm not arguing. Over the nearly 15 years we've been farming, our long term $$ deficit is still in the thousands. I'm determined to continue to subsidise the American walnut diet but wouldn't mind closing the gap.
We're really pleased that we can offer almonds from our neighboring orchard here in the Capay Valley-- 3Docs is a young orchard operated by our fellow retirees, David Markham and Jane Stallings, both former academics like myself. I just picked them up at the Sacramento airport, back from teaching a 2 week course on teaching assessment methods in Sao Paulo, Brazil, sponsored by the World Bank. Neighbors like these make life interesting in the CV-- David plays bass instruments-- stringed or brass-- and joins others, musically inclined, sometimes here at WCR.
We lost one of the most talented and versatile of these, Will Baker, at the end of the summer. Will played the banjo and dobro, wrote a few good books, raised fine beef cattle, roamed the hills on horseback and kept the radical right troglodytes at bay. And sang a fine tenor cajun-french lyric as well. He'd quit smoking for over 15 years but it still caught up with him. We mourn him and miss his big grin and lean, lanky carcass.
Well, the shadows outside my window are getting long-- the custom is that happy hour starts when the western Blue Ridge hills shadow the ranch and ends when they climb to the top of the Capay Hills to the east. They're climbing, so I'd better get busy if I'm to have time to toast you all-- thanks for your patronage and I'm wishing you a fine autumn season with good friends, family and fortune.
26
November 2006 It's a rainy Sunday afternoon here in the
Capay Valley of northern California. The cover crop is seeded in the
orchard, as of last Tuesday-- I thought it would rain so I didn't
irrigate, which meant I didn't have to repair a dozen or so broken
sprinkler heads. But the rain held off until today and I put off the
irrigation and now here, at last, is the welcome water from the sky,
to save me from sprinkler repairs and germinate my cover seed. When
we lived in Seattle (1971-91) I always cherished the few sunny days
and rushed to do outdoor chores and games-- I'm still in the habit of
feeling like I should be outdoors whenever the sun is shining.
Consequently I put off to extreme the indoor chores, like updating
this web page, in sunny California. And, I appreciate and am
gladdened by these things that we humans do not have under our
control and must simply take in our stride.
At the end of
last year's season we did a heavy pruning, long overdue. That meant
that this years crop would be down, and down it is, about 60% of last
years harvest. But a good crop never-the-less, at around 7,000
pounds. However we continue to see tree mortality in our
orchard. The maintenance chores are not any lighter and our
economies of scale, compared to some of my neighbors who harvest
1000+ acres, are non-existent. As I think I've commented in past
years, we are a net subsidizer of American walnut consumption to the
tune of around $1000 per year, on average. So this year is decision
time for the economics of walnut ranching here at WCR. Barring some
unforeseen changes, this will be our last wholesale commercial
harvest-- in future years we'll limit ourselves to our small-scale
retail web sales. The walnuts I will buy from my larger-scale
neighboring walnut farmers, those who are certified organic growers
like myself.
This year I have supplemented our old-fashioned
Hartley variety with a small quantity of Tulare variety (certified
organic) nut meats from Dan Martinez, a large grower near the town of
Yolo, about 20 miles from WCR. Some of our retail buyers I will ask
about sending a few of these Tulares to supplement our own Hartley
nut meats. If you are interested in trying them and comparing to the
Hartleys, let us know in your order. The Tulare meats are generally
slightly larger and lighter colored than the Hartleys. They tend to
crack out in larger pieces, more whole halves. Same price. And, in
spite of my proclamation in an earlier edition of the home page, I
have obtained some almonds from neighboring 3 Docs farm, in
their second year of the 3-year transition to certified organic
status. Check the order page to purchase these almonds.
So
that's the news from WCR this Fall. I continue to lead hikes around
the Yolo/Napa/Lake/Solano/Colusa county area-- check out the
Yolohiker
newsletter here. Caroline contemplates joining me in retirement
from the U of California, Davis at some time in the not-too-distant
future. In the meantime we keep the home fires burning, enjoy our
good neighbors and friends and are grateful for our continuing peace
and fortune-- we wish the same for you. Stay in touch.
7
January 2007
Well, the decision is all but made-- we
have had our last commercial harvest of Hartley walnuts at Winter
Creek Ranch. I have sowed the cover crop and the little seed leaves
are showing in the winter sun out my studio window. However, I will
not water the trees this spring and summer, saving hundreds of
dollars in PG&E electricity costs, and will not mow except to
whack down the cover crop sometime in late spring. This will also
save hundreds of hours of my time in back-breaking work, repairing
sprinklers and irrigation valves and riding (and repairing) the
tractor and mower. And thousands in harvest, washing and drying
costs.
For our faithful retail customers, we plan to become a
re-seller of organic walnuts from our neighboring certified organic
farms who do not have a retail operation. Mainly, Tulare walnuts, as
mentioned above. If I can find organic Hartley walnuts from a large
producer I will attempt to secure some for those of you who love this
variety (as do Caroline and I). But it's unlikely.
If you
would like Hartley walnuts and are in our vicinity next fall, October
or later, stop by and you can shake the trees and pick up all you
like-- they'll be producing for a while but will gradually become
senescent (like me). We started with nearly 400 trees two decades ago
and are now down to about 200. Some are big and robust, but only a
few-- many more have succumbed to disease and I will remove a few
more dead boles and branches this winter. I see one down on the
ground right now-- its roots rotted away and no longer supporting the
heavy trunk.
Thanks for all the patronage, walnut orders
large and small and encouraging emails over the years! We'll try the
re-seller route for a while and try to keep you in walnuts.
Sincerely, Caroline and Sam Bledsoe
....and our stable of ranch cats who keep the California giant pocket gopher (probably Thomomys bottae) under control (organically): the girls are Princess Slasher, Sportster and SweetFace; the Patriarch, Rumsey. Taxi-cat succumbed to natural causes, at about 18 yrs of age, last summer and Cash likewise, but in her prime. And we have two new youngsters, Anthony and Cleopatra (Tony and Cleo) dashing about the place and harassing the older cats.
12
November 2007
I have a confession to make-- I am
addicted to growing walnuts-- and harvesting, and pruning the trees,
and mowing the orchard, and maintaining the irrigation system, and
repairing the tractor and all the other little and big chores
necessary to keep this little orchard producing. In short, I'm a
walnut-grower-oholic. In spite of my declaration last January about
our last commercial harvest, here it is harvest season and I've done
it again.
We had a slightly smaller crop this year, though all
the orchards in our area were down somewhat, but I diverted a few
more pounds from our wholesaler to retail sales-- maybe this will
help the bottom line a little. Everything I said last winter about
our problems with disease and senescent trees is true, but we still
do have a viable harvest in spite of it all.
Last weekend we
had our annual orchard gleaning-- about a dozen of our friends and
neighbors (some from out of state) joined us for a weekend of
scouring the ground under the trees for the walnuts missed by the
commercial harvest machines. The haul amounted to nearly 200 pounds.
Our hand-cranked walnut cracker was busy and those not picking the
ground or cranking sat around a large table and separated nut meats
from cracked shells. A few bottles of local vine product (from our
neighbors at Capay
Valley Vineyards) lubricated the process and vegies and viands
from the BBQ grill kept us all fueled. It was a sunny but not
over-warm, fine California autumn day. A very satisfying day. Anyone
in the vicinity this time of year is welcome to join in our annual
gleaning party-- drop us an email if you'd like an invite next year.
15
May 2008
As I mentioned on the main page, in the early
days of April, when the young and tender, wind-pollinated female
walnut flowers were setting fruit, we had several days with a light
over-night frost. The tender, very young leaves and fruits at the
ends of many small branches are withered and blackened. I haven't
done a 'scientific survey' (it's extraordinarily difficult to
estimate the size of a walnut crop at this growth stage, at least for
me) but it looks like we've lost at least half of our crop and maybe
a lot more.
In 2001 we had a heavy frost (18 degrees F, very
cold for this part of California) at the same time-- first week of
April-- and lost our entire commercial crop. We had a harvest of
about 400 lbs of nuts (in-shell) which we consumed ourselves and sent
out as holiday presents, but no walnuts for wholesale or retail sale.
I don't think the damage is nearly that bad, and we will first
sacrifice our wholesale crop which is normally about 3/4 of the
total, but our harvest is definitely going to be greatly reduced this
Fall. When I do a survey I'll update this note. But, be sure and
check with us in October, at the latest.
If we do have a few
nuts, I'm going to hold back some in-shell for those of you who like
your walnuts un-scathed. They will only be available, if at all, for
a very few weeks (maybe even days) after the harvest, normally the
3rd or 4th week of October. And, since we are sold out, be sure and
check with my friend and neighbor Jim Haag, at Haag
Farms, who frequently has a nice variety of nuts to sell this
late in the walnut cycle.
It's nice to look ahead to that
time, because right now, as daytime temperatures soar into the 90's,
my brother Steve and I are working, in the early mornings only, to
mow the cover crop and trim the pasture grasses around the tall
sprinklers near each tree. This orchard had been seeded to permanent
pasture many years before the walnuts were planted and there is a
fierce competition each winter and spring between the legumes of the
cover crop (re-seeded each Fall) and the naturally re-seeding,
vigorous and tough grass stems-- barley, rye, oats, and Indian grass.
Some of these stems are 5' tall and this week they were reduced to
near-ground level by my trusty John Deere tractor and 6' wide flail
mower. Hot, dusty work, but now the orchard is nearly ready for the
summer irrigation rhythm, 60 hours of continuous pumped water every
other weekend (when power is cheaper) and more often when the mercury
soars into the 103+ regime. The life of a farmer!-- but this is
nothing compared to what some of my neigbors-- serious, full-time
organic vegetable farmers-- endure (checkout Fiddlers
Green, Full Belly and
River Dog farms).
Until
the harvest...
8
November 2008
I despaired of the entire crop earlier
this year and cancelled our commercial harvest with our neighboring
farmer who harvests all the small orchards in the valley. Several of
you readers who inquired early in the season received emails
beginning "Sorry, but we have no crop...".
Now the
good news. I knew last summer there were a few trees in one corner of
the orchard which seemed to have withstood the worst effects of the
April freeze and had a decent crop of green walnuts. Inspecting again
this fall, I estimated that we might have enough walnuts for our
internet customers although nothing for our wholesale buyer. But, how
to harvest them without commercial machinery?? It's easy enough to
walk through the orchard late in the season, when the fall winds have
dropped most of the ripe nuts in dry hulls onto the ground, and pick
up a couple of buckets full. We have an autumn gleaning party every
year for our local friends. But several hundred pounds to deliver to
our hulling and shelling operations is just not practical by hand.
Then my brother, Steve, got busy with a wide orchard rake and the
trusty John Deere with a five foot bucket on the front. He was able
to rake under most of the few producing trees and then scoop up nuts,
grass, twigs and other orchard debris and get it all into an enormous
pile on tarps by the barn. Then came his ingenious idea-- a leaf
blower was the key to separating debris from nuts. Steve and Caroline
managed to get about 600-700 pounds of nuts, still in their dry,
flaky hulls, into two bins and deliver them to the huller/dryer
operation of our neighbors. From there, a day later, they went to the
sheller. Another day and I got a call to come and pick up a couple of
hundred pounds of fresh nut meats.
So we do have some walnuts
for your holiday treats. The price of organic nuts continues to
increase, not as fast as gasoline this year, but to conform to the
price our neighbors charge in the regional Farmers Markets our prices
are up to $9/lb this year, in 5# minimum lots. The Holiday Gift Pack
is, however, still $35, including 2# of fresh walnut meats and 1# of
Walnutty Granola, postage paid in the US-- a bargain!
I'm
sure you're wondering what I was doing while Steve and Caroline
laboriously harvested and cleaned walnuts. I injured my achilles
tendon over a year ago and, when it didn't seem to be healing
properly, finally consulted an orthopedic surgeon last summer. Very
gratifyingly to me, he allowed as how my tendon was stretched and he
could shorten it up. Accordingly, I had a small operation in early
October and am now on crutches and looking at 6 more weeks in a
fiberglass boot while my tendon heals. Then I get to start physical
therapy. So my ranch function is now reduced to pounding the keyboard
and watching, from my upstairs study window, the barnyard and orchard
where my wife and brother labor faithfully. With breaks to supply my
meals and other needs. Needless to say, I'm feeling very grateful--
as well as completely useless. --sam
P.S. 2 December
2008-- Well, I predicted it would be a fast sellout and as of
yesterday evening we are completely SOLD
OUT of all walnut meats. We were in
business less than one month this year-- shades of 2001. I hope this
never happens again, but everytime we have a late spring (early
April) freeze, we can expect to lose a significant part of our
production. Luck of a farmer. I've got one 17 lb box of in-shell
walnuts, picked up in the orchard last week and dried in the
sunshine, which one buyer turned down-- maybe I'll sell it on eBay.
But if you want it for $3/lb, email me.
16
October 2009
Here it is Walnut harvest time once again
and we are ready-- unlike last year we have a bounteous crop and the
orchard is mowed flat with a carpet of nuts on the ground from the
first wind and rain storm earlier this week. Our harvest crew is
ready to begin shaking the remaining nuts from the trees and sweeping
and vacuuming the entire acreage into their trucks. They'll be
conveyed 1/2 mile south to our neighbor Charlie Gordon who will hull
and dry the nuts and return them to us for shelling and packaging and
shipment to you. Check our order page and dibs your share of this
year's walnut crop.
3
November 2010
It's a bit late in the year for harvest--
delayed by early rains for each of the two past weekends, making the
orchard floor too soft and muddy for the big tree shakers and ground
sweeper and vacuum to operate. But the trees are ready and lots of
nuts already on the ground from the wind. The crew has promised to be
here soon and I'm about to order the big gondola trailers to be ready
to move our walnuts from the huller/cleaner operation (at our
neighbors, Gordon Farms) to our wholesaler Dixon
Ridge Farms. But first I'll pull out a couple of thousand pounds
and transport them myself to our small-scale shelling operation in
Yolo, Ca, about 20 miles from Winter Creek Ranch. I leave my old
pick-up, Art (the Artful Dodger, a 1968 Dodge), with four big plastic
bins in his bed for Bob Gordon to load with in-shell nuts before they
go to Dixon Ridge. It then takes me two trips in Art, whose capacity
is 1/2 ton and and whose springs, like my knees, are a little the
worse for wear. But Art is always happy to help out, and I'm always
grateful for his assistance. Russ Maichel runs the shelling operation
and my crop is small potatoes compared to the hundreds of tons he
processes. But I always take a pound of Walnutty Granola for him and
his wife and he always fits my nuts in and gives me a call to pick
them up a few days later. Then Caroline and I are ready to pack them
up and ship them off to you, in time for holiday munching and
gifting.
12
December 2011
Well,
I'm the tardy student this year-- all the harvest work has been done
and I'm only now getting to write up the news. It was our lowest
harvest since the early 90s when the young orchard was just getting
into production (aside from the two years when spring freezes
destroyed 90% of the crop). Hence the sad news that this will, in
fact, be our last year in commercial production. It's just not
economically in the cards to continue to shell out more thousands of
dollars in production costs than we make in wholesale and retail
sales-- especially after the 7.5hp irrigation pump died last spring,
a $6000 repair, well in excess of our annual gross. So, although I
confessed (see 12 November 2007) to my
addiction to walnut growing, eventually even the hardened addict has
to go “cold turkey” when the drug of choice is priced
beyond his means. With luck, my Higher Powers will see me through. In
the meantime, please partake of the final harvest before our New
Years price increase.
What
will happen to all those trees? We started with nearly 400 and now
have perhaps 100 in production but most of those have many dead
branches (from the bacterial disease of the cambium which slowly
spreads). The orchard will go fallow next year with no water but the
winter and spring rains. I'll mow once or twice to keep the weedy
grasses below fire hazard level. (Our orchard was a permanent pasture
for a stud cattle farm before Jim and Gail Sims put in the walnuts in
the early 80s-- those grasses persist even now.) And we'll water a
couple of robust trees near the homestead to keep walnuts on our
table and provide the granola makings. Don't hesitate to contact our
neighboring orchardists, Jim and
Clair Haig, when your walnut supplies run thin and we've got the
SOLD OUT sign up.
Thanks for your interest and your walnut
order! --sam
Wishing
you a joyous and healthy Fall season, the Happiest of the upcoming
Holidays and a 2012 in which your dreams and ambitions are
realized!-- Caroline
and Sam Bledsoe (and all the ranch cats)
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