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*** NOTES: OCTOBER WALNUT HARVEST AT HAAG
FARM ***
As a knowledgeable and interested individual, we wanted to update you about the correct timing of English
walnut harvest, whose history covers thousands of years. This approach is called: "The more you know, the more you value."
Thus, the estimated time of harvest for www.Walnuts.US is usually in early October when the 2,000 walnuts hanging throughout
the volume of each of our quarter-century old orchard trees meet three vital and independent conditions listed below. However,
take our word that the occurrence of these conditions is unfortunately not simultaneous nor is it entirely predictable. Over
the past 25+ years, we have seen many and inconsistent variations on this theme. The three essential conditions for the walnuts
harvestability are:
1) Nuts must be fully ripe with 100% full-spectrum, non-green mature taste;
2) 99% of the
nuts are capable of being shaken from the walnut tree on one 15-second attempt without damage from or to the tree; and
3)
98% of these fallen nuts can be hulled without cracking the shells and with no remnants of green hull remaining. (We use
the other 2% as compost.)
Some years, the nuts are shakable but not hullable. Other years, the walnuts just won't
release from the tree until later in October when heavier dews occur. That is, the reverse of the former condition occurs,
they are hullable, but not shakable. We must then wait until we judge you will receive a top quality product: fully mature
flavors, 100% non-broken, and 0% contamination.
If one rushes walnut harvest or otherwise interferes unwisely
with Mother Nature, many "bad" things can happen to the product. Here is an alphabetic list describing the undesirable tastes
of walnuts. This is based mostly on what our customers have complained about concerning competitors' non-Haag Farm walnuts
over the years:
acid,blah,cold,deadly,ecoli,fibrous,grassy,hard,immature,junky,kinky,light,musty,nasty,
oily,putrid,queer,rancid,salmonella,tasteless,unknown,varied,woody,xtra,yucky,zzpplt...
Moving onwards on harvest timing, we use numerous methods, e.g., dust control, water withdrawal, and ripening control
(Remember using a ripe banana to hasten the ripening of non-mature fruit in a bag?), in attempting to make the three above
conditions coincide. Meanwhile, avoiding the 26 undesirable tastes & states listed above. It can be a frustrating experience...
If nature sends along a light rain in the middle of September, ending our many months of rainless summer days
in California's semi-arid 400-mile long Central Valley, this has a more desirable effect than almost anything we growers can
do. Heavy dews help as we need those thick dry green hulls to begin to split right there on the tree. Only then, can we
start harvest operations...
Next, we use special testing techniques to select the exact day to begin. Some of
these techniques are trade secrets, but one we can reveal is to drive a pocket knife 1" into a walnut at the attachment end,
give a 90-degree twist, and see what happens. Two perfect halves inside the shell with a fractured hull outside that automatically
falls off comprise an excellent sign that the desired harvest day is within a week. Finally, we use special harvesting techniques
when all is ready!
One example would be to vary the time of tree shaking which we can change from, say, 15 seconds
to only 7 seconds to bring down all 2,000 nuts. Or give a double shake of 7 seconds each time. Another example is the pattern
followed by the gripping end of the $250,000 hydraulic shaker; we can perhaps use a 4-leaf clover pattern rather than a 5-pointed
star shaking pattern. And this goes on and on...for after all a grower is paid only once a year, following harvest, so we
have 365 days, and nights, to plan for it.
Finally, the days of harvest arrive and we have already ended all
irrigation and mechanically scraped almost all vegetation off the harvest floor so there is very clean dry level soil under
all the walnut trees. To some eyes, the orchard resembles a big clay tennis court with trees. Next, the shaker shakes down
a quarter-mile pair of rows of trees, doing one on the left, then one on the right, backing up then to the next pair of trees,
etc.
Now, the 8'-wide sweeper can blow the 2,000 nuts per tree away from the trunks and sweep them all into
a quarter-mile long windrow down the middle of each pair of tree rows. When this is completed, a huge vacuum-cleaner type
of machine, called a pickup machine, drives over the walnut windrows, sucks them up while blowing out any debris, and dumps
them into an attached cart. The carts when full are emptied into large open-bed trucks which take the walnuts to the huller
for water-bath cleaning, hulling, and then drying to the optimal 8% moisture. Finally, these clean babied English walnuts
are gently cooled to room temperature, eyeballed so any rejects can be taken out, boxed, and then rapidly posted to your home
address...
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