About Us and Our Nuts 

About Us and Our Nuts

 

NOT ALL ORGANIC FARMS ARE THE SAME. You are about to read what makes us stand out from the rest. We are not just certified Organic USDA, we are certified organic with the Real Organic Project who stays true to real organic principles. It’s about harvesting the right way and farming without compromising principles.

 

Our website is or orchard’s farm stand virtual extension. We really are a true family farm, all eight of us farm the orchard. We sell only truly raw, unpasteurized almonds. We use sustainable, regenerative certified organic farming practices to ensure we are good stewards of our land. We grow and sell only our own California almonds. We devote 100% of our farming time towards our 1400 trees to produce high quality organic almonds for you. All equipment used is certified organic and free of other tree nuts, peanuts, grains etc. Our almonds are always properly stored on site in a temperature and humidity controlled storeroom.

 

Our farm is unique. Unlike conventional orchards that harvest onto the ground, we harvest off-ground. The hydro-mechanical shaker head is built into a catch frame tarp system. This tarp system avoids the typical dusty, dirty operation of sweeping nuts off the dirty orchard floor (ground). This virtually eliminates any chance of salmonella and provides greater food safety and cleanliness for our customers. Therefore we can safely offer the best unpasteurized raw organic almonds for your raw foods diet. We do not mix organic and conventional products or farming methods.

 

Eat our truly raw, unpasteurized organic almonds or try the smoked ones. Our smoked almonds are awesome. They are naturally smoked using real almond wood from the organic trees they grew from. We also make our own truly raw almond butter with stone grinder in small batches.

 

Check out our customer reviews tab and see why our customers say we sell the best certified organic raw almonds, raw almond butter and smoked almonds. Order direct from the farm on Our Products tab or feel free to call or text your personal farmer Brian on his cell at 530 507-8222. You can order any variety you like, same price. We normally ship USPS Priority Mail arriving in 2-3 days. All our products are Certified Organic, Vegan, Non-GMO, Gluten Free, Paleo & Keto Friendly and processed in Peanut/Dairy/Soy-free facility.

Located outside Esparto in the beautiful Capay Valley in central California, Brian and Gretchen Paddock established a small family farm consisting of organic almonds. The original orchard was planted over 100 years ago. In 2009 and 2010, all our six (yes, 6) children, many friends, and extended family gathered to plant a new, 1400-tree orchard. Each child has a role in our farm. Kyle and Bailey manage our website, Nicholas keeps rodents under control, Alicia writes our newsletter, Jessica created our logo (Brian and our two original dogs, Roxy and Travis, are in the logo), Joshua manages seasonal labor, packs orders and everyone harvests, sorts, and packs.  Becca fills orders when Brian is out and check the irrigation daily. Brian is the operations and sales manager and Gretchen runs the nut house.

We choose to farm organically because our home is situated in the middle of our orchard, we drink the same water as our trees, and we do not want to subject our family to health concerns that “conventional” farming operations can present. We also strongly believe in being good stewards of our land, and therefore we grow our almonds using sustainable processes following national organic certification criteria. We practice regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is an approach to food and farming systems which aims to regenerate topsoil, increase biodiversity, improve water cycles, enhance our ecosystem, support biosequestration and recycling as much farm waste as possible.  

We understand that people today want to know how their food is grown, and we don’t mind sharing with you exactly how we grow the best almonds.   There are several primary aspects to farming organically, including weed control, soil health, irrigation, pollination, insect and pest/disease control, harvest, and marketing.

The trees are grafted on either peach or a peach/plum hybrid rootstock. The rootstock is important to best maximize production, protect from disease, ensure compatibility with soil conditions, and promote tree health.

Weed Control is the most time-consuming and labor-intensive aspect of organic farming.  We do not use any synthetic herbicides or flame control. To help block out harmful weeds, we plant a beneficial cover crop. Once the cover crop has grown but before it goes to seed (which uses valuable nitrogen), we introduce sheep which eat the cover crop down to the ground. Normally the cover crop will grow again in a month’s time, so we repeat the sheep grazing again. Well before harvest, the sheep are removed according to food safety requirements. The sheep also help with soil fertility.  Often in fall after harvest, the sheep return.

Soil Health. Almond trees use a lot of nitrogen, but adding nitrogen alone is not proper soil management. First, in autumn we spread 50.000-150,000 lbs. of organic compost on the orchard floor. The purpose of compost is to build soil structure, add nutrients (such as nitrogen, potassium, etc.), increase soil water-holding capacity, improve soil aeration and cation exchange, supply organic material for beneficial soil organisms, and stabilize soil pH. We also add chicken manure from an organic grower and gypsum, mined in Nevada. After those inputs, we complete a light rototill to prepare for our cover crop. We use specifically chosen annual plants (Mustard, beans, radish, clover, vetch) which will aerate the soil with deep roots and/or inoculate the soil with nitrogen fixing roots and add organic material to the soil. In spring, sheep graze the orchard and deposit manure for the next year. In 2015, with the drought ever-present, we inoculated the cover crop seeds with a naturally-occurring, beneficial fungi before planting them. Mycorrhizal fungi are a fungi that form a mutually-beneficial symbiotic relationship with plants’ roots. These fungi attach themselves to the roots of plants (and then spread to our trees) and basically become extensions of the roots. Therefore, mycorrhizae increase the trees’ capacity to find and absorb water and even help to break down important nutrients for the health of the tree. At our farm, we work towards organically producing a balanced soil condition containing nutrients and minerals. We also feed microbial activity in our soil. These microbes break down otherwise unusable nutrients and make them available to the trees, reducing inputs. We test the soil and leaves regularly throughout the year to quantitatively monitor the soil health and document the impact our soil nutrition program is having on the trees. From leaf samples, we can fine tune what minerals the trees may be lacking and add them through foliar sprays if needed. These products are all certified-organic and are natural, mined minerals: copper, zinc, magnesium, boron, etc. Each mineral serves a critical element to overall health of the tree. Foliar sprays in particular are very efficient as the open leaf stomata serve as an entry point for these micronutrients.

Irrigation is another costly expense. We are very careful about water use. We are regularly repairing damage from rodents have our system efficiency tested often.  We have measured our water use to be 21% less than the average almond orchard!  Our water comes from a 300 ft. deep well, which is very clean, pure and is tested regularly. We test it annually for nitrates, e-coli, and a number of other elements. The well pump is powered by solar panels on our barn.  We do not flood irrigate, to conserve water we use a modern form of drip irrigation, microjet sprinklers. There is a water emitter with a circular pattern between each tree. This system is the most efficient due to excellent water distribution. Our alternate system, sub-surface drip, is buried 6-8 inches down in the ground and is used primarily on windy days.  Another way we maximize our water conservation is by irrigating only when the tree tells us to. So how does the tree tell us? We have a pressure chamber which a UC Davis professor invented. With this device we can determine the stem water potential and compare it to a chart. From the chart and evapotranspiration tables, we determine the irrigation requirements of the tree. We really don’t care how wet the soil is, we care what the tree leaves are getting. With this tool and with our sub-surface drip system, we eliminate over-irrigating and are therefore using our water resource properly. Additionally, the mycorrhizal fungi help the tree find water. Mycorrhiza absorbs nutrients from the soil which are passed along to the plant, further reducing water usage and efficiency.

Pollination. The blossoms of most California almond varieties require cross-pollination with other varieties to produce a crop. We planted three varieties of almonds (Nonpareil, Fritz, and Monterey) to maximize cross pollination and production yield, and to ensure a good tasting nut. Pollination during the bloom period (Feb.) is the single most important factor in determining a good yield. Without bees, we cannot farm almonds. They are critical to moving the pollen around each of the 1400 trees. So where do we get our bees? Fortunately, our next-door neighbor is a bee keeper and queen bee breeder of Carniolan and Italian queen bees. His bees enjoy our orchard and hedgerows year-round. We always have some plant blooming and maintain 3500 ft. of hedgerow, which provides a natural insectiary for beneficial bees, insects. Some of these insects pollinate the trees while others eat the bad insects…bug warfare. So our hedgerow segways right into insect control.

Insect Control- Years ago farmers ripped out the native plants, not realizing that in doing so they were killing the habitat for the good bugs, and hence the bad bugs took over. Furthermore the destruction in biodiversity allowed certain types of insects to take over. So these farmers looked for a solution, and folks came up with pesticides which would eliminate those pesky insects. The problem with that plan is pesticides kill good bugs and bad bugs all together plus involve some rather hazardous chemicals. We don’t use insecticides or pesticides of any kind. Instead, on our farm we provide a nice habitat for the beneficial insects through our hedgerow, and in return the good insects kill the bad insects. These good insects include but are not limited to butterflies, native bees, green lacewings, praying mantis, lady bugs, etc. We encourage an orchard system of biodiversity to keep our ecology growing and conducive to beneficial insects.  We also have cultural practices which also reduce pests: Every winter we painstakingly remove almonds which did not shake loose during harvest; these are called mummies. This eliminates overwintering homes for naval orangeworm and Carpophilus beetle which greatly reduces their populations. In addition to insects, another pest problem we encounter is rodents.

Rodent Control- Rodents are certainly not insects, but they can be just as damaging to the nuts as well as trunks and roots. Each squirrel can clean an entire tree of nuts! They are very costly.  We use natural predators to the rodents under control. We refrain from using any poisons, so instead we use foxes, cats, dogs, traps, shotguns, rifles, and owls to keep these populations under control. We encourage fox habitat in our hedgerows and neighbors property. Foxes love to eat squirrels, they can have all they want.  We have raptor perches for hawks. Next we have owl boxes. At night you can hear our owls near their boxes. The barn owls don’t hoot, they screech very loudly and eat many rodents. Between the owls and hawks, they take care of the smaller rodents like mice, rats, moles and gophers.

Disease control is a tough battle for organic farmers to fight. We have few safe weapons to combat disease after infection is present other than removing the infected tree entirely. There are some organic fungicides available which introduce naturally occurring bacteria which combat the alien fungus. Therefore the best management course is prevention. We do our best to prevent diseases through these methods: (1) Promote open tree canopies for good airflow. (2) Minimize pruning to lessen the number of entries for disease. We also prune only during the right atmospheric conditions. (3) Keep the orchard floor as clean as possible. (4) Don’t over-irrigate and needlessly increase canopy humidity. (5) Plant the trees on mounds to keep the root ball dry.

Harvest: Over the past several years there has been much concern and talk about salmonella. Most almond farmers shake their trees with a machine and the nuts (in the shell and in the husk) drop on the orchard floor. They are then susceptible to soil-borne pathogens--not good. These nuts are then swept up with another machine into rows. The rows, full of nuts, branches, dirt, dust, poop, etc. are then gathered up with another machine. It is a very dusty operation and not healthy for the harvesters or the consumer eating the potentially-contaminated nut. This is not how we harvest.  We use a hydro-mechanical harvester to drop the nuts onto tarps or a catch frame. This method virtually eliminates any chance of salmonella poisoning because the nuts never touch the ground.

Hulling, Shelling, and Packing:  After harvest is through, we transport the in-shell, in-hull almonds to a local certified-organic, local huller-and-sheller. The almonds come back to us hull-and-shell-free in USDA-approved containers. The hulls and shells are also products.  The hulling and shelling company sells them for a variety of products, mostly cattle feed and animal bedding. Next, we then hand-sort the almonds to separate out any bug/insect-damaged and blemished almonds. We pack the good nuts in boxes and put them in cold storage until they are re-packaged according to the customer’s wishes. Our primary cold storage facility is here at the farm in a room which is precisely temperature and humidity controlled according to UC Davis recommendations. Our secondary long-term cold storage is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in a facility which is naturally cold with low humidity. Lastly, we complete the final packing and labeling for shipment to you.

 

Education: We believe educating the consumer is critical part of food integrity and safety. We host free tours, educational talks and normally have at least one scientific study in progress on our orchard through the year. We have hosted many university researchers who have completed studies on regenerative agriculture, sustainability, grazing sheep, organic practices, mycorrhiza, pollination, cover cropping, soil health. These studies help other farmers but society in general around the world. We continue to provide our orchard for University California Davis researchers, education programs and the Ecdysis Foundation who provides research for Regenerative Agriculture

Marketing and Sales: If we did not make money from farming, we could not pay the bills associated with farming. We direct market. This removes the middle man (a store or broker) and we save money for the consumer (you) and retain more money for the farmer (us). This positions us to be economically sustainable. We do everything possible to keep costs down and shop for the best value on all orchard supplies and equipment. Brian’s mother and father taught him well. He is very wise spending money and saves much. Those savings are passed along to our customers. We ship USPS flat rate for the smaller orders and UPS flat rate for the larger orders because it is the least expensive, and we print the label at our farm to save more money. The lower our costs are, the more affordable we can offer our almonds to our customers. How do we sell? Our primary customers come through our roadside stand at our home/orchard and through this website, built by our oldest son, Kyle. The website serves as an extension of our roadside stand making unpasteurized California almonds available to all, no matter where you live! Most of all we could not do it without you!  That’s right, other than the website, all our advertising comes from word of mouth, one customer telling their friend or neighbor about our wonderful almonds.

Well, that’s how we farm. We hope you see that we farm in a very sustainable manner, minimizing the impact we make on God’s beautiful creation.

Brian & Gretchen Paddock and family