The Badgersett Growers Blog

Yes, we have plants for 2012

2012-01-12T22:04:00.003-06:00

We ARE currently taking orders for 2012 shipment of plants; as a rule we will take orders up to one year in advance of first desired ship date.

We expect more bare-root dormant tubeling hazel and chestnut material than usual this year, and possibly some hickory-pecan as well.

We also have excellent availability for nearly all classes of standard tubelings, except for some select and XL hazels which may be sold out, depending on how the early growing season goes here.

We will be updating our pricing within the next month, BUT YOU CAN LOCK IN TODAY'S PRICES BY PLACING YOUR ORDER NOW!

Along with the pricing update will come some new plant types, including the first-available-anywhere MACHINE PICKED seed. Highly experimental, of course.

Since our plant catalog threatens to become even more complex, we may also add a "just send me some hazel plants" option.

Hopefully I will be able to put some very basic updates on the main website as well.

Soon to come: an official announcement for this year's Short Course, to be held March 30-April 1 with farm tour on April 2.

Nuts For Thanksgiving! Chestnuts!

2011-11-15T12:11:00.007-06:00

In spite of everything Mom Nature has thrown at us this year, (starting with an actual tornado), Badgersett will be getting chestnuts shipped out to our customers in time for Thanksgiving.

We'll be shipping the first orders out tomorrow, Nov. 16; later than our usual target date of Nov. 10. We delayed shipping for the extra days to allow the chestnuts' flavor to develop further; because of the extraordinary harvest weather- temperatures well above normal for us, and high winds, day after day, the "curing" process we put our chestnuts through simply took longer than usual. We didn't want customers to be disappointed with nuts less flavorful than they're used to.

Chestnuts fresh off the tree taste bland- little sweetness or complexity. Genetics does make a difference in flavor; and we've got the best there- but the other factors involved in bringing a chestnut to peak mouth and stomach joy require time, and knowing the secrets. One of the secrets to developing maximum chestnut sweetness is drying them - a little. Some of our secrets, though- are secret. :-) And we'll be keeping them that way.

So you'll know: our chestnuts this year will average a little smaller than usual. The growing year was bizarre, from start to finish; so cold early on that the trees flowered later than we've ever seen them do it, entirely in July; then finishing up hot, but with cold flashes. The chestnut trees seemed to be uncertain about when or how to ripen their nuts; then with the heat, decided to ripen everything all at once. Trees that normally ripen late were dropping nuts at the same time as early trees, and dropping them unusually fast. But a little smaller.

From the "food crop" standpoint, we did far far better than our neighbors with corn and soybeans. Both those crops grew slowly and poorly- and had their development stopped dead by an early frost. Soybeans were estimated to be only about 80% "ripe"; corn only a little better. Those crops were still harvested; but their value, both monetary and nutritional were down considerably. The chestnut crop was abundant; not affected by the little frost at all, and fully ripe.

In case you haven't run into it before, we have had authoritative expert opinions that Badgersett chestnuts; "intensely flavored nuggets"; are among the best anywhere.

You'll recall, of course, that we put out a new video about "how to peel chestnuts" last year. The video is thriving on YouTube - the original, very crude one, is still the all-time most viewed clip; but the "improved" versions are gaining steadily!

We have (of course!) learned something from the responses to the video- in particular; there are times when our cut/steam/plier peel method doesn't work.

We now know why. We were truly puzzled at first, because it always worked, either literally perfectly (on our own nuts) or 98% perfectly, even on store-bought European nuts we bought for testing. The thing is; we were always careful, whatever nuts we tested, to buy nuts we were sure were fresh. That's the problem, right there.

Chestnuts that have been dried moderately will likely not peel so very perfectly, using our pliers method. Two things happen; partly dry nuts may actually cook, during the steaming, and will then crumble when you try to squeeze them out of the shell; and not uncommonly, the "skin" of the nut, the pellicle, may stick tight and refuse to slip off.

We found this out looking for reasons why the peeling method didn't work so well; and found this year that some of our own chestnuts, dried far more than usual by the hot winds during harvest, are "sticking" when we peel them. You can predict when you may have this little difficulty; if you squeeze the nut, and the shell dents, or gives, more than 1/8 inch; it may be dry enough that peeling will take a little more work.

The upside is- the dryer nuts are almost always sweeter. And- the plier peeling method is still light-years ahead of older methods, or the old "cut an X on the palm of your hand" method.

Do remember that we have full instructions (some looking for 1 sound bite think too full!) on chestnut handling posted on our website; as well as a good sampling of recipes.

Now- the really amazing news! We can now offer you another nut, ready (now!) in time for Thanksgiving. Due to a very recent change in food regulations in Minnesota, we are now allowed to sell pre-cracked hickory/pecan nuts. Nutmeats are now considered "produce" in Minnesota, and can be sold directly by the grower, without the farmer having to become a licensed "manufacturer". Next post- hickory/pecan hybrid nuts arrive!

And; just to keep you on your toes- the hickories this year- are uniformly bigger than last...

Chestnut fed beef?

2011-10-19T13:58:00.005-05:00

A comment from the previous post- my answer started getting long, and it dawned on me it would work best as a post-

"Hello, my name is Elinor. I am a farmer from MN and today I read this article. http://www.allaboutfeed.net/news/chestnuts-for-cattle-feed-12326.html

"This story fascinated me! I wanted to learn more about chesnuts and see if there were any growers in Minnesota.

"What do you folks do with leftover chesnuts?

Hello Elinor, and welcome. Many thanks for the link to the chestnut fed beef story, we'd missed that. After googling it, I can see why; as far as I can tell there's only one farm selling it right now- and they're in Australia.

The farm in Florida is just feeling their way into it. Reading as much as I could on the Titania Farm beef; they mention having to learn how to feed it to the cows, which concerns me slightly. The well known problem of cattle eating acorns is a major reason we have not tried it; while acorn poisoning in cattle is usually attributed to tannin related chemistry, I've also heard that if cattle eat too many acorns they can get gut blockages from the rather indigestible acorn "shells". Chestnuts have shells that are quite similar to acorn shells, and while the nuts themselves have virtually no tannins, the shells certainly do.

So- there may be a serious learning curve to it all- it would be good to go slow.

On the positive side- we have been feeding chestnuts to ruminants here, pretty much daily, over the past few months. Our Icelandic sheep came "trained to corn"- a common practice. Icelandics in particular don't usually need supplemental feed, but giving them a little corn at regular times keeps them trained to come to you, and the promise of the treat can be used to lead them, from one place to another. They're pretty good on rough feed- they eat Japanese honeysuckle, wild parsnip, and prickly ash- by preference, not just when the pasture is low. So I decided to try- just a little- chestnut in their diet, and see how it worked out.

At this point, I've replaced the corn entirely with chestnuts- in this case, very old, very sprouted chestnuts from cellar storage; and the sheep jump on them with exactly the same enthusiasm they do corn; it's candy to them, apparently. Still not feeding much, though; the equivalent of a 1/4 cup per animal per day; this is just for training. While we intend to eat lamb someday, that day is not in the next year; we're building the flock; so there's no push to fatten them. No signs of a bellyache anywhere, at least.

Those nuts in the cellar are our "leftover" nuts- a small supply we didn't get around to selling last season. We've also tried, a little, to work on chestnut fed pork, a much more common practice than feeding them to beef. The attempt did not last too long; primarily because of logistics. Picking up nuts, storing them, then feeding them to pigs - is just really expensive, from the human labor input aspect.

It will make far more sense to let the pigs pick up the chestnuts for themselves- someday. But the problems of containing pigs on pasture are not trivial of course, and again, we've been stymied there by a shortage of labor. It's on our list of things to try soon- but it also needs to be done in a fashion which does not damage the trees, and hogs are notorious for rototilling pastures. But- it was one of the reasons we got sheep- we intended to learn how to use moveable electric mesh fencing, with the pigs in the chestnuts very much in mind. We're getting used to moving the mesh fence, and it really is pretty easy. Pigs coming soon.

One thing that concerns me about the stories from Australia- I'd like to see the nuts they're feeding their cattle. My guess is that they are actually chestnuts; but that's not a given. Particularly when dealing with other dialects. In the UK, when a person says "it's a chestnut tree", about 95% of the time they mean it's what we would call a buckeye, or horse chestnut; genus Hippocastanum, not Castanea. What we call simply "chestnut", they call "sweet chestnut" or "Spanish chestnut" - never mind that chestnuts were brought to England by the Romans.

And in Australia, it's worse; it's not impossible they have a grove of Castanospermum, Moreton Bay Chestnut; which is in fact native to New South Wales, where that farm is located. The info on Moreton Bay Chestnut states that "The seeds are poisonous, but become edible when carefully prepared by pounding into flour, leaching with water, and roasting." But- lots of things can be fed to animals that would give us a tummy ache; I'm just not sure about this one. The fact that one of the chefs talking about the chestnut fed beef attributes some of the characteristics to the "oils" in the chestnuts, makes me wonder-

"Compared to wagyu, it's a little bit leaner and the marbling is not as pronounced. "It's slightly younger beef but the thing I noticed is the texture. It's got this quite buttery, silkiness to it which comes from the the oils in the chestnut," he said."

Chestnuts are unusual among nuts in that they are very low in oil, an almost negligible 5% or so dry weight. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Moreton Bay Chestnut, which is actually a member of the legume family, had more oil.

So- some of that doesn't quite add up. Which doesn't mean the beef isn't terrific. I think we should find out! But we do have a lot to learn, from harvest on through feeding.

More wind; more good press-

2011-10-07T12:55:00.002-05:00

We have a new aspect to the chestnut harvest: the Armor Warning Flag is flying today.

If you have to be among the chestnut trees, for harvest or any other reason- you really better be wearing armor; head, face, shoulders, legs, feet and hands. The trees are throwing bombs, all over.

The high winds are not funny for us, at all; particularly combined with this record hot spell; it's making the chestnuts ripen all at once, drop fast, messily, with leaves and burrs hiding them, and subject to rapid drying (which is NOT good for chestnuts) from the wind and hot sun.

So, we're trying to pick up nuts working just on the north sides of the trees; away from their target areas, today. Can't afford to just not pick them up; we need them for all the reasons there are.

The good press bit: today, Oct. 7, the Rochester Post Bulletin is running two stories on neohybrid hazels, that are nicely complementary. Take a look- if you go on line, you'll need a subscription to see the entire article. Or- pick up a copy of the newspaper, if you're anywhere in the region here.

http://postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1471083

http://postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1471090

Urgent harvest

2011-10-05T10:57:00.002-05:00

The weather has been weird all year- and while it hasn't been urgent for the tree crops before; the heavy rains early, record heat later, record dry September, early frosts- all have been tolerated well; we're getting slammed now by - again, near record heat; and high winds.

The chestnuts in particular, ripen and drop rapidly when the temperature hits 80° in October. It always does, and is usually welcome, to get the crop in. Right now, though, we've got a string of 80° days; and a wind warning up for tomorrow.

That's not only going to have the trees throwing nuts far from the normal drop area; it's going to be ripping off leaves and burrs, making the harvest all the more tricky.

So- we're in "max" harvest mode; dark to dark. Not much time for anything else for the next few days.

More harvest updates

2011-09-29T19:51:00.008-05:00

We've machine picked the hazels here in Minnesota for the second time; one week after the first picking, and the results were again- better than anticipated. Many bushes which refused to be picked the first time, were very successfully machine picked on the second pass.

Right at the moment, though, our next emergency has arrived. We work with two other crops here, as not too many folks realize; chestnuts and hickory hybrids are also quite important to us.

Because of the rather strange growing season, we've been unsure until quite recently whether we would get any chestnut crop this year or not. They flowered extremely late, in mid July, and developed slowly, as from extreme heat we shifted to cool drought.

All these nut crops have the ability to alter their ripening behavior, from year to year. This year, the chestnuts have decided to all ripen at once; early and late varieties; and in a hurry; many of the nuts now dropping are not fully colored.

Then, today- we've had heavy winds; steady at over 30 mph, gusts over 45 mph, all day-

(the quality of this video was low to begin with; shot in very low light- but it looks like Blogger still has no clue about how to handle it. But you get the idea.)

Far far from ideal weather when you have ripe nuts in tall trees-

the wind throws loose nuts far from their normal drop zone; and due to the fuss and hurry associated with the new machine hazel picking- we don't have the chestnut and hickory plantings mowed down tight enough for easy harvest. Too late now. And today; it was really too dangerous to be out in the fields picking up nuts- the air was full of bombs; some of them with not-funny weaponry-

You truly do not want to risk being hit by one of these, flung at 30 mph from a height of 30 ft. Yes, you can wear protective gear, but a hard hat is not enough; you need a heavy jacket at the least- all of which adds up to nearly impossible working conditions.

Tomorrow; we hope. Meanwhile- if you have an urge to help out with harvest- now would be a really good time.

Catching our breath- or not...

2011-09-23T14:59:00.004-05:00

The First Minnesota Machine Harvest of hazels went well; we estimate about 20 hard-core hazel growers came to see and investigate, as well as neighbors and folks who were "just interested.

As we use the machine to pick here on Badgersett Farm itself, it dawns on us more and more- the world has changed.

We will certainly be harvesting twice as many hazelnuts this year as last; at least, even with many nuts still left on bushes that refuse to be picked. Part of what that means is- all the other machines needed, huskers, cleaners, etc; are now an order of magnitude too slow.

We did also get great TV coverage from our Rochester Minnesota NBC affiliate, KTTC. I couldn't figure out how to embed the video here, so the link will have to do.

Meanwhile- the other two neohybrid nut crops we work on are just in the early stages of ripeness; and chestnut harvest, and hybrid hickory harvest, are looming. Hazel harvest is NOT finished, meanwhile; we will be machine picking our fields here in Minnesota a second time; about a week from now. The plants definitely have differing maturities, and harvesting bushes within a tiny 3 day window (we've picked everything here, in 3 days) is hardly an accurate idea of what will really respond to the picker. Plus; we're well aware; the hazels with the earliest maturity were picked a month ago. Next year.

Hazel Machine Harvest Press Release

2011-09-20T14:00:00.005-05:00

This is the official press release we're sending out- if YOU would like to send it on; please do! The photos included here on the blog MAY be good enough for publication; but I never really know what Blogger will do with the pics next. If they're not; email us; and we'll email you publication quality files.

Press Release - 9/20/2011 - For Immediate Release

Attention: TV, Print, Electronic, & Radio

Badgersett Research Corporation: 18606 Deer Rd, Canton, MN USA 55922

phone (888) 557-4211 email: philip.rutter@badgersett.com web: badgersett.com

FIRST MINNESOTA MACHINE HARVEST OF NEW CROP - Sep 22nd

Hybrid Bush Hazels Can Out-Produce Soybeans

keywords: Sustainable Agriculture, Hazelnuts, Soybean Replacement, Machinable Crop,

The Public and Press are invited to attend and observe the First Machine Harvest in Minnesota of a highly promising new crop; hybrid bush hazelnuts. The machine will be working where visitors can watch up close and personal this Thursday, September 22nd, at Badgersett Farm in SE Minnesota. No reservations or fees are required; hours are 10 AM to 3 PM. The company’s blog will carry updates, and has more photos and video available; http://badgersettresearch.blogspot.com/

Easiest instructions for how to find the farm are at Google Maps, or at the company’s website, badgersett.com.

“We’ve been working toward this day for 2 decades. The dozens of growers who already have hazels planted have been counting on our prediction that we would be able to machine harvest these neohybrid hazelnut bushes. Now we’ve made the prediction come true: the machine is here - and it works.” says Badgersett CEO and Chief Scientist Philip Rutter; “The reason it took two decades was not the lack of a machine; we needed big enough fields of big enough bushes to warrant the machine. We actually had the field ready last year, but weren’t able to arrange a machine in time- the nuts mostly went to feed wildlife. This year, a grower came through, took the leap, and purchased a machine. He’s already glad he did, and we’re ecstatic.”

Hybrid hazelnuts were developed and introduced to the Midwest by Badgersett Research Corporation (BRC). As early as 1994, major plantings of Badgersett hazels were installed at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and at Arbor Day Farm, Nebraska. Seen by many as an “oilseed” crop, the USDA recently awarded a $1.3 Million grant to 3 universities to pursue development across the nation. “It’s actually more than an oilseed. Sure; the oil is hugely important; the hazel kernel is about 60% oil, compared to 20% for soybeans. In addition, the hazel oil quality is fabulous; it’s literally the exact chemical twin of olive oil. But these plants produce far more; every year, for example, they produce nutshell, which can be used as fuel in a dozen ways; and don’t forget they’re woody plants- we harvest the wood as another crop.” Rutter says. “That’s more money in the farmer’s pocket. Ask any farmer if he could use a little more.” he grins. “Even the nut husk is going to be a money crop someday- wait and see!”

The machine being demonstrated is a used blueberry harvester, previously working to pick Michigan highbush blueberries. “Our goal from the outset was to develop a sustainable crop that real farmers; corn and bean row-crop farmers, could actually adopt. The neohybrid hazels are exactly that- you plant them just once in your lifetime; harvest now with a machine that drives like a combine; dry it in the grain dryer you already own; store it in the grain bin you already own, and in time you’ll sell it at the elevator, just like corn and beans. The nut is similar enough to soybeans that we could convert a soybean crushing plant quite easily to hazelnut processing- and not put anyone out of work.” says Dr. Brandon Rutter, an engineer and BRC COO. “It likely jobs will be added- as an industrial feedstock, the hazels are actually more versatile than soybeans. We know the soy people won’t believe that- but we can prove it.” he smiles. The company uses the term “neohybrid” to distinguish their plants from hybrid corn; “What’s going on in the chromosomes of these plants is utterly, totally, diametrically different from what happens in hybrid corn. Both kinds of hybrid genetics have huge advantages; but they are completely unlike, and yes, it’s going to be important for farmers to understand that, at least a little.” says founder Philip Rutter.

Visitors and press who come to see the harvester at work at Badgersett Farm should be aware that they won’t be seeing a full scale harvest. Philip says, “Most of our best bushes on this farm have already been picked, by hand; so we can gather the data on the individual bush performance. Everyone will be able to see the reality, though- this machine picks hazelnuts just fine, and we already have specific modifications in mind. There are still lots of nuts. We’ll be able to harvest quite a few plants and rows we haven’t been able to get picked in other years; we just didn’t have the time. The truth- just before I left for Illinois, to use the machine there on that large experimental field, I was depressed. We have so many hazel plants here; thousands of them; we simply haven’t had the time to collect the data we need and get them picked. I was thinking we should stop adding to our plantings, so we could evaluate the huge number of genetic variants we already have. But- coming back from using the machine? It hit me. We need a lot more plants, a lot more fields. We just jumped the scale of the crop way, way, up.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos sent on request.

CONTACTS:

Badgersett Research Corporation; Philip Rutter, President/CEO; (888) 557-4211

be prepared to leave a message detailing how and when to call you back.

web: badgersett.com for many details, and a map of how to get to Farm #1

email: philip.rutter@badgersett.com, info@badgersett.com

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS are available for press use; contact us via email.

A research tray of neohybrid hazelnuts; each nut from a genetically different bush.

Dr. Brandon Rutter driving the harvester at the Illinois hazel field, 9/17/11

The harvester swallows a hazel bush; hazels are more flexible than blueberries, and the bushes are not harmed when compressed by the picker.

Machine harvest video

2011-09-19T13:19:00.003-05:00

We're trying to catch our breath today, not that it's working. I managed to get a crude video of the machine working, and put it up on YouTube; catch it there if Blogger is not working satisfactorily.

This was a good bush; you see it go into the machine, though it's much wider than the machine (the hazel bushes are extremely flexible) - then there's a wait for travel, then the nuts start to come down the chute. Also bugs; you can see a few Japanese beetles- consequently, we did NOT bring the harvested nuts back to Minnesota; we'll have to process them in Illinois. We could use some help there...

At the end you see the conveyer; this bush did not clog the machine, but the conveyer was full. I never managed to get a movie of one of the really huge-crop bushes- they actually overflowed the conveyer and everything else; we had to hit the panic button and stop the machine completely, in order to catch up.

This only shows one side of the machine; there are two; which means there were just as many nuts coming out the other side also.

More soon.

The Machine WORKS-

2011-09-16T10:07:00.005-05:00

Better in fact than I'd hoped. Though it will need some modifications on the nut/cluster handling/cleaning eventually- right now, it will let you pick a big field. Perfect? No. Just- way better than the slow hand picking process. We had two farmers, a PhD engineer, and a professional machinist studying the machine end of it, and two farmers and two biologists studying the plants- and animal end of it.

stick insect, picked out of harvest bag, after going through the machine

Yesterday was shakedown; we found several ways to do it wrong, but also how to do it right. Today is our first attempt at full day work. We're not sure we can get all the bushes picked in the time available- it's a big field; but we're going to try. Some of the bushes are not ripe yet - of course- and we may bring the machine back to this field in a couple weeks, to re-pick. We'll see.

bushes coming out

bushes going in

cluster bearing twigs; picked clean

picking an easy row; Brandon driving

The press event for Illinois will be Saturday, Sept. 17; from 10 AM to 2 PM (although we will try to accomodate other needs.) Stockholders are strongly encouraged to come! It's an experience you'll tell your grandchildren about.

The Minnesota press event will be Thursday, Sept. 22; rain date Friday Sept. 23. Picking will be going on in Minnesota starting on Tuesday (we think: transport permitting), and the public is welcome to come and observe- and maybe help wrangle the bags of nuts...

Machine Harvest- This Week!

2011-09-13T15:41:00.007-05:00

To our surprise and delight, we find that Badgersett Research Corp is going to be harvesting neohybrid hazelnuts by machine, the very first time this has been done anywhere - this week. Thursday, Sept. 15th, to be exact, if present plans stay on track. That will be the first day; we plan many more to follow. First harvest will take place on the Illinois hazel field we picked by hand last year; after several days there, the machine will come to Badgersett Farm #1, in Minnesota; picking in MN will be Sept. 20, 21, 22; press event to be set. (Yes, we did pick a few some years ago, from the Badgersett hazel field at Arbor Day Farm, but that was just a demo/trial, not a real harvest. This is- real harvest.)

The machine is an older model self-propelled BEI blueberry picking machine, purchased in Michigan, by hazel growers and close friends who wish to remain entirely anonymous. And while Badgersett does not own this machine, we nonetheless have exclusive use of it for 2011, and will have continuing use of it for several years. The owners wants to pick their own hazels with it next year; and BRC is providing engineering consulting and extensive field testing, to jointly begin the process of fully adapting this type of harvesting machine to the task of genuine hazelnut crop picking.

As part of the agreement, in the coming years Badgersett will be able to offer custom machine harvest to other growers. If you've been finding your increasing hazel crops are becoming just too much for hand picking- you might want to contact us and start making arrangements for us to bring the machine to your farm - very soon.

This is the back view, showing the mechanism. The "tunnel" is 6 feet high, which we think will be adequate for most of the hazels at the Illinois farm, and the younger hazels we'll be using it on in Minnesota.

The side/front view. The machine has hydraulic adjustments for the wheels to allow compensation for field slopes.

Everyone needs to realize; as we do; that having this machine does not mean "machine harvest" for bush hazels is here, fully developed and ready for prime time. It means we can now truly begin the process of adapting the machine to the plants; and adapting the plants to the machine.

For at least 20 years now, we've been noting in our hazelnut data whenever a particular hazel plant was "machine pickable"; meaning the nut clusters were not yet dropped, but would come off with a little moderate shaking - and - the bush was of a size and flexibility that would be likely to work.

Starting in 2012, we will be taking the next, and highly important, step in adapting plants to machines: we will be planting ourselves, and offering for sale; hazelnut tubelings from nuts that - were picked - by machine. It's an authentic evolutionary step; if you'd like your field to have a better chance of being machine harvestable; planting it with seedlings from nuts that were successfully picked by a machine is a huge step in the right direction.

Stay tuned here for more information. The harvest event at the Illinois farm is a closed event; open only by invitation to Badgersett stock holders, past volunteers, and the press; but the harvest events at Farm #1 in Minnesota will be open to the public. You're welcome to come - and maybe even lend a hand.

Booths at the Field Day

2011-08-19T13:52:00.005-05:00

Still some other possibilities, but we will have the following friends here, selling and showing off.

People here:

Featherstone Farm produce: 11 AM - 3 PM -ish
Oak Meadow Meats: Afternoon
Small animal booths: Sharon Lewis et al.
Anna Stutzman's Amish baked goods and preserves: 10 AM - 4 PM -ish
The Inn at Sacred Clay Farm

NOTE - it would be a good idea for you to bring a cooler- you may want to pick up some of the great local meats available, and other produce might benefit, too- and maybe a small-animal transporter if you'd like to take home a hen or two...

Booths/info, maybe without people:

Eagle Bluff
The Inn at Sacred Clay Farm
Habitat for Humanity - Harmony
Denise Walser-Kolar: award-winning paintings of Badgersett hazels

Field Day Schedule

2011-08-18T22:55:00.002-05:00

Here's an outline of the schedule for the field day; pretty close to set at this point.

Friday: Arrive and set up camp, if you like. Primitive camping under our 1993 Chestnut planting west of the maze, portajohn and water available.

Saturday:

9:30 AM - 5 PM Registration and Registration-Tent Sales Open
10 AM - 6 PM Plant Sales open at Greenhouses
10 AM - 5 PM Vendor and Displays Open (not all vendors/presenters will be there all day)
10:30 AM First Tours start, 1 1/2 -2 hours

Introduction to Woody Agriculture: for first-timers, and a refresher/update for experienced growers who haven't taken this tour for a couple of years.
Integration of Animals in Woody Agriculture Fields: Advanced tour for those interested in fitting animals into their woody ag operations. This includes people who don't want to burn as much gas for mowing.

11:15 AM Greenhouse Tour. Off-grid, solar-heated four-season greenhouse; in operation for about two decades. We can show you some things that work, and others that don't!
12:30 - 1:45 PM Lunch- Eat under the hickories, get pies, bread, jam, cookies (THIS YEAR WITH BADGERSETT HAZELS AND HICKORIES) from our Amish friends, enjoy live music, and visit our vendor/display booths!
1:45 PM Afternoon tours start:

NeoHybrid Hazelnuts: 1 1/2 - 2 hours. Including some introductory material, as well as touching on our latest developments and discoveries in management of establishment, fertility, pest control, harvest and more.
On-Farm Cloning: The first public full disclosure of our on-farm cloning method, presented by Dr. Susan Wiegrefe, our research associate, who is continuing to refine this technique.

4-5 PM: What's New short talk, and question and answer session.
5:15 PM: Demonstration of post-harvest processing machinery down by the greenhouses.
Evening: Camp out again! See if you can convince Brandon to light the bonfire!

Sunday: For those sticking around, we may be able to use your help planting hazel tubelings. Hazel harvest is a bit late this year, we've got a lot of research plants to get in the ground, and the ground is actually dry enough to work!

NOTE: the week following the field day is the first volunteer planting opportunity we've offered for a while, and we're planning to do some full-scale machine planting. Let us know if you're interested!

2 new reasons for you to come to the Field Day

2011-08-15T14:27:00.003-05:00

Hazel grower Don Price called us this morning to let us know that he will be bringing a harvest processing tool he's been working on with him; and we'll set it up and run it.

Don's been working with rebuilding and adapting what used to be a standard tool for all farms, a fanning mill. He started working with one at least 3 years ago, and provided one for us to play with here at Badgersett, too.

We haven't had the time we've wanted, to work with the really excellent machine he brought us; but he's done some tinkering with his, and has been using it to clean (at least) his hazel nuts. It's likely that with a bit of remodeling, these things can be made to size nuts, also; and remove blanks and lightweights.

It'll be here, set up and demonstrating, for the Field Day.

Item 2; Sue Wiegrefe has been systematically collecting data on soil pH in a variety of our hazel plantings, with known fertilization/lime treatments. And- we've got results to show. We've actually learned something; quite important. There's more to learn; but we already have some information that will change the quality of your crop.

Come and see- and learn! I could just "tell you"; of course- but - it's about 1000x more effective if you SEE it.

The curse of being first-

2011-08-14T17:41:00.003-05:00

We arranged to demonstrate machine picking of neohybrid hazelnuts 9 years ago. I'm astonished it's been so long. The entire world has changed, in the meantime; for one thing, the machine company we dealt with, BEI, Inc; has been sold. 9 years ago, I'd been talking to their founder and president, Butch Greiffendorf, for 15 years already. He was an enthusiast for the hazels, and came to one of our Annual Field Days, to see the crop for himself, and meet potential growers.

But he sold the company, the rascal, a year or so before I called BEI to arrange a trial, on the 9 acres of Badgersett hazels at Arbor Day Farm. Enough enthusiasm survived that the trial did happen.

We're trying to arrange real machine picking, now, this year; and so far it's been an uphill battle. These are harder economic times, of course. The Illinois planting we featured here is loaded, and really needs a machine.

I of course made a video of the picking trial; but it wasn't easily available for me to send around. Remember- 9 years ago? There was no YouTube. It finally dawned on me; there IS , now. So I put it up. Imagine that.

Hopefully this will help to explain to the picking companies where we are, and how we got here, and what it looks like when a blueberry picker picks hazelnuts.

The thing is; this video is ancient; and primitive, by today's standards. I shot it on one of the first digital cameras that could also make short videos. But this was so early, they had no sound capability, at all. And of course, the resolution is a long way from HD.

But it was simple; anyway. This whole thing was cobbled together from 4 or 5 short clips, all entirely edited within plain old QuickTime.

When you're the first at something- it means working with whatever tools there are; and later comers can look a lot slicker. But; they can't be first. :-)

How did it work? It worked just fine. If there were ripe nuts, the machine picked them. (There weren't many; they Arbor Day people set aside the rows right next to the woods for the machine trial- and the squirrels were active...) The unripe nuts stayed on the bushes, as did the leaves, and next season's catkins. The force these machines use is adjustable, in sophisticated ways; the force needed to pick hazelnuts was allowing walking-stick insects to come all the way through the machine into the harvest bucket- and get up and walk off.

We will need different innards for the machines - a cluster of 10 hazelnuts will not behave like a blueberry on the conveyers or in the cleaners; but the picking mechanism itself- was just fine.

Field Day update

2011-08-12T13:59:00.002-05:00

Here's a little updated information on the Field Day- it's looking like attendance will be great, and even the weather seems to be cooperating. This is a version of the press release we sent out:

Press Release: For Immediate Release 8/10/11

BADGERSETT RESEARCH FARM

20th ANNUAL FIELD DAY:

SATURDAY, AUGUST 20

20th Field Day; 30+ Years Of Progress With New Sustainable Crops

If you’ve ever heard anyone say the word “hazelnuts”, in the Midwest, it’s a sure bet they’re talking about the hybrids developed first by Badgersett Research Farm, in Fillmore County. Unknown to many, Badgersett has also been developing two other crops, for the same 30+ years; hybrid chestnuts, which they claim will someday be comparable to corn as a mainstream crop, and hybrid hickories, now in the early years of showing what they can do.

“This 20th Annual Field Day is a fantastic chance for folks to see the realities involved in these new crops. At this point, with 5 universities picking up our hybrid hazelnut research, some of the information floating around can be conflicting. Very simply- our plantings are the oldest, by decades; besides being the largest, by tens of thousands, and the most diverse.” says Philip Rutter, Badgersett Research Corporation founder and CEO. “The USDA has just invested $1.3 Million in hybrid hazel research; a grant awarded to a collaboration by 3 universities, and based on the promise these new hybrids have as a crop that can be grown for energy and food- both, at the same time. We’re delighted. But managing a crop you plant once in 50 years is very different from corn and beans. The plants still surprise us, every year. For people who are interested, there’s just no substitute for seeing the fields, first hand.”

Badgersett’s hybrid hazelnuts are touted by many as a replacement for soybeans - in terms of markets, hazels can do anything soybeans can, and more. “They’re 60% oil, and the oil is chemically the twin of olive oil; so you can understand the interest.” says Rutter. “It actually tastes better than olive oil, in our opinion- plus; we burn it in our diesel engines.” Only for demonstration purposes at this point, he smiles, “Diesel is still cheaper, but the hazel oil smells better.” The hybrid chestnuts are producing wood as well as nuts now (“We’re drowning in woody biomass!” Rutter wails.) and the hybrid hickories are coming on strong; “The hickories are going to be important very soon,” Rutter says, “The same machines used for the pecan crop will work for these hybrids, so we don’t have to invent anything. Plus we can grow them in Minnesota- where pecans freeze out.”

Guided tours start at 10 AM, and run into the late afternoon. Visitors are welcome to bring a picnic lunch, and folks traveling from greater distances are welcome to camp overnight, before and after. “We usually have folks coming from 2 and 3 states away”, Rutter says, “all we can offer is primitive campsites, but it’s a growing phenomenon.”

This year’s Field Day has 3 areas of focus; on-farm cloning techniques, the off-grid solar greenhouse, and the integration of animals with the crops. “We’re working on pastured poultry in the hazels, and using horses and sheep to control grass in the chestnuts and hickories. So far- we think we need more animals.” says Rutter. “The idea is to use tools to control grass and weeds that have some chance of producing income- instead of just paying for tractors and diesel fuel forever. Even at the small test scales we’re using; it’s looking promising.” One of the things to see: “The hazel rows where we’ve been pasturing poultry for 2 years look better than any on the farm; they’re gorgeous. Better than expected, in fact.” grins Rutter; “Much better. Now we need to figure out why. It’s not just the nitrogen, we’ve proven that.”

Badgersett’s first Field Day was held in 1991, funded by a grant from the Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture. “The Field Day has really grown over the years; at this point we’re working on turning it into a one day Local Food / Sustainable Agriculture Fair. All our fellow members of the Lanesboro Local market (www.lanesborolocal.org) have been invited to come and sell their wares at the Field Day; we have hopes of a great turnout. Our Amish neighbors will be there, selling baked goods and more, and this year we’ve added music; the well known local country duet, Brother Music, Sister Rhythm (www.brothermusicsisterrhythm.com/) will be playing for us during the midday.” Rutter says. “That’s the direction we want the Field Day to go- a solid community and family event.”

The regional Clean Energy Resource Team (www.cleanenergyresourceteams.org) is bringing a group for a special tour of the greenhouse, which may just be the oldest off-grid business in the state.

Hazelnut, chestnut, and hickory plants WILL be available for sale this year; for the first time in several years.

A map to the Farm can be downloaded from the Farm website: www.badgersett.com, or is available by searching Google Maps for “Badgersett Farm”. Updates on Field Day events at: badgersettresearch.blogspot.com

Announcing: Badgersett Research Farm 20th Annual Field Day

2011-07-08T16:04:00.011-05:00

(click on photo for bigger views)

Badgersett Research Farm 20th Annual Field Day:

Saturday, August 20th

If you want to learn about growing hazelnuts in the Midwest; it makes sense to go and see where it's been done the longest. That would be us, we're at 32 years, and counting. No other grower or researcher has production rows like ours.

We're making a concerted effort to expand our Field Day event this year; we're inviting quite a few other folks to bring what they have to show and sell, and set up booths in the chestnut rows, where we can guarantee good shade. Stay tuned to this blog, where we'll be announcing the specifics as we have them. We're inviting hazel growers, graziers, wool spinners, wood carvers- anyone who makes a living, or wants to, from sustainable farming and integrated woody crops. And our Amish neighbors will be here, of course.

Plus- in a change from the past few years, we WILL have plants available for sale this Field Day; hazel, chestnut, and hickory-pecan tubelings will be available for purchase. (In "moderate" numbers... we probably couldn't sell you 5,000 plants right then, for example.)

The major guided tours will start at 10 AM, and will run throughout the day until 4 PM. Lots of folks wind up staying and talking until 5:30 and 6.

This year's Field Day will have 4 special focus aspects:

1: On-Farm Hazel Cloning.

Dr. Sue Wiegrefe, Badgersett Research Associate, will be running tours to see both our new field plantings of our cloned hazels, and "division parent clones" in the greenhouse. We are now outplanting divisions of some 20 different clonal hazels; from several varying processes, including direct in-field divisions.

NOTE: At these tours, we will be making public the division processes we have up to now kept proprietary.

Dr. Wiegrefe has taken our years of work on the division process, and brought the techniques ahead to a state of success where it is now time to publish so other researchers can add to it. Following the Field Day, we will be publishing the divisions research details online, as part of our peer-reviewed Badgersett Research Bulletins series.

2: Integrating Animals In Woody Crops.

Tours will look at our "chicken/guinea tractors", sheep, and horses. All of these animals contribute to grass/weed control in our crops; and all can produce farm income. We're in the very early phases of learning how to manage them profitably; but any hazel grower with more than a few years of growing knows by now that grass control is critical to any hope of a profitable hazel crop. Simple machine mowing, in the long run, will not be a competitive practice.

3: The Sins Of Not Fertilizing.

Hazels, and all woody crops, have highly complex responses to fertilizer. Fertilizer applied in the current year will have measurable, and visible, affects at least 4 years down the road. Since our goal from the outset has been agricultural style food production, all Badgersett hazels have been selected for production when supported by additional fertilizer. Leaving them unfertilized will have the same effect as if you put your herd of registered Holstein cows out to graze on poor pasture, with no feed. They will produce milk until they get sick; and you will be making no money next year. Various efforts to grow and select hazels that "can produce without fertilizer" will result in selecting for "wild-type" genetics. Bison may survive on poor range- but they won't be producing big dairy crops - or meat - for you.

Ultimately, all concepts of avoiding fertilizing are fantasy, by very simple reference to the science of physics. If you are harvesting x tons of food/acre; you are necessarily removing x amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and minors. That's a fact. If the productivity of the land is to be maintained; nutrients removed must be replaced. There is no escaping that law. The bigger the crop you are removing; the more nutrients must be replaced.

Tours will show multiple aspects of fertilized and unfertilized hazels (of course we maintain unfertilized control plants; this year they are exceptionally educational.)

4. Off-Grid Earth Sheltered Greenhouse; 18 years of Operation.

Interest in alternative energy continues to grow. Our earth sheltered, solar heated, and photo-voltaic powered greenhouse is thought to be the oldest such business in Minnesota. Tours will focus on the energy dynamics of the building, and the interplay with the needs of the greenhouse crops we grow.

We'll be posting details here on the blog continuously, as we develop them. Check back often, and plan on coming!

-----------------------------------------------------------

Notice: If you would like to have a booth for our Field Day; please email us as soon as possible, at info@badgersett.com with your details. For this first year, there will be no charge for space. If you want to bring animals, to show or sell, please let us know, and we'll try to be sure appropriate space is arranged.

Notice: Harvest Volunteers - are going to be needed more than ever. While we're trying very hard to arrange some machine harvest this year, there are still many bushes that must be harvested by hand, in order to maintain the identity of seed, and to keep research data secure. We can't emphasize the importance of this enough. For those who help out, we do provide hourly pay in the form of credit that can be used to buy tubelings in future years- a great way to learn, and earn plants. If you think you can help, please email us at info@badgersett.com and let us know what dates you may be available. Any dates from Aug 15 to Sept 20 may be helpful.

quick sheep followup

2011-07-08T15:46:00.004-05:00

The sheep are doing outstanding work in the apples. So much so that I had to take a couple "before and after" pics to show you.

Before:

Looking down the hillside at 2 rows of apple trees. The second row is obscured by the unmowable stuff under the first row of trees.

After:

To my astonishment, they eat not only the tops of thistles and wild parsnip; they ate the leaves off the invading honeysuckle and sumach, and pruned the apples up to boot.

If we'd had to clear all that brush/weed stuff by human labor- there's really no question it would have take twice as much work, time, and sweat as it took to set up the mesh fence and move the sheep.

And the sheep seem to be getting big and fat off the process.

Sheep come to Badgersett

2011-07-04T18:49:00.006-05:00

The 4th of July is exceptionally appropriate for this development. We're hoping to become a little more independent of fossil fuels. After decades of mowing grass between nut bushes and trees, and paying for endless and increasingly expensive (now to the point of ruinous) gas and diesel fuel; we've acquired sheep.

The hope: we can make it actually pay. Not this year; of course. But we've chosen two breeds to try out at first, and both are versatile in their produce. Sue wanted Babydoll Southdowns, which she'd been studying about for some time; and I wanted Icelandics; likewise. Both breeds bring high prices for their meat and fleece, and the Icelandics have also been selected for milk production, for hundreds of years. In case we ever want to go there.

Two of the Babydoll lambs; we have 3 lambs and one ewe. And;

Three of the Icelandics; we have one ram lamb, 4 ewes, and a wether.

Today, for the first time; we really put them to work. We've had them for a month or so; but have spent that time in getting to know each other, and doing a little training. The movable electric mesh fence, could be a little iffy with the Icelandics, if they challenged it and got their horns stuck in it. So we did a few days of training, first; combining both the non-portable electric fence originally set up for the horses, then upgraded to "almost" sheep tight, with the mesh. Both together were apparently quite convincing- because on moving them today into the apples; not once have we seen any of the sheep "test" the fence; they respect it, all the time.

And that; we hope, can make it easy.

Time, perhaps, will tell. We're doing tight accounting. Meanwhile- if you're mowing grass- maybe you should come see the integrated animals, on our upcoming Field Day (Aug. 20 - more soon).

Moving the sheep was an adventure- neither any of us, nor these sheep, had ever done it. If we're lucky; Brandon may post a movie of the drovers and sheep...

Chestnut blight arrives at Badgersett Farm

2011-07-02T18:01:00.005-05:00

When we started growing and breeding chestnuts here in SE Minnesota, there was no chestnut blight (Endothia parasitica at first, then Cryphonectria parasitica; though my own preferred name is Cryphodothia pseudoparasitica*... long conversation...) known, for at least 50 miles, perhaps 100. It had been identified in Ames, Iowa, and seen once briefly around Zumbrota, Minnesota; but it certainly was not here.

For the first 20 years, as our chestnut plantings expanded, we never saw it. When we were ready to test our chestnut genetics against the blight, we sent seed both to Auburn University in Alabama, and to the Hubei Academy of Agricultural Science in China. Tests in both places were overseen by Dr. Hongwen Huang; I will put his reports here, originally published in our Root & Branch #4:

Date: Fri, 05 Apr 96 11:18:53 EST
From: hongwen huang

Subject: RE: report of blight resistance of your breeding lines in Alabama

Dear Phil:

In response to your request for the results of my
performance tests of chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) resistance of your advanced breeding lines grown in Auburn, Alabama, the following statement is based on my observations and best knowledge.

As you know, I collected seeds of some 25 trees, representative of your breeding lines in your breeding orchard, and 4 random selections of pure American chestnut at West Salem, Wis. in Fall 1991. Twenty to 50 seeds from each line and selection were germinated in the greenhouse and transplanted in 18.93-liter polyethylene containers in Spring 1992. All seedlings remained in the containers in an outside growing area under daily sprinkler irrigation. This area was a designated plot for my research on evaluation of blight resistance among Chinese chestnut cultivars
using artificial inoculation of virulent C. parasitica strains. Three strains were used: SLA-155 and SLA-389 (provided by Dr. Sandra Anagnostakis, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station) and AL-W ( a wild strain obtained in Alabama).

An evaluation for blight resistance was initially started in Summer 1992 and repeated in 1993. Resistance was rated in 4 scales: very resistant, resistant, susceptible-resistant and susceptible. All pure American seedlings were completely susceptible to C. parasitica and were girdled by blight within 3 weeks and died. Variation of blight resistance was found within and between each seedling progeny

of your lines. Most seedlings showed resistance to C. parasitica, ranging from susceptible-resistant to resistant. There were 2-8% seedlings that were completely susceptible and died like pure American chestnuts. To my knowledge, all 25 lines you developed are resistant to C. parasitica, but heterozygotic for at least one gene of blight resistance (2-3 genes involved). Seedlings from each resistant parent line should be expected to segregate for blight resistance genes and the 2-8% susceptible seedlings found in this study should be those homozygotic for all alleles of the related 2-3 genes. This roughly fits the model of 2-3 genes regulating blight resistance. Since this experiment is not formally carried out in an official project, no records are filed and reported. I am personally responsible for the results stated above.

Sincerely

Hongwen Huang
Associate Prof.
Wuhan Institute of Botany
The Chinese Academy of Sciences

--------------------------------------------------

RE: report of blight resistance of your breeding lines in China

Dear Phil:

I would like to give you a report on an evaluation of your advanced breeding lines for resistance to chestnut blight.

Seedlings of the thirty-six hybrid breeding lines you sent to the Hubei Academy of Agricultural Science were planted at 2 x 4 m spacing in an experimental plot of the Fruit and Tea Institute of the Academy in Spring 1992. When I went back to China in June 1994, I evaluated all lines for resistance to chestnut blight in August. All lines looked healthy and have grown very well in Hubei. Most lines were rated as very resistant (defined as canker width = 1.0 to 3.0 mm on the trees when they were infested by the blight) to resistant (canker width = 3.1 to 5.0 mm). The resistance observed on these lines is comparable to what is usually found in resistant pure Chinese chestnut.

The cankers on these lines were gradually walled off after the initial infection. If you have further inquiries regarding the performance of your breeding lines in Hubei, P.R. China, please don't hesitate to contact me or Professor Zhang at the Fruit and Tea Institute, Hubei Academy of Agricultural Science.

Best regards

Hongwen Huang Ph.D
Associate Professor
Wuhan Institute of Botany
The Chinese Academy of Sciences

The test orchard in China is still growing there, and was also inspected by Brandon Rutter during his work in China some years back. Most of the trees are thriving, the primary complaint of the managers there being that some of the local folks insist on climbing over their razor wire fences to steal chestnuts from our trees. Hubei is a major chestnut producing province, so that's really quite a compliment.

Being quite familiar with the blight, and knowing it was only 50-100 miles away, I always expected it to get here in my lifetime. And now, it has.

Although I certainly know chestnut blight when I see it, I nonetheless asked MN State Forest Pathologist Ed Hayes to come and do the positive identification. This is his photo, in fact. It's the blight.

It showed up first on one of my "canaries in the coal mine". At the outset, expecting blight to arrive, I planted pure American chestnuts in two locations on the farm, expecting them to show any blight presence sooner than the resistant and semi-resistant hybrids. One on the north fence, where they are reproductively isolated from the hybrid breeding work; and a small population of male-sterile pure Americans among the hybrids. It was one of those male-steriles that showed it first.

This tree took 3 years to kill to the ground, and is now re-sprouting vigorously, as American chestnuts do. In those years, we've started to see blight elsewhere among the hybrids, a few trees succumbing slowly; a few with an affected branch. Most show no signs, but in the nature of epidemics, the true testing is yet to come. The blight is now here, permanently; as expected. More trees will die in the coming years.

Most folks respond "oh, that's terrible!" when we tell them; but we don't feel that way at all. It was expected; we prepared for it; and in fact we can now directly test our newest hybrid chestnuts against the blight right here, and all their lives long (the only kind of testing that counts in the real world). In many ways it's a relief.

But - it does mean that our chestnut tubelings can no longer be expected to be blight free (although they probably are); and should not be shipped to or planted in areas still free of the blight, to protect any susceptible trees still living in such places.

And it means visitors should be careful about carrying blight from here back to uninfected areas. It doesn't mean you shouldn't visit; just that you should be careful about what you touch, be sure to disinfect shoes (chlorine bleach is the standard), and generally think about what you do when.

*The blight fungus in this case is not actually a "pathogen" or parasite, an organism that causes disease for a living. In China it mostly lives as a free-living "saprophyte", an organism that lives by breaking down dead matter. It lives that way in North America, too; extremely well. Judging from the infection patterns we see in our plantings, that's most likely how it got here. Not from some visitor bringing a disease; but just as the natural spread of an invading fungus, slowly taking over more territory. It grows quite well on oak bark, and in forest litter; it's here to stay.

Turns out, it was actually a tornado.

2011-06-05T13:19:00.004-05:00

We did get hit with intense storm winds a week and a bit ago. I was actually watching it hit, out the house windows, with Eleanor. To me it looked like a "downburst"; very high straight-line storm winds. We saw big trees breaking; and it left our woods-road blocked with several big oaks down across it.

Now it turns out, it was indeed a documented tornado, that worked its way across much of Fillmore county. Pretty exciting.

What hit us was clearly not the horrific circulating winds of a tight "finger"; but it was some part of a tornado, nonetheless.

We lost 3 big apple trees that were uprooted. But the damage to the hazels, chestnuts, and hickories, was really extremely slight. That part, at least, is encouraging.

LIMITED TIME: Survivor Butternuts ready to ship!

2011-06-02T00:09:00.002-05:00

Hello folks,

Even with the tornado last week and missing staff this week, we are working through the shipping queue for standard hazel tubelings– this week we should be getting to ship hazel orders paid last December and January. Chestnut and hickory shipping is still a few weeks off, however.

Also, our new secretary is starting to get up to speed and should be able to handle some of your more urgent customer service inquiries tomorrow.

---->>> This note is about Butternuts, ready to ship this week! These are our Survivor butternuts, see the Butternut catalog page and Badgersett Bulletin 8 for details, but NOT for current pricing, which is below.

We were able to dig most of our remaining bare-root butternut nursery stock this spring. This is 6-0 and some 7-0 stock, which was coppiced last year and has grown back. Although there may be a very few available next spring, this may be the last time we ship butternuts for five years or more.

Rather than sell by age this year we are selling by size:

Normal, 30-40 available: tops about 12-24", at the old 5-0 prices:

1–5: $14.60 ea; 6-15: $11.20 ea; >15: $8.50 ea

Magnum, 15 available: tops generally 24" or over, with particularly robust root systems.

$18 ea.

Shipping and handling is $18 for orders under $100, or 15% for orders over $100. This is higher than for our other plants, because they are substantially larger and it takes more work to get them from our field to your forest.

These will ship "as soon as possible", this week and early next week; we'll try to do particularly quick turn-arounds on the butternut orders because there are only a couple of weeks left before they start getting too delicate to ship safely.

To place an order, use the prices above and the email form linked here.

Free Range Chicken & Guinea Hatching Eggs For Sale

2011-05-21T10:51:00.006-05:00

Ameraucana and Brahma eggs

If you're not already aware, we're now keeping/growing both chickens and guinea fowl at Badgersett Farm, as an integrated part of growing the nut crops.

The birds provide multiple services, and produce multiple products. They eat grass (way more than expected, particularly the guineas) and reduce our mowing costs; they eat bugs constantly, we hope including nut weevils, they provide substantial rapid fertility to the plants, and they adjust the soil pH upward, again, more than expected. Besides which, we get eggs and meat.

We are keeping records of costs/expenses and our expectation at this point is that the birds contribute far more positives than they cost.

Right now- we are able to offer both chicken and guinea "hatching eggs" for sale; specifically these are eggs from selected parents, and from birds that have proven to be survivors in a complex true free range environment.

Virtually all the chickens available commercially have been selected for only 1 of several factors; maximum meat, OR maximum egg production, OR "beauty". Finding stock that is selected for multiple traits is extremely difficult; and finding chicks or eggs from long-term free range flocks is likewise difficult.

Our chickens will be: hybrids! Big surprise! But not random mutts. Inevitably, I am unable to prevent myself from working on improving the genetics of our birds. The pure strains we've tested have always been strong on one or two characteristics, and weak on others. We need birds that fit our situation; so we're breeding for what we need.

Chicken eggs available are from a pen with two roosters; a pure Partridge Cochin

and a rooster hatched here last year, 1/2 Buff Orpington 1/2 Ameraucana.

The hens in this particular chicken tractor are 6 Ameraucanas, 3 Brahmas, and 1 Blue Cochin. The Ameraucanas are 2 years old, the others 1; all surviving as total free range during the day, and enclosed at night (our big predator problem is owls).

The list of characters we are selecting/breeding for is too long for this post; but includes large adult size (less hawk problems) and good potential for going "broody" - the ability to hatch their own eggs, and mother the chicks.

The guinea hatching eggs we have at the moment are much less well defined; but include survival as free range birds as the largest factor.

We can ship eggs to you; or you can pick them up here (always best). We can not guarantee your eggs will hatch (no one in the business can or does) - but what we DO guarantee is that they are fresh and fertile when we deliver them to you or the post office.

We haven't done this before! (selling hatching eggs) so we'll be feeling our way into it. Please ask your questions here on the blog, that will help.

PRICES: Chicken hatching eggs: $4.00 each; guinea hatching eggs; $3.00 each; plus shipping, of course.

Email or give us a call to arrange it– orders@badgersett.com; 888-557-4211

Hickory buds

2011-05-19T14:21:00.004-05:00

Every once in a while, we do try to grab just a bit of the beauty that is zooming past us. Yesterday I ran out for a few minutes to take just a few pictures of the hybrid hickory buds. I wanted to send them to Denise, who did such a spectacular job with her illustrations of the hazels. (Incidentally; she was awarded the Silver Gilt Medal at the Royal Horticultural Society art show; which means she now has the very great honor that she may show any of her art at that show for the next 5 years, without submitting it for preliminary approval; a very big deal!)

In spite of these being very hurried pics, a couple of them turned out not awful anyway. So I thought I would let you see another benefit to growing these hybrids; a brief gorgeous bit of nature that few know exists; the slow blossoming-opening of the apical buds of hickories. Click on any of these for a bigger view; and then magnify to see full size images.

Above is what the swollen buds look like just before they break open- furry gold. This one is really worth the click and magnify process to fully appreciate.

These are showing their shagbark and shellbark ancestors; buds of pecans and other hickories are not this showy. At the right stage, some of these trees can look like flowering magnolias; gorgeous, and startling.

Shipping Status Etc., and BUTTERNUTS

2011-05-15T22:15:00.002-05:00

We expect to start shipping standard hazel tubelings on Wednesday, pretty much right on time! - 5/15 is our earliest possible ship date, and we usually ship standard tubelings Wed-Thurs of each week so that they arrive for the weekend ready to plant.

PRETTY PLEASE keep in mind that there are 155 orders on the shipping queue- and the first one placed in 2011 is number 76 in line. Not all the plants are ready, and we don't currently have the capacity to ship that many orders in a day anyway.

Also- much to our dismay, the personnel disruptions we had in February-March mean that our first CHESTNUTS WON'T SHIP UNTIL MID-JUNE. We apologize for this; if you had both hazels and chestnuts in your order you can either opt to wait until both are ready, or have us ship them separately when ready, at no further cost to you.

Most of the rest of our bare-root dormant tubeling orders will ship this week. If you ordered XL or Select bare-root hazels and specified no substitutions, we don't have it and most likely will not next year either. We will be contacting you regarding options for back-order, substitution, or refund.

GOOD NEWS! We DO have about 70 of our Survivor butternuts dug and ready to ship– these are 6-0 and 7-0, coppiced last spring with the summers' re-growth. We have mostly "normal sized" plants, about 12-24" tops, at the old 5-0 prices, and about 16 "magnum" plants, with tops generally 24" or over, and particularly robust roots– these are $18 apiece. I'll be sending out an email with the details as soon as I can- THIS MAY BE THE LAST TIME WE SHIP THESE at least for the next 5 years.

More Plant Shipping, Nut Shipping

2011-04-29T14:50:00.002-05:00

Remember: standard tubelings don't ship before 5/15; we usually field-plant most of our own in July.

Bare-root dormant shipping is delayed; we have very few orders for the material we actually have on hand. We do not have XL, XL-select or L-select bare-root dormant hazels. We DO have quite a few bare-root dormant hickories, and chestnuts (except for Tree type) available. If you are early on the shipping queue or antsy to get your plants in the ground, we may be able to convert your order to Bare-Root Dormant for chestnuts, hickories, or Medium or Wildlife hazels.

We'll be working hard to get these things figured out in the next few days, and should be able to start shipping early next week.

Ryan, who is working overtime to make up for some of our backlog, is currently working on processing hazel nuts to eat; if you've got a paid hazel and/or hickory order with us it should ship on Monday or Tuesday.

If you're near Lanesboro, tomorrow we'll be at the 2011 Root River Earth Day Celebration put on by our friends at Eagle Bluff. We'll be selling hazels and hickories to eat, t-shirts, smokewood, and some chestnut food products under development.

Plant Shipping

2011-04-23T19:45:00.002-05:00

We're slightly behind on bare-root dormant shipping; we should be able to start on Tuesday the 26th. In addition to all the snowstorms and such, we've had some unexpectedly missing personnel in the past month, and are a couple of weeks behind. Also, Philip had a tooth pulled on Thursday, but I'll spare you the rest of the details.

Standard tubelings are coming along well, and we expect to be starting the decapitation process to harden them for the field next week. If the weather is reasonable, this should result in first shipping close to the hoped-for 5/15 date.

Hopefully we'll be digging bare-root butternuts this coming week, and will alert those of you interested in receiving our last shipment of those for some time.

Chestnuts to Eat: shipping done for the season.

2011-04-07T21:03:00.003-05:00

Since it's that time of year, and what we have left will sprout like mad if we mail it, we are no longer taking orders for or shipping chestnuts from the 2010 harvest to eat. We are working on a couple of new processing methods, and may be able to offer a couple of processed chestnut items later on. Thanks for understanding!

Also, while we're at it: current order processing is about a week behind; today we handled orders up to about April 2, and our next order processing date is on the 12th.

Short Course This Weekend

2011-04-07T14:52:00.002-05:00

The short course is going ahead as planned this weekend; at the moment we've got around 20 attendees in total. We can take last-minute registrants, so if you haven't registered yet don't let that stop you!

Click this link for directions to Eagle Bluff.

Events start with supper on Friday at 5:30 PM; doors lock at 10 so let us know if you'll arrive after that!

Continental breakfast Saturday at 8, lectures start at 9 and go ALL day.

Breakfast at 8 and lectures at 9 on Sunday

Directions to Badgersett for the tour/field class on Monday (scroll down on that page).

We're looking forward to seeing you there!

Latest excuse

2011-04-01T11:08:00.005-05:00

Quite a lot of our work here on the farm consists of coming up with new excuses for "why we haven't gotten back to you yet."

Here's the latest one:

Like all good drama, there is both tragedy and joy in this story. This is "Atlas", born 1:30 AM, March 31st, 2011; about 12 hours before this photo. His sire was Brigadier. But- his sire is dead. We lost him to colic, months ago; a devastating thing for us, and still painful.

He left us with two mares pregnant; and yet more tragedy. The day before Atlas was born, his half-sister was born- in a breech position, and she did not survive. Meg was able to save the mare, which was great, but did not entirely ease the pain of the lost foal.

Then- 24 hours later- Atlas arrived. His dam is Lacey, an Appaloosa. He seems to have his father's size. It was mostly an easy birth, but he still needed help. His hips are so big they stuck; Meg had to pull and rotate, to get him out. She was there.

Then there were hours of "imprinting". It's critical to get a foal used to humans immediately; all of us had to spend time with him. Not onerous- but time consuming.

And in the background there, you see a big part of the reason for the horses. Grass. In hazel rows.

Last fall, before chestnut harvest, we did put the horses on pasture under the chestnut trees. We used temporary electric fence, which they are trained to, and watched carefully. Mostly, we wanted them to mow the grass, so we could find and pick up chestnuts. But the results were actually far better than we hoped. They mowed the grass- and they also cleared brush, under trees were machines can't go. I think the dollar value of the work they did, in terms of cost of diesel fuel and human labor replaced, was certainly more than $2,000.

At this point; we think we'll be able, in a few years, to show that the expenses of keeping and managing the animals will actually total out as less than the alternative expenses of machinery, time, and fuel necessary to control grass in the nut plantings.

We've experimented a bit with the horses and hazels; and initial results are more than encouraging. Even in a couple rather uncontrolled circumstances, the horses leave hazel bushes virtually untouched, apart from an experimental taste here and there.

We'll see.

We have plants!

2011-03-26T15:28:00.006-05:00

In this picture you can see some of the over 20,000 plants we have started in the main, solar-heated greenhouse (starting on February 2; this picture taken Feb. 28). Each of those tags is in one frame = 98 plants! This is more than we produced all last year, but we are already sold out of some classes. Below is a copy of the email I just sent out to our catalog list; send an email to orders@badgersett.com if you didn't get that email, and want to be on the list.

These availability numbers are of course estimates, because of variability in seed germination, the growing season, and customers' cancellation or postponement of outstanding orders. If you want plants that are "sold out", you can still send in your order to save your spot in line for when they do become available, and if you specify "ship when ready" for a ship date, we may be able to get you plants earlier than we expected. As always, your order is more likely to be filled if you specify that you WILL take substitutions.

PLEASE NOTE: We have reduced our minimum order to $50, but this has not yet been changed on the website.

REGARDING EXPERIMENTAL HAZELS: These are rated "Experimental" because they either have a teeny bit of Eastern Filbert Blight on them, or we don't have enough years of crop records in the database. A substantial number of these plants will end up being upgraded to "Guaranteed" as we process the backlog of data from the past several harvests. In long-term planting planning, we would be very comfortable planting 50% Experimental. Higher percentage experimental at higher densities will have marginally higher initial costs, but are likely to produce a substantially better final stand.

HAZELS:
http://www.badgersett.com/plants/orderhazels.html
-------
BARE ROOT: Sold out except for:
Medium/Experimental Medium: about 100 available
Medium-Nut Wildlife/ Experimental MNW: about 100 available
Wildlife/ Wildlife-Select: about 30 available

STANDARD:
Select parents definitely sold out through 2011, and we may be reaching "sold out" for 2012 shipment.
All others sold out until 2012, except for standard tubelings of the following classes:

Guaranteed Wildlife and Wildlife-Select: Limited; may be sold out.
Experimental Medium-Nut Wildlife: Thousands available.
Experimental Medium: Thousands available.
Experimental Large: Thousands available.
Experimental Extra-Large: Limited, may be sold out.

Chestnuts:
http://www.badgersett.com/plants/orderchestnuts.html
----------
BARE ROOT:
All-Purpose: about 100 available
Nut type: about 300 available
Tree type: sold out

STANDARD:
All-Purpose: Thousands available.
Nut type: Thousands available.
Tree type: Limited, not yet sold out.

Hickories:
http://www.badgersett.com/plants/orderhickories.html
----------
BARE ROOT:
About 100 available.

STANDARD:
Availability is excellent. Please note that this is the first year we're really shipping these, and we have not fully evaluated our standard establishment practices for the hickories. Therefore, mortality may be higher. They are still covered by our standard survival guarantee, which allows for a graded discount on replacement plants depending on your mortality rate.

Butternuts:
-----------
Extremely limited supply of coppiced (top cut off) 6-0 bare-root nursery stock. Notify us if you're interested; we will let those interested know when availability and timing are clear. Special pricing and ship date restrictions apply.

Denise Walser-Kolar Presents Badgersett Hazel Paintings Going To London

2011-03-02T15:52:00.007-06:00

(click for larger view. low-resolution details of larger drawings)

These are all paintings of Badgersett hybrid hazels; we've worked with Ms. Walser-Kolar to provide material for the past two years. Now, we are extremely proud to announce, she has been invited to show her work at the Royal Horticultural Society Botanical Art Show, in London; this March. This event and her work were covered in the Rochester Post Bulletin, a week ago (link no longer working).

We've seen small-scale proofs of all of her works for this exhibit, and they're really quite outstanding! As soon as I get the database updated, we'll be offering at least some of the earliest of this series she did as greeting cards; possibly prints and (with some further work) calendars as well. I also very much look forward to seeing these works in person. Congratulations, Denise!

Hazels In the Greenhouse

2011-02-28T01:47:00.002-06:00

Just a quick note- our initial round of hazel production for the season is filling the tables in the all-season greenhouse, and pretty close to on schedule. I'll try to post a picture or two soon. Lots to do prepping for the short course, handling spring plant orders, training a new secretary, preparing for attempts to actually get sufficiently capitalized to do all this stuff, keeping the plants growing, and so on!

2011 Short Course: April 8-11 at Eagle Bluff

2011-01-20T08:17:00.003-06:00

We've finally set the Short Course dates for this year, April 8-11. Arrive Friday evening for dinner with the crew and some social time, intensive classes held Saturday and Sunday with a few hands-on activities, and stick around on Monday the 11th for a tour and field instruction at Badgersett.

As you might guess from the lack of posts, we've been overbusy and experiencing some sickness post-holiday. I'll post more details and links here as soon as I can, and update the appropriate places on the main site.

Local Chestnut Retailers

2010-12-22T09:17:00.002-06:00

You can get Badgersett chestnuts from Harmony Foods in Harmony, Oneota Co-Op & Quillin's in Decorah, Good Food Co-Op and Zzest in Rochester, and the Village Quillin's in La Crosse, and also from Heartland Restaurant and Farm Direct Market in St. Paul. Buying from these folks is cheaper than direct from us, because you save on shipping and some of our packing/handling labor. Ask them where the Badgersett chestnuts are!

Still time for Holiday Nuts!

2010-12-18T20:32:00.002-06:00

Hello folks,

It's late, I know! We did just get most of our outstanding nut orders shipped today, and although we expect to sell out by Christmas we do have a few left that you can snatch up, if you haven't already. We thought we should let you know:

DATES:
If you make your e-mail order by 5 PM Monday, and you made it early enough that there are still nuts left, we should be able to get it shipped on Tuesday for Christmas delivery via our standard nut shipping (that is, at least, according to USPS). Barring, of course, further blizzards.

What we've got available:

FIRST TIME: BADGERSETT HYBRID HICKORIES! These look mostly like shagbark or shellbark hickories, but the shells are thin enough to crack with a hand cracker! Most nuts taste like premium pecan, some will have a good real hickory taste, and some will even taste like black walnut. Limited supply, and in 1-pound bags only. NOTE: though they'll crack with a hand cracker, you'll want a nut pick.

We still have Orchard Sampler, Large, and Old Fashion chestnuts here and ready to ship, though this year's Old Fashion is nearly gone.

We are shipping hazels (and now offer a smaller 1-lb sampler), but keep in mind that hazels on your order may still slow delivery. Employee sickness has slowed down our husking in the past week.

Order nuts here: http://www.badgersett.com/nuts/ordernuts.html

Check out some updated chestnut plier peeling method videos here: http://badgersettresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/updated-chestnut-peeling-video.html

As Dad observed in a recent press release, "It sounds so simple it can seem silly- but it’s actually the difference between an easy happy experience, and yet another path to Holiday Hell."

And see our nut recipes here, including gluten-free stuffing: http://www.badgersett.com/info/recipes.html

(and a quick note about plants: we have a good supply of chestnuts and hazels for 2011 delivery still, however we are SOLD OUT of Select material, and Guaranteed XL. More than usual of our material this year is classed Experimental, since for the first time we'll be selling seedlings of Cycle 4 material. More advanced genetics, and better nut quality, but "Experimental" because we don't have the long track record we require for our EFB-guaranteed material.)

Happy Holidays from Badgersett!

Blizzard

2010-12-12T08:36:00.002-06:00

One of those things that happens. We are snowed in, by the blizzard; and will not be able to even get our roads plowed out probably until Monday afternoon. At the moment, Meg is attempting to dig her way into the main greenhouse- both doors are blocked by long 3-4 foot deep drifts; the first time that's ever happened. Water access for the horses is only possible from inside the greenhouse, and one of the mares is just about to foal; any time now.

We won't be able to ship chestnuts until Tuesday; but there should be no problem by then.

Updated chestnut peeling video

2010-12-08T18:27:00.011-06:00

We're pretty proud of the fact that we've actually invented a new way - or two new ways - to peel chestnuts.

Here's the YouTube video; this is the long version, for Method 1. We had to split the video into two pieces for You Tube, so Method 2 is separate. For those in a hurry; there's The Short Version, which has both methods and much less commentary. (Plus, I don't sing, in The Short Version, so you can escape that hazard if you wish...)

Another thing we're proud of, is that a few years ago our chestnuts were featured in a substantial article by Corby Kummer, Senior Food Editor of The Atlantic Monthly.

He liked them. Quite a lot. Corby cooked most of his in the microwave; cutting them in half (at our suggestion). If you use a microwave; be sure to use Method 1, not Method 2- the microwave heats them so fast that sometimes #2 is just not enough area to let steam out, and you may have an explosion even though they're pierced.

Nuts to Eat!

2010-10-29T11:18:00.002-05:00

Hello folks,

Just a quick notice- we do have nuts to eat available for shipment at the usual dates listed on our nut order page. We'll hopefully be updating that page, and potentially prices, in the next week or so. As always, ordering now will lock in today's price!

Note: our supply of Old Fashioned chestnuts is relatively low this year, and we may sell out early.

Badgersett: Processing & Distributing

2010-10-08T21:31:00.003-05:00

Chestnut and hickory harvests are winding down, and we're moving into the next seasonal tasks: fertilizing, pre-winter pest control, firewood for the cabin, and not least of all post-harvest work for all three crops.

Hazel seed processing is nearly done, but nearly all of our hazels to eat have yet to be husked (though they have been curing in-husk since harvest). We've got a substantial amount of the chestnut harvest in the curing stage, and a few of the hickories as well. Hickory post-harvest is more experimental for us, and this year the hickory data is critical and a pain in the neck– both because the trees are getting crowded and we need to make coppice/cull decisions.

As of October 5, Badgersett Research Corp. has officially entered into the "processor and distributor" business; we've bought our first batch of nuts (unhusked and uncured) from one of our growers. We'll buy yours too, in any condition. We will currently buy fully husked and well-cured (not overheated, rancid, or over-dried) nuts, of sufficient size and fit for human consumption, for $3/lb; prices are adjusted from there based on basic quality and required processing.

Marketing your own crop is definitely doable, but it takes substantial time and energy. We've got the demand already lined up, from small-order direct sales to requests for container-loads per week (which we won't be filling for some time...). Now, you've got access to those markets through us!

We'll pay by check, or (for a 15% bonus) in credit with BRC for plant or consulting purchases. We can estimate the yield and pay you at delivery, or pay using known yield after processing. Due to our limited resources and the associated increased risk, payment at delivery will invoke a 5% lower payment.

THIS YEAR ONLY: we'll provide full yield analysis of your crop for no additional charge. We expect this to be offered for a fee in the future.

We've got enough folks around that we can take delivery at almost any time, but you can call ahead at (888) 557-4211 x7 to verify that somebody will be at the farm to take your delivery, particularly if you want payment at that time.

yes, we've got big nuts.

2010-09-26T17:13:00.005-05:00

Chestnut (and hickory) harvest is in full swing; we're about 1/3 of the way into it. The 80°F, flooding rains and high winds of a few days ago (we got off easy, only 4.3" in 24 hrs) brought down a huge number of nuts. We're almost caught up with the pick up process, and the cool weather now has slowed the drop slightly to let us catch our breath a little today.

We're finding it has been an above average year for chestnuts; size of nuts and crops per tree are both up. For those who persist in thinking it's not possible to grow

"big" chestnuts in places like Minnesota, we offer the following:

Just a quickie photo there; too much contrast, and they need to be held in a human hand for actual scale to be effective. Basically; these are huge, by any standards.

Chestnut harvest is being helped out this year by our horses; we're not using them to pull carts of nuts; we put them to pasture in the mature chestnut groves. Using electric fence, they were confined inside particular rows for a short period of intensive grazing/traffic; usually about 6 days, with some variability for rain.

It was an experiment that turned out extremely well indeed. Of course they mowed the grass, saving us diesel fuel, tractor, and labor costs; but in addition they cleared brush and weeds under the trees where the tractor mower cannot go, saving huge amounts of human hand labor, and their hoof traffic proved highly effective in flattening the ground surface.

Over the years, the ground under the bigger trees has been getting rougher and rougher, from a variety of causes, right down to earthworm castings (which can build up in one place over the years, with no tillage). The rough surface has made it very labor intensive to get the nuts picked up. We use "Nut Wizards" now extensively, and great as they are, they are still not able to pick up a nut out of a hole or next to a big bump.

The horses really flattened the ground, though they needed a little watching to be sure they didn't over use one area, or pound a place into mud in rainy weather. Our Friesian stallion has extra large hooves, typical of the breed, which I think made him more effective, and with less actual soil compaction.

Illinois Harvest Pictures

2010-09-22T09:07:00.004-05:00

As promised, here are a couple of pictures of the Illinois harvest:

Here is most of the crew, gathered around the full harvest at sunset on the second day.

The harvest pile from a different angle. I'll try to post some pictures of it drying in our upper greenhouse; it covers most of one of the 40'x6' tables. As Philip said, this was around 20% or so of the nuts that were originally on the bushes; it was a pretty late harvest for that field. Even so, there were a number of outstanding bushes and parental lines still holding on to a substantial crop, and still ready for a shaker-based harvester. We'll soon be starting to coordinate machine-based harvest there and at Badgersett Farm #1, as well as insuring that both places get some fertilizer this fall.

Chestnut Harvest! Come help next weekend!

2010-09-19T09:03:00.003-05:00

Hello folks,

The main chestnut harvest is starting in earnest. We're doing just a little more cleanup and mowing under some of the trees, but the horses are out (having done their part in a few rows), and now as you walk through the chestnuts you hear mostly two sounds: bluejays, and nuts dropping.

It's early enough this year that we're unlikely to get any problems with an early freeze, and if we don't get any serious wind in the next couple of weeks it should go pretty smoothly.

We'll do a farm-work harvest event next weekend, September 25-26. There will be PLENTY of chestnuts to pick up- it can be a sight to see.

I'm still over-busy, but I will get pictures of the Illinois hazel harvest up before too long. It was about a ton fresh unhusked (deer and squirrels had gotten quite a bit by the time we got there)- still enough to start the next level of machine and market development, though. (Also, don't forget- we'll buy your nuts this year).

Talk today in Oberlin! And harvest status.

2010-09-16T08:17:00.003-05:00

I know this notice is super-late, but figured I'd try to get it in anyhow. Chestnut harvest time here on the farm; all super busy.

Philip will be giving a talk on Woody Agriculture at Oberlin College today, 12:20-1:15. The talk is open to the public, and will be held in the Craig lecture hall of the Science Center which is on "North" campus, at the corner of Lorain and Woodland St. It is a large lecture hall on the second floor. You can tell anyone to just ask someone to point them in the right direction.

I will do my best to get more harvest updates here soon. Hazel harvest is done; we have enough seed that in 2011 we should be able to produce 2-4 times as many as we did this year. I'm pretty sure we're already sold out of select material, however. Hickory harvest has started, and chestnut harvest is beginning. If anybody wants to show up on the farm this weekend for harvest help, there should be chestnuts to pick up!

Dr. Susan Wiegrefe Joins Badgersett Research

2010-09-12T14:08:00.004-05:00

Badgersett Research Corporation is immensely pleased and proud to announce that Dr. Susan Wiegrefe is joining the company.

Dr. Wiegrefe's doctorate is in plant breeding, and she comes to us from the Morton Arboretum, where she had responsibility for breeding maples, Viburnums, and several other groups, and from a professorship at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls.

Dr. Wiegrefe will be involved in all aspects of crop development at BRC, for hazels, chestnuts, and hickories. Besides her unusually broad comprehension of the many aspects of botany, she has also been a specialist in plant propagation, and will be working both in the field and the greenhouse to advance our projects using those skills.

A large reason for our enthusiasm about hiring Dr. Sue is that she is not limited in her interests to just the plant genetics; but is deeply interested in working on all the integrative factors needed for woody agriculture to move into the mainstream. Besides taking chief responsibility for the apple crop this fall, next spring she will be taking primary responsibility for our long postponed efforts to add sheep to the cropping systems here.

Welcome!

Illinois Harvest info-

2010-09-12T13:53:00.002-05:00

Here's the very quick skinny on how the hazelnut harvest went at the Illinois planting: really good; considering.

Sorry to say Dr. Brandon has all the photos at the moment, and he's up to his neck in the regular alligators; and I'm in Virginia.

Details: alas, only about 20% of the nuts we saw in mid-August were still on the bushes when we arrived Sept. 4. Three factors; we'd had several days of very high winds just before (the kind that blows semis off roads); deer had been eating a couple specific breeding-lines of the hazels far more intensively than we'd ever seen before, and there were more tree squirrels in the plantings than we'd expected (gray squirrels, is what we saw).

We did pick up a fair number of good nuts from the ground, but only a tiny fraction of what had been blown off, of course. Sept. 4 is extremely late to start harvest, of course, so this was not entirely unanticipated. We kept hoping a machine would materialize, which made us put it off longer than we would have otherwise.

With 8 pickers, it took us 1.5 days to pick what was there; not bad. We DID get in a substantial quantity of nuts; Dr. B has a photo of us all and the pile of bags; we'll get it up here soon.

So; no tonnage; but, lots of good news:

The bud mite is well established throughout the planting.

EFB (Anisogramma) is present, though we'd failed to find it earlier, and is well established on several plants; some of its companion microorganisms are also already present.

The overall quality of the nuts from this planting are very greatly improved from earlier plantings, demonstrating that BRC breeding techniques work well.

The genetic diversity in the planting includes several variations that will make machine harvest easier. A primary chore ahead of us is choosing which of several harvest strategies to pursue.

The genetic diversity in the planting was also important in a little extra incentive to Dr. Wiegrefe; as you'll see in the next post...

A bit of info on the Big Picking event..

2010-09-01T17:23:00.003-05:00

Hello, Meg here:

Both Philip and Brandon are swamped getting the picking weekend organized as well as getting the work here running well enough to leave for a few days.

Therefore...

I'm going to be the on-farm center to coordinate volunteers, meetings, ride-shares and so on.

Here's the scoop...

Philip and Brandon will be on the site as early as they possibly can Friday, which MIGHT mean they will leave Thursday night as it is quite a distance away. They are willing to guide anyone in from the (sign up/call in to pick to get this info...) We are doing this for two reasons, first this is a private site (both for Badgersett and the owner) and also because the roads are highly confusing to navigate and literally dangerous in some places. Call me and LEAVE A MESSAGE at (888)557-4211 ext. 6; that will alert me through my email. I will be checking constantly throughout the weekend.

(For those wondering; the site is in NE IL; right in the corner.)

Driving arrangements can be made. Car-pools are welcome to meet at Badgersett and leave one or more of their vehicles here. Please let me know if you want to car-pool and when you will be arriving at Badgersett so I can set you up with like minded people.

Brandon and Philip will welcome a few riders going with them, but those people must stay at the site the whole weekend (returning Monday morning) or arrange to ride with someone leaving earlier in the weekend.

Sleeping arrangements are a little loose at the moment. We have two triple rooms reserved at a local motel in which we can probably stuff about 12 people. If you need a place to sleep, remember that they are available, but you may be sharing your sleeping arrangement with some new friends! Also if you are bringing a RV, tent, or even a van that you are planning to sleep in please let us know so we can find you a place.

Please remember that we would love to have you for the entire weekend, but if it is not possible feel free to come for the amount of time you can spare. I would just like to know when you will be arriving and leaving so I may arrange to have enough picking supplies for you as well as letting the guys know when you will be there.

Please feel free to call or email me starting from the instant you receive this so I can make this weekend a great experience for us all.

Your urgent help needed.

2010-08-28T15:29:00.004-05:00

First; look at this video. It'll take a few minutes. The first 30 seconds or so of film show UNfertilized row; after that (when the bushes get big and green) the rows were fertilized.

That is our Badgersett Research Corporation expansion farm in Illinois.

You are looking at some 3-4 miles of harvestable hazel bushes; with a substantial crop ripe; right now today.

So far, both BEI and Korvan have failed to respond to our repeated requests for a picking machine, to start working on real machine development (in spite of our offer to pay up to $3k in costs).

We will be picking these rows by hand; on Sept. 2/3/and 4. All day; fast; all the people we can get. Almost everyone there will be volunteers.

We're expecting to harvest up to 2 tons of dry nuts; perhaps more. These will finally give us the nuts needed to work seriously on cracking/sorting etc. machines. We're hoping Lee Pothast will be working on this harvest to develop his husker further.

If you want to see what a real hazel harvest is supposed to look like; of nuts at commercial potential today (no 20 years from now) - you should come; volunteer; camp overnight, and help get this incredibly historic harvest in. This is it. The first real full scale harvest of neohybrid hazels.

Be aware; the nuts in this field are 10X better than yours. Or the ones you've seen at Badgersett. They represent the cutting edge of our breeding work (as of 2003). So they are 15-20 years beyond anything at Arbor Day Farm, for example; which contained no cutting edge material, even at the time it was planted.

Bring anyone you want who wants to help; but note; this is a restricted private research site; belonging to Badgersett; persons representing competitors or researchers from other entities are BARRED from attending this event. The owner does not want the site public; if you are coming, we'll arrange to meet groups in a town in NW Illinois, and then guide you to the farm.

More info will follow here; if you can come; comment here with your email for more info; or call our new corporate toll free number, 888-557-4211, and leave your info.

Now- look at that video again.

Field Day: More Details

2010-08-20T07:39:00.003-05:00

A few quick updates and details about the field day as we do our final day of preparation:

Remember, use the map on our website to find us- navigation systems usually don't work.
Registration starts at 9:30 this year. First tours at 10.
Morning tours: Woody Ag, and Mature Hazel Management. Hazel coppice demonstration!
If things go well, we'll have a lunchtime raptor roost raising.
Afternoon tours: Hybrid Hazels (possibly including harvest demo), and Animals in Woody Agriculture. Farm-hatched guinea keets!
3 PM other demonstrations and discussions start, possibly including fertilizer demo; brush puller demo, and husking. Q&A session.

The weather is looking pretty good; we hope you'll be able to make it!

Working in the Chestnut Shade

2010-08-12T16:14:00.003-05:00

--- This post is from Meg, who due to my swamped-ness isn't yet an "official" author on this blog. -BLR -----

It is HOT today. The weather sites on the internet claim that the temperature in Canton MN is 90 F and the thermometer on the north wall of the cabin is reading 89F in the shade. So I would conclude that it is HOT.

We were doing harvest and other related field work this morning, but we abandoned that in the heat and are now working in the shade of the chestnuts. The plan is to do some pruning and clearing out to make chestnut harvest a tiny bit, or a whole lot, easier.

Hazel harvest is trickling in. I hope it will wait to crush us in an avalanche of nuts until I am in the cast so I can actually go out and help the field crews.

Brandon is continuing to scare the crows with the shotgun. If luck holds he'll hit one or two that we can hang up as a warning to other crows to enter our fields at their peril. Not that he's a bad shot, but crows are really smart. He's also wrangling the field workers and volunteers. Sometimes I wonder if it's a bit like herding cats, but they are getting a lot of work done and we are grateful for the help.

Philip is working on press releases and the tour content for the field day. He's sequestered upstairs with earplugs in so he can actually work and not be driven insane by Elly the Dervish. He, and all of us at Badgersett, are hoping to make it a really great event this year. Hopefully we'll see some of our readers and friends there.

Consequently, I am writing this quick update. I hope you liked it.

Meg

Pest Control

2010-08-06T22:09:00.006-05:00

Never a dull moment!

Pest control– the harvest has started, and so have the squirrels and crows (jays and woodpeckers come later; mice and ground squirrels are a bit harder to see sometimes). Critical to know- squirrels and chipmunks will steal nuts before they are ripe; so you must really be on your guard. I was harassing them today, starting before dawn, with some good effect. Permanently de-commissioned four red squirrels; those little guys certainly pack away the nuts. We also put up a new hawk roost today; I think our first one made from a chestnut tree. Combine that with keeping the crows back, and maybe we'll get the hawks back for a bit. The owls, of course, use the roosts at night without worrying about crows at all.

Now (or maybe last week) is a good time to check out the vintage post on checking ripeness, and on determining ripeness, as well. New growers should check them diligently; you'll lose them! Before my work today, we'd already lost the entire crop on one of our earlier bushes.

19th Annual Badgersett Field Day, August 21 (and HARVEST)

2010-08-01T09:53:00.003-05:00

Every year we have our annual field day on the third Saturday in August; this year that is about as late as it can get– the 21st. Hazel harvest will be in full swing at that point; there may be fewer nuts left on the bushes but there will be more in processing.

We've been a little slow in getting the reminders out for the field day this year, partly because we're trying to nail down a machine harvest demonstration for the field day, and would like to include that in our notices, and it will have a substantial effect on the schedule of the day. Other than that, the form will be quite similar to last year, so you can start your planning based on that in the meantime.

As always there is a lot more for me to say here, but I need to get our greenhouse worker trained in watering today so that I can be out in the field more for harvest. We'll be posting notices about farm work scheduling (for harvest, hawk roost raising, etc) in the near future– let us know if you want to be on the weekend worker list!

Harvesting- Chestnut Poles

2010-07-02T17:15:00.007-05:00

That's what we're doing today- cutting some of our older chestnut trees; to use as poles for our "raptor" roosts. We hope to let them dry just a bit (with the help of the leaves) before we have to wrassle them into place. They are really important if you don't want the mice, bluejays, 13-liners, etc., to get all the hazelnuts.

This is a Great Horned Owl using one of our "hawk roosts". They'll start using them immediately - but you DO have to put them up. This pole is black locust, but our stand is getting thin. Chestnut is pretty much just as rot resistant.

We need quite a few new ones; these will be as dry as we can get them in a week or two. If you want to learn how to get a 30' tall tree up; think about coming and giving us a hand; we can use the help.

Hazel Tubelings: Shipping, and Sold Out

2010-05-27T07:30:00.008-05:00

The good news: we start shipping this week, at the beginning of the order/shipping/pick-up queue. We've got some hazels ready to go, and chestnuts not far behind. Keep in mind that this does not mean that we are ready to ship all of our outstanding orders; many of the plants for our currently outstanding orders will not be ready until July.

The less good news: we're sold out of hazel plants for the year. If your order has already been received and processed, there is a good chance that we will be able to fulfill even the most recent orders; however new orders and email orders not yet processed will most likely not be able to ship until next year.
We are particularly low on Large-select and Xtra Large-select material; I'm afraid that there's a good chance that some of the orders we've already taken for these classes of plants may not be filled this year. For those of you in this boat, you will have the option to convert your order to another class with higher availability, postpone it until next year, or take a refund.

We are essentially sold out of Chestnuts as well, but there may be a little wiggle-room for All-Purpose and Nut-type trees. Due to less stringent germination requirements, outstanding chestnut orders will likely all be ready to ship by late June/ early July.

Why are we sold out? Mostly, it boils down to: insufficient hazel harvest labor, extraordinarily bad weather for chestnut harvest, and the compounding effect those had on the timely processing of the hazel seed harvest.

This picture is of Philip harvesting chestnuts at 9 PM on October 10; we scrambled that day to get all we could in before the freeze that night. I was able to keep harvesting until about 2:30 AM, when the crop remaining had frozen; the greenhouse thermometer said it got down to 17.8° F that night. Harvest had already been slowed substantially by a poorly timed windstorm and wet weather; this very early freeze claimed more than 95% of the overall chestnut harvest. We did, nevertheless, manage to get enough in to cover the orders we've currently got in the database.

We don't like being sold out this early in the season, and we apologize– but that's the way it is. Orders can still be placed for next season, and this will effectively mark the beginning of the delivery queue for the 2011 planting season. This means: if you want plants for next May-June delivery, it might be a good idea to place those orders now. We do expect availability to be very substantially improved, as it has already been this year compared to last.

Regarding the timing of shipping, this year the hazel pipeline is a little slow, but the plants we'll be delivering are very strong and healthy. Badgersett is a sustainability-first business; heat and power in the greenhouses comes from the sun, and that's it. This means that nearly all stages of plant production, including post-harvest processing, stratification, germination and actual plant growth, depend on the weather. We do what we can to get plants ready as quickly as possible, but the bottom line is that the plants are ready when they are ready, and not before. We will only ship plants worthy of our guarantees, and often this means that they will ship later than your requested ship date.

It should also be kept in mind that we have a long queue of orders; currently we have some orders made in 2008 that are ready for completion of shipping this year. Orders made in January are likely to ship before mid-July, and possibly even in June. Most orders made in April of this year won't come to the head of the queue until our second flush of plants is ready in July.

This information has been available in a shorter, less specific form in our FAQ, which does state that you can contact us for your order status and get a fairly short turn-around. That is unfortunately not the case right now. We are more focussed on the quality of the tubelings than on responding to order inquiries right now. We're sorry that we have been slow in responding, but we are convinced that plants of the highest quality will make everybody much happier in the long run. We sincerely appreciate your patience!

Plant Shipping Status and Work this Weekend

2010-05-20T09:48:00.006-05:00

We have not yet shipped any standard tubelings this season, and do not expect to do so for another week or so. We've had a lot of delays with this year's planting season, some of which can be traced to two deaths in the family last December, and Meg's January foot injury, which is still slowing her down. Most recently, we've had a couple of weeks of colder weather which slows down the finishing stage substantially.We do, however, have a lot of strong tubelings in the pipeline– the closest fully-leafed-out hazels in the finishing house shown above have been decapitated and are nearly ready to ship; we will get them to you as soon as we can. Remember, tubelings can be planted throughout the growing season! Most of our planting at Badgersett happens in June, July and August.

For those of you still placing orders for planting this year, I apologize that our order handling has been slowed down for the past couple of weeks. At this point it's possible that we are sold out of some classes of tubelings, and we will have a better idea of where we stand when we process some greenhouse inventory numbers within the next couple of days.

Farm work this weekend: final hazel coppice of the year, and chestnut field maintenance (mostly consisting of pruning & tree removal). Saturday only this weekend, starting at 10 AM. Bring gloves!

NEW! Greenhouse Office, and some status.

2010-05-13T13:29:00.006-05:00

I'm writing this from the main greenhouse here at Badgersett– we had the DSL hooked up today. Now, we should be able to do more office-related work out here, rather than having to do all of it either at home or at the local elementary school. This should really help a lot, since this way I can be at "the office" and managing the new part-time greenhouse help more or less at the same time.

As I've said before, and will most likely say again– things are picking up, but we still have a long way to go. Today we should be getting to some of the order handling that has been postponed for the past couple of weeks.

The hazel and chestnut tubelings in the greenhouses look great; we've started decapitation and are hoping to get the first hazel tubeling orders of the season shipped within two weeks. Chestnuts are a little behind, but healthy and in the pipeline. Due largely to the October 10 freeze last fall (we were out gathering nuts until about 2:30 AM), we are short on Tree and All-Purpose type chestnuts, but have plenty of Nut type left. If you've got an order for Tree or AP, we may be contacting you about substitutions.

I'd better stop now, otherwise I'll start writing a book. But later on I'll try to tell you about the butternut and hazel transplanting we did last week, our increased work on hickory tubeling production (we might actually ship some this year...), the very wet weather we're having, and all the birds singing outside now (saw a yellow warbler this morning, and the bobolinks are back).

But instead, it's time for me to take care of a few orders and information requests. There are still hundreds in my inbox, and I'm sorry that we still won't get to most of them this month. But we're working on it.

markets

2010-05-11T10:16:00.002-05:00

This is just something to keep in mind-

Eating nuts daily improves cholesterol etc.

Lots of buzz on this factor recently, and it's increasing.

pocket gophers

2010-05-01T18:43:00.009-05:00

As a result of short help and lousy luck with health over the past 3 years, our pocket gopher population on the farm has metastasized. Look below for an old blog post from 2004 for abundant details and photos about how serious pocket gophers are for hazels.

In the past we've relied on the specific gopher poison we sell, "Answer" (not set up on the web yet) - which is labeled for use on food crops, and works better than anything else we'd found, in terms of dollars/time/per gopher.

However- we now have animals of various kinds, and while secondary poisoning is supposed to be uncommon, we really really don't want to take the chance with a working dog we've spent hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours on. And we have 3 dogs now.

There's also a chance of secondary poisoning for our cats (5 - 3 barn cats for horse shelter and greenhouses), and our guinea fowl/chickens, which we are hoping to actually make some tangible money with this year, besides their non-monetary contributions of tick and general bug control. If a carcass gets pulled up on the surface, and attracts flies- there will be maggots- and the poultry will eat them.

All of this is low probability; but too high for me to like it.

So- we found another path, and it's been working quite well.

Amish boys. The township here pays a $2 bounty for gophers- which is quite sensible given our terrain and soil; the erosion they can start is very serious.

As additional incentive- we pay our 2 experienced gopher trappers an extra $1/gopher; a 50% bump in their pay, basically. The township takes the 2 front feet as proof; and we take the tail.

Our boys are brothers, 10 and 14, and we usually drive them to and from their home (about 3 miles away) 3-4 days a week.

We just finished the first two weeks- total gophers = 44

This time of year this are big old gophers from last year; many lactating females, so effectively we're getting the broods too.

And these 44 came out of our most sensitive places- where they were or were about to really hurt hazels.

If you've ever trapped gophers- that's a whale of a lot. The boys and their family were seriously pleased with the $44 bucks. We've got lots more gophers. And some happy helpers.

------------------------------------------

Old Blog Post by Phil Rutter, 9/27/04 at 9:01:26 AM.

Gophers Again-

Pocket gophers- Geomys bursarius in the East, Thomomys sp. in the west; turn out to be extremely serious pests. This time of year; early Fall, is when the young of the year leave their home burrows, and invade new territory. You MUST get them out; one way or another.

This kind of gopher; pocket gophers, not the cute little stripy kind (which can eat tons of hazel NUTS if you leave your grass too long all summer and the population builds up...)

Here you see the teeth, that they cut roots with (their main food) and also use to dig with; their tremendous claws, and the deep cheek pockets that give them their name.

In 2001, the extent of the damage to young hazels by pocket gophers finally became crystal clear to us.

Hazels from 1-2 years old are too small to be very interesting to gophers; they may eat one or two, but damage will be minimal.

From 3-5 year old hazels however ARE big enough (the root systems), so that a pocket gopher may settle down and EAT. All the roots. All. Then go on to the next hazel in the line, and eat (ie. kill) that one. Then the next. This is a disaster.

Each of these sticks was a 3 year old hazel.... this is all the gopher left.

Once the hazels are a little older, their root systems are SO big that in most cases the gophers will get either full, or bored, and move on before doing lethal damage to the plant; most will survive. (There are some indications that genetics plays a role here, with native North American genes making the hazels less tasty to gophers, and European hazels getting worse damage levels. Maybe, we think.)

So - it's become critical to exclude pocket gophers from our young plantings - and yours, too.

Fall is an important time to GET them, for two big reasons:

1) They do NOT hibernate like some other rodents, and will cheerfully eat roots all winter; under frozen soil and snow where you can't get to them. 2) The juvenile gophers of the year spread out, in mid fall, and invade new areas. This is the only time you'll ever see a pocket gopher above ground; once a year, the young will get up on the surface and run like mad- maybe a mile; maybe two; then burrow in. Possibly this is a mechanism to prevent inbreeding in a mammal that otherwise moves very little from its home territory.

So, in fall, you'll see new gopher invasions, where you haven't had them before- and, these new sites are almost entirely young, DUMB gophers, which are very easily trapped.

The good news is; gophers CAN actually be controlled; unlike mice, which you could trap and remove by the hundreds, without making a dent in their population, gophers breed slowly, and trapping can actually keep them effectively out. But it's work getting there. Best way to do it is not allow them to get established in the first place.

A whole treatise on gopher control will take more than this web log to cover- main point here is; if you have gophers, GET them OUT of your hazels, right now. One gopher can easily kill 20-40 hazel plants per year; and not newly planted ones, mind you, but 3-5 year old plants, just ready to start bearing those nuts- a 5 year old hazel is vastly more valuable than a 1 year old; all that work; all that time. Hard to put a dollar value on, but we'll guess it's somewhere around $40/plant, IF you could find a similar replacement, which you can't. So; one gopher, at 40 X $40 = $1,600.

Holy Cats! Really?? Yeah, if you're counting.

Get the gophers out. Most farm neighborhoods with gophers have bounties on them; and kids and sometimes adults who make money trapping them out. Find your local gopher control folks (call the county agent if nothing else occurs to you), and get them out of your hazels, right now; before the ground freezes.

!!!

Work this weekend, April 24-25

2010-04-23T08:23:00.002-05:00

It's looking a bit like rain, but we've got plenty to do in the greenhouses as well (including cleanup and finishing hazel husking). We'll be available for work both Saturday starting at 10:30 AM and Sunday starting at 10. Chance of rain is slightly lower on Sunday, so that might be the best idea if you want to be out in the field.

Meet at the white van or greenhouse- if it's raining please don't drive any further than the white van (where the gravel on the driveway ends).

Propagation day, Sunday the 18th 9:30 AM

2010-04-17T05:28:00.005-05:00

We'll be holding a farm work-in-training day this Sunday, April 17. Field cloning. We're attempting a serious push this year, towards the goal of transforming some acres of Badgersett Farm from research-oriented to production-oriented management. It's time.

Show up on the farm around 9:30 AM. After your first full day of farm work, you'll be earning credit towards plant purchases or up to 50% of short course or consulting fees. Plus, this is the most effective way to learn Woody Agriculture and NeoHybrid™ Hazel management from those who know it best. If you're seriously interested in learning, it just might be a good idea to follow the advice of Mario Batali. Do you want to learn how to grow hazels?

Short Course!

2010-04-17T04:38:00.006-05:00

We held the Woody Ag Short Course last weekend, with 18 attendees. Philip ended up with some serious stomach trouble for the weekend, so I ended up doing all the lectures. A little more than I bargained for(!), but it seems to have worked out alright.We had two days of intense presentations, including a new introduction to the Badgersett NeoHybrid breeding program, and the hands-on nut quality workshop. Half of the attendees managed to stay to stretch their legs on the farm tour Monday, which included Philip's hands-on introduction to our proprietary in-field propagation method.

The audio and presentation timing for the course was recorded this time around, and we expect to have a "first cut" set of DVDs ready to send out at least within the next few months. We will send this to all previous attendees as well, since we've been promising to send the presentations ever since the first short course in 2006. Technology and personnel will make this a lot more straightforward this time around.

This was a really great group of people, with serious interest from a number of different angles. Thanks to everybody for showing up!

Badgersett hazel genetics- and the U of Nebraska-

2010-03-28T10:29:00.007-05:00

It has come to our attention that at the recent hazel convention in La Crosse, a paper was presented stating that the "Arbor Day Lodge" hybrid hazel planting (100% of which is from Badgersett, though papers from the U of N routinely do not state that) - has only around 0.5% of the bushes that might have commercial potential.

Our response would be- "well, duh."

That's exactly what we would expect from those hazels.

But then- we know what that planting contains, genetically - in detail.

And neither the Arbor Day Foundation, nor the University of Nebraska does. They actually have no idea whatsoever, what those hazels ARE, genetically.

Why?

They never asked. How many of their researchers have ever visited Badgersett to investigate the source?

Zero.

Yes, we do see that as a problem.

In fact, we DID tell the Arbor Day Foundation what kind of hazels we were planting there. Not in detail, because they didn't have anyone on board who was assigned to keep track of such information, at the time. We always assumed that anyone interested in those hazels - would ASK - and we'd be happy to tell them.

But- Arbor Day forgot- and the U of N- has never- ever- bothered to ask.

Basically- if I were going to spend a lot of time studying anything- I'd darn sure want to learn as much about the origins of what I was studying. Wouldn't you?

we've been quiet-

2010-03-23T16:53:00.002-05:00

Whenever we have a rather long quiet period here- where we don't make new blog posts, don't get phone calls answered, and don't get emails answered- it's 10 to 1 that the reason is someone's health.

In this case, it's Meg's. She's on crutches, and confined to the house; has been for over a week now. 3 trips to the doctor so far; more to come, mostly in Rochester (50 miles).

She's had a number of foot injuries in the past; it seems they're all ganging up on her now. About 10 days ago, the pain in her heel became really unbearable. She'd been ignoring it for a month or so. Called the nurse help line- the nurse said "90%- you've got a broken foot. Get in to urgent care, now."

X rays and scans later- she has torn fascia and ligaments- and a bone spur growing into it all. Surgery, most likely, but the doctors have to try everything else, first (insurance).

Thank goodness I've got Brandon here to help pick up the load; but it still means we're a lot more tired at the end of the day.

And- we may be entering a drought. Too much beautiful sunny weather; no real rain in sight. Which means "rainy-day" chores, like writing, get put off.

More before long.

spare 2 minutes...

2010-03-14T14:33:00.008-05:00

I've got about 2 minutes "spare" here, and ran into these photos; which I thought I'd stick up here. (Click for bigger versions- recommended)

This is what our "to eat" hazels look like these days; this is actually what we ship. The upper photo is of a loaded sorting tray, just as it is when we're doing the final sort, removing any weeviled or spoiled nuts we can find.

There's been a substantial change in the overall size and quality; as we include more of the 3rd cycle plants- which are now producing, but not tested enough to use for seed. A lot of them have outstanding nuts.

As you know, if you're harvesting your own, the smaller ones frequently have extremely thin shells; paper thin- or thinner. We do discard heavy shelled bushes in the breeding process.

Short Course Details Posted

2010-03-10T13:24:00.004-06:00

Initial details for the April 10-11 Short Course have been posted on badgersett.com at the 2010 Woody Ag short course event page. We recommend arriving in the evening of Friday the 9th, since the classes start at 9 AM on Saturday. We aim to have it all wrapped up by 4 PM on Sunday. For those who are interested there will also be a Monday tour of the farm.

Please do check out the event page for details, but I'll put the current rough course outline here as well:

Day 1: Classes will start with Woody Agriculture theory and progress to details of establishment and planning, primarily focussing on hazels:

Woody Agriculture Introduction: Theory and Energetics: Why; and How
Basic Hazel Biology—plant morphology, physiology, genetics, species ecology
Chestnuts, Hickories, and Others
NEW! The Badgersett Hazel Breeding Program - Specifics on Cycles 1 through 4, with the math.
Establishment— site selection, planting, and weed control
NEW! Life Cycle Hazel Spacing— with effects on yield and long-term management

Day 2: The detail continues, with fertilization, pest management, marketing and sales:

Fertilizing— how to assess and optimize hazel fertility
Harvest and Post Harvest— ripeness assessment, state of the art hand harvest techniques and machine capability
Pest Management in Detail—mammals, birds, insects, plants and fungi
TENTATIVE Propagation, high and low tech—involving examination of actual plants in class, and including our proprietary on-farm cloning method.
TENTATIVE Coppice— important details of this field renovation practice
NEW! Nut Quality– faults, sorting, grading for sales
NEW! Marketing– Including specifics on creating markets for new products.

Note that the marketing talk is now tagged as "new" since I didn't find it as a separate talk on any of the previous short course syllabi.

March! and Short Course details soon.

2010-03-03T11:20:00.006-06:00

Here at Badgersett we get started on spring a little early; hazels are already leafing out in the greenhouse, and if we're not careful it can get up over 90° in there quite often this time of year. Even so, the spring songs of cardinals (about three weeks ago) and chickadees (last week) are still a bit surprising to me every time. Here at the beginning of March, though, the signs of snow melt and harbingers of mud season are everywhere. The new puppies will be a little more difficult for a while, I'll bet.

The dogs, incidentally, are part of an overall plan to integrate animals on our farm, and more generally in Woody Agriculture systems– but that discussion will have to wait until later.

Today I'm working on some of the details for this year's Short Course. I'll put a note here and post it all on badgersett.com when it's done, but for now I can tell you:

Same pricing as 2008
Four definite presentations:

Life Cycle hazel spacing (new/improved)
Nut Quality– faults, sorting, grading for sales (NEW, with hands-on materials)
Badgersett Hazel Breeding Program. Specifics on Cycles 1 through 4, with the math. (NEW, given by yours truly)
Marketing (skipped in 2008, so now it's back)

Remaining presentations will be taken from those given previously; always updated with the newest information. If you as an attendee want a specific talk to be presented, let us know!

Reply to Tom in Dubuque #2

2010-02-26T10:56:00.009-06:00

6° below 0 F here last night, so I'm putting off going out to cut firewood until it warms up a bit; say to +10°, a nice work temperature if there's no wind.

You'll recall we were working on answering the query from Tom in Dubuque, and the first part,

"I've planted Badgersett and others' hazels for years. I've found that the Badgersett hazels produce nice nuts, but generally don't thrive as well. "

had resulted in Big Fat Post #1.

Now, I'm going to tackle the rest, before the blog wanders too far in other directions; hopefully it won't take as long as the first bit.

"I've also found that despite my best efforts the deer keep the hazels severely pruned. "

Though that's not posed as a question, it's definitely something we need to talk about.

Whitetail deer damage to Badersett hazels is usually minimal and inconsequential. Though not always, as Tom observes. I'm aware of a couple other situations where deer have been an actual problem and delayed the growth of the bushes and production of nuts.

Truly, however- those situations are far and away the exception, not the rule.

Deer can cause serious damage to a hazel planting immediately after planting and during establishment; but there are a number of specific things to do which can nearly eliminate all attention from deer.

1) When the plants are small, do NOT keep them perfectly weeded. We prefer to cultivate between rows- but not between plants in a row. The resulting strip of "weeds" dramatically distracts the deer. As remembered by one of our Short Course attendees, if the only thing available to eat in your field is young hazelnuts; the deer will eat them. But they'd really rather eat almost anything else.

2) If your hazels are very widely spaced, that will increase deer damage per plant, according to our tests. Deer have short memories; and hazels don't taste great. If they've just taken a mouthful of hazel, they're likely to pass up the next hazels they wander past, if they're very close. If the next hazel is 15 feet away (5m)- they will have "forgotten" the bad taste- and they'll take another mouthful. When the bushes are only 2-3 feet tall, that can add up to a lot of damage.

3) If your deer are a little short on minerals; they will eat more hazels. It's a very good idea to actually provide a mineral block (salt with minors; blocks designed for deer exist) for your deer; again, according to our research, deer with good mineral access will eat almost anything rather than hazels.

4) Heavy adjacent cover will increase deer damage. If your hazels are planted right next to a bit of forest- the deer are very likely to stop there on the edge, and browse a few hazels, while they check to make sure it's safe to come all the way out into the open.

A question for Tom- have you done analysis of the nutritional status of your leaves? I'd be very interested in seeing the data on exact minors content.

"My question: About eight years ago I purchased chestnuts from you. They all struggled for a year or two and then died. I've heard since that at least three feet of matting is needed around chestnuts if they are going be become established. Is this true? Thanks."

Well, that's very lousy luck; and, no, it's not true. My guess would be that if you're seeing serious deer damage on your hazels, it would be repeated deer browse, and possible rabbit browse (they go together) that killed your chestnuts. They can stand being hit once or twice, but not constantly. Unlike hazel- chestnut is considered favored deer browse material. Spacing is important, too. A single, clean cultivated chestnut out in a field by itself is about the same thing as putting down a dish of ice cream in a playground full of 1st graders. It won't last long.

These chestnut rows were all established with no matting whatsoever; planted directly after corn. They were machine cultivated to the sides twice in year one, and hand hoed once in year 2. Then mowed to the side for several years. That's it. And again- our experience is that the closer the spacing on the plants- the LESS damage you will see; even for chestnuts. Deer like variety- if a food is very common, they may start to look for something different.

The very short chestnuts in the row to the left were coppiced a year ago- we let the shoots grow back for multiple reasons; one of them being- to feed the deer. These were inferior plants that were crowding a chestnut tree or two which we wanted to follow more closely; but rather than killing them, we let them grow back from coppice, for several reasons. One is firewood, or "biomass" fuel research; another is to find chestnuts that naturally grow good straight poles from coppice. Do you know what a good chestnut pole is worth to an organic grape grower?

Badgersett will buy your nuts. This year.

2010-02-24T10:48:00.001-06:00

It just dawned on me that this is really major news; and should go here as a full post; so more people see it.

"Eric the Red", in KC, commented on the last post; and I answered:

"My thoughts on cooperative were on the lines of furthering breeding lines in a different locale for the very reason you mention - lack of a solid hazelnut market in the Midwest. I know that other organizations do this and have germplasm agreements and such. Is this something that Badgersett does or would consider?

FEBRUARY 23, 2010 12:51 PM

Philip Rutter: Is cooperating etc. something BRC would consider? Absolutely- it's even something in our Business Plan. We've done a little- and now have a much better idea how to go about it.

So- yes. In fact, we're going farther than that; starting this year, Badgersett will buy your harvested nuts.

So- you now have a guaranteed market.

It's going to be wild pain figuring out how to price everything- obviously we'll have to vary prices with crop quality (weevils, blanks, etc..) - and distance-

But still. We'll buy what you have (ANYBODY out there with our hazels) - which will really help give us a pool of nuts to work with; on processing, and marketing.

A good part of the reason we can do this this year - we've had another substantial infusion of investment cash; gives us more latitude to work.

But don't count on getting rich at it! :-)

Word gets around-

2010-02-21T11:04:00.001-06:00

I'm going to strive NOT to provide a steady diet of heavy complex discussion here, rather substantive information punctuated by sideways excursions.

Here's an excursion. It would be good for people to know that Badgersett ideas get around- here is an unexpected comment on the blog of a UC Davis professor, who has written a well received book on "radically rethinking agriculture".

Three comments, actually:

Topic

Thriving

Intriguing

Big Fat Post #1

2010-02-20T15:22:00.010-06:00

We are suffering from information dysfunction here at Badgersett; some of it due to human nature, some of it quite possibly due to my past training (making my statements less comprehensible to normal people.)

That's a huge part of the intended function of this blog; to start straightening information out.

We've had two very tough questions posted already, and I'm going to tackle one here. First of all, the initial discussion:
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Anonymous said... Hi,

I've planted Badgersett and others' hazels for years. I've found that the Badgersett hazels produce nice nuts, but generally don't thrive as well. I've also found that despite my best efforts the deer keep the hazels severely pruned. My question: About eight years ago I purchased chestnuts from you. They all struggled for a year or two and then died. I've heard since that at least three feet of matting is needed around chestnuts if they are going be become established. Is this true? Thanks.

Tom in Dubuque Co.
FEBRUARY 10, 2010 12:50 AM Philip Rutter said: Tom in Dubuque - we appreciate the straight talk.I'm going to answer your query here as a new post, in detail, with photos But first, I'd appreciate it if you would answer, here, this question: Have you attended our Short Course? My guess would be, no.

FEBRUARY 10, 2010 12:26 PM Anonymous said... Hi, No, I haven't been able to attend a short course. I work overseas and am only back in Iowa for a month or so every summer. Thus I put the bushes in the ground, do everything I can to help, and then leave them to their own devices. Not the ideal situation, I admit.

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  Ok, bit by bit: "I've planted Badgersett and others' hazels for years. I've found that the Badgersett hazels produce nice nuts, but generally don't thrive as well. "

  Glad to know you like the nuts ok. Now, about "thrive".
  Something everybody needs to keep in mind is the history of hazelnuts in the Upper Midwest. If you can, find a copy of "Growing Nuts in the North: A Personal Story of the Author's Experience of 33 Years with Nut Culture in Minnesota and Wisconsin by Carl Weschcke". To my astonishment, when I googled, it's not hard to come by.

Flatly; if you are thinking about growing nuts seriously in the Upper Midwest; read this book first. For one thing, the foundation stock for our Badgersett hazels came from the survivors of Carl Weschcke's plantings. We've updated their genetics considerably, but if you just look at the plants side by side, it's hard to tell the difference.

Weschcke's experience with hazels was not good, actually. Something missing in his book is the "and then what happened!?" part. Something DID happen. He decided to go into business, and make and sell hazel butter. He wound up buying hazels from Oregon to meet his obligations, and the project went broke. He really lost hope for hazels in this region; not reflected in the book. (How do I know? Extensive/intensive personal communication with many of his friends from the Northern Nut Growers Association, of which I am a Past President.)

A huge factor in that failure was a big epidemic of "Eastern Filbert Blight (EFB)" that moved into his hybrids and reached epidemic proportions shortly after he wrote the book. Experts from Oregon came and looked at them, and told him there was really no hope- they were all going to be seriously susceptible to the disease.

They were wrong. And this may be the place to point out that I have a track record of saying "the academics are wrong" about a forest disease- and being proven correct. I was the founding president of TACF. At the time, chestnut blight was "known", after 50 years of extensive research, to have no solution; but a mere 25 years later, we are planting out the first trees which may bring the species back; and the science behind it is recognized as entirely sound.

Ok, hang in there Tom! :-) I know this may sound off the track; but it's really not. Just to keep you reading, and your appetite whetted: this is a photo of plain Badgersett hazels, 18 months old.

When I decided to try to carry on Weschcke's 35 years of work, around 1982, the state of knowledge about growing Corylus for nut production in the Upper Midwest was this:

European hazel will not grow reliably here. A) It's not cold hardy enough for test winters, and B) it's lethally susceptible to EFB.

American hazel will not make a useful crop. A) All of them eventually are attacked by EFB and knocked back, and B) crops are small and erratic, with small nuts (i.e. "wild")

That's what "everybody knew", and they had decades of experience to back it all up. All of those statements, however, turn out to be only partly true; which leaves a lot of room for finding individual plants that do perform.

Without getting into ALL the details of the initial generation of Badgersett hazels, you can see that the barriers were formidable. My training in evolution, though, had led me to be quite aware of the fact that populations of everything on Earth periodically must, and do, go through "bottlenecks" - some change in their living situation which means 90% of existing organisms now are inadequate; hence only 10% will survive to pass through the bottleneck, and launch the renewed population on the other side.

What was needed for hazels was a strict and harsh bottleneck, artificially imposed in this case. That's what I set out to do; not cold hardy? die. Not resistant to disease? die.

Those, actually, were the ONLY two criteria for passing through Generation 1 here. For scientific reasons; if you do the math on finding individuals in a random population that meet 1 test, and the number that will meet 2; and the number that will meet 3- it turns out 3 is far too high a goal to set.

I would strongly recommend that you read this paper, from 1988, which outlines our goals. One bit:

The major long range goal is to pursue the domestication and development of woody perennial plants for agricultural purposes. It is not our intention to be satisfied just with finding new cultivars better than those currently available, for purposes of commercial production of luxury crops such as pecans and walnuts. We wish to begin to realize the potential of such species to become producers of staples. In order for that to happen, however, we feel that a basic change in philosophy is necessary, moving away from the searching of natural forests for interesting trees, and turning to intensive breeding with the specific intent of altering wild trees, which basically have no reason to produce large, regular crops for human use, into genuinely domesticated plants.

That's really very different from "gosh, I'd like to find some hazel bushes that would make good nuts." It's a commitment to creating an entire crop system- which is a very complex undertaking.

---------------------------------------------------

Ok! Finally! Here's why your Badgersett hazels don't "thrive" as well as others! :-)

In the desire to create a working crop system, I inadvertently added a 3rd criterion to the 2 I was thinking about, EFB resistance and cold hardiness; that was "survival, in adversity".

Real farmers don't have a lot of time to baby their plants. Planting huge fields of corn works because it's done with great precision, in a very small window of opportunity. Done exactly right, it works.

Farmer's record with growing trees is typically not good; they'll plant 100 black walnuts, with good intentions to "get back in there and control the weeds and deer... when I can..." which means the deer and weed control mostly do not happen.

Plants coming out of University research stations have an even worse record than farmers. The "three year grant cycle" means your work won't get funding if you don't have results in 3 years- which means they use every tool at their disposal to speed up the plants' growth in the University test plantings. Which means- when they give those to the farmer- it's a dead loss.

I'm not making this up. It's well known and admitted that the entire first generation of "hybrid poplars!", supposed to be "wonder" plants, the result of advanced scientific techniques; were simply not VIABLE in the real world. They would die.

I didn't want to do that. So we put all our initial 2 generations of plantings through 3-5 years of intentional, total, neglect. 2 years of good weed control and some fertilizer for establishment; then oo weed control; no fertilizer; for years. If they weren't there 3-5 years later- good. Plenty survived.

What we now know, however, is that in selecting plants that survive stress, we inadvertently selected for plants that will shift growing programs- and shift into survival mode, if they are, or have been stressed. And transplanting is stressful, no getting around it.

IF THE STRESS IS HIGH ENOUGH, BADGERSETT HAZELS WILL "SHUT DOWN"- often until next year. What that means is, instead of risking resources on making new leaves and shoots, the plants will put virtually all their time and energy into making roots.

In many cases, on poor soils, they may wind up making roots- for years.

Which can be very discouraging. But- if you planted your tomatoes on broken bricks, would you expect a good tomato crop?

At this point, 35 years in from my own beginning, my opinion is that Badgersett hybrid hazels will often take 10-15 years to build a "mature" root system. The root system is immense- basically a hemisphere at least 3 meters in diameter full of roots. It takes a lot of NPK to build it.

Folks have, now, grown our hazels this rapidly in the field. This is Norm Erickson, looking at some of his 2.5 year old hazels (with Nancy.) As you can see- he's doing extensive cultivation (which is a kind of fertilization you know- it makes resources available) and multiple fertilizations. Plus, his hazels at this point have their deep roots well into the local aquifer. The water table is about 4-5 feet down, and that water is jam packed full of agricultural nitrogen; all you can eat.

  So. If your Badgersett hazel plants are struggling for any resource- water, NPK, sunlight - when they are very young, they may grow very slowly. If you treat them like an agricultural crop- weeding, water, and food- they can and do grow just as fast as anyone else's.

  One other thing- Tom, do you have active EFB growing in your hazels there in Des Moines? I would guess likely not, or just a little.

  EFB is a very specialized fungus; it must have hazelnut to grow in. Consequently, in many places, it could now be considered an endangered organism. It can be very rare.

  I have many many stories to tell of people "back east" who had some European hazels growing "for 40 years!" in their backyards- only to have them suddenly collapse and die, completely.

  That is the eventual fate of almost all hazels- if they have not been through 10 years of REAL WORLD screening for resistance to EFB. And, so far as I know, we're the only ones who do that. We don't sell seedlings from plants less than 10 years old.

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  OK!! I'm gonna stop. You're probably as tired out as I am. More soon.

  The intention, here, is to get all these replies linked up in a really functional FAQ- so folks can browse through the answers at their own speed. Hang in there. Didn't get all Tom's points addressed; but we will.

-------------------------------

ps, for reasons not clear to me, my control of fonts and text sizes here sucks- I'll work on fixing that and getting all this readable.

typical.

2010-02-19T09:18:00.000-06:00

Just climbing out of bed here, after 3 days sleeping like the dead. It's one of the great benefits of having a small child in school; every virus in circulation winds up in your circulation. All 3 of us were hit and knocked down; just getting back on our feet.

Getting some real answers up here is very high priority; but so is fixing the wood stove (our only heat) which has a stubborn clog in is somewhere and will not draw correctly.

Hang in there.

oops

2010-02-12T09:42:00.001-06:00

After seriously launching this blog- of course- I accidentally let one of my mailboxes fill up. It's an older email address, but still-

If anyone made a comment in the last two days; or sent me an email, and you haven't had a reply- it would be good if you could send it again. There's a good chance the automatic notification might have been messed up by the full mailbox.

My bad.

More soon.

We're still husking hazels here, working hard on it today.

The Badgersett Growers Blog- Thanks, Jim (and family!)

2010-02-05T17:18:00.000-06:00

If you're here, we're assuming you're familiar with Badgersett Research, so we'll dive right in.

If you'll take a look at the dates separating the first post on this blog and the second, you will immediately be on the road to understanding the purpose of this change in our blog, and the purposes it will serve.

Dec. 17 to Feb. 5 is an absurdly long time for any business to allow a major public aspect to languish.

The fact is; we're desperately overloaded here. We need about 8 people, full time, to be doing the day to day work. We have 3. We'll eventually get into how that happened, but not just now. The reality is; the overload is so bad, and has been going on so long, that it is literally affecting our health; not for the better; and when one of us winds up with 4 sick days in a week, we get further behind.

All our communications channels suffer from this. This blog is an attempt to make communicating about grower's concerns easier.

We've had a blog since 2002 - if you know your internet history, the word "blog" was just barely becoming current then, and services like Blogger and WordPress barely existed, and the entire phenomenon was just taking off.

So- we wound up being one of the very first "nut" oriented operations to have a blog- of any kind. And the software that supported it; though it was state of the art in 2002- is now seriously out of date. That's exactly why our entire website is a little behind (about 4 years). We have one of, if not the, first website of any nut business in North America; maybe the world. Using the software then available; which of course is now orphaned. We're working on a total overhaul- as of 5 years ago.

Being the first one to stick your neck out is always expensive. For us- the entire expense of setting up- and hosting, all those years- our original blog has been donated by Jim Stegman and his family business; as a way of supporting Badgersett. It was a huge help, and very important to us; but the software had a bunch of built in limitations; by today's standards, it was very hard to use.

Now- on Blogger- it's easy. If you have a comment (civil) - make it. It'll appear sometime the same day, usually; and if you have a question, we'll actually try to answer the same day. On the old blog, we had to go to it, and check for comments; alas, far too easy to forget, or postpone. With the new blog, when a comment is made, it will be emailed to 3 people, any of whom can moderate it. Probably; one of us will not be sick that day; and we'll try hard to get it done.

We want to answer your questions; never doubt that. And provide a forum where growers can talk. We're aware that a couple other efforts have been made to launch hazelnut forums, in particular; but if you've tried them, you've discovered a basic problem- they really don't have anyone there who has any more experience than you do.

We have 30 years- which is about 20 more than anyone else; and many tens of thousands of plants more than anyone in the midwest. And scientific standards actually greatly more stringent than any of the universities doing work in this area.

You can "subscribe" to this blog; i.e. arrange it so that whenever we make a new entry, you get an email notice. It's down at the bottom of the page. I'm pretty sure you can also ask to be emailed if/when someone responds to your comment. (If not, we'll fix that soon.)

This blog is not only for questions, comments, and a growers forum; it will also be a place for news, and statements from us about what we're doing; not only for our hazels, but for all 3 of our "NeoHybrid" crops; hazels, chestnuts, and hickory/pecans. And other news about operations; for example- did you know the farm here now includes horses? No? We'll post about that soon. (Horses eat grass, you know.)

(you can click on the pic for a bigger version)

Post #1

2009-12-17T06:55:00.000-06:00

Hello folks, and welcome to the new blog for Badgersett Research Corporation. We have had a blog site for some time: the Woody Agriculture Weblog. We'd like to thank the folks at Exodus Online Services for setting that up and hosting it for us since 2002.

That said, we figured it was time to seriously update our news ability, and for the moment that means Blogger. We expect to eventually be moving this directly onto the Badgersett site. We will also be moving the posts from the old blog to the new one. But for now, look here for new news and there for old!

Comments will be lightly moderated- we will accept anything that is not spam, libelous or trollish. Debate and discussion are encouraged!

Welcome!