Plant and Nut Availability Update

Executive Summary:

Plants:
Standard tubelings still available for all categories (Hazel, Chestnut and Hickory-Pecan) except MP-BFL-Haz. We expect most orders taken now to ship around mid-June, some categories still available earlier.

Bare-root dormant tubelings SOLD OUT for 2013.

Nuts:
A few hazels and hickories still available from the 2012 harvest. Chestnuts from 2012 sold out.

Details to come, but right now we're preparing for the Short Course that starts tomorrow!

Hazel Maze and Pick-Your-Own Chestnuts!

A long time in the making, we are now ready to open our Amazing Hazel Maze for the month of October. The season has been good enough for our chestnuts that we have some available for pick-your-own for the first time as well- definitely exciting to pick that food out of the leaves on the ground!

Below is the note we just sent out to our email list. For directions, check the "About Badgersett" page on the main web site
We hope to see you here, and we'll post more details here as we can.

This Sunday October 7, and the remaining Saturdays and Sundays in October, from 1PM-5PM.

Hello folks,

This is a quick note going out to our "nearby" friends from us here at Badgersett– this Sunday we will be opening our hazel maze for the first time, and we'll have pick-your-own chestnuts available for the first time ever as well!  The maze will be open for the rest of the weekends in October, but chestnut harvest is tapering off and they are likely to be harder to get, and maybe unavailable, later on.
Our half-acre maze is fun for the whole family- plenty of nooks and crannies to explore, and room for the kids to run around as well!  Once you've been fully a-mazed, spend some time touring the farm or picking up your own chestnuts.
Admission is $8, $5 for children 10 and under. If you've got volunteer credit, that can be used for half of the fee.

THIS SATURDAY: Sustainable Farming Association of MN

This Saturday, February 18, our CEO and Chief Scientist Philip Rutter will be giving a talk at the 2012 annual conference of the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota. Badgersett will have an exhibit table as well.

Philip's talk is currently slated for 2:30, and titled:

"What's All This About Hazelnuts?"

The short description of the talk is as follows:

"In the past few years buzz and investment in hazelnuts for the Upper Midwest have increased dramatically. All of the interest originated from the investigations started at Badgersett Farm 30+ years ago; and all the crop genetics currently producing, also. Do hybrid bush hazelnuts have a future in sustainable farming practices in Minnesota? The talk will cover whole-system theory, practices, the current state of the art, last year's first machine harvest, and several different paths forward. Is this the first real perennial agricultural crop? Badgersett is now expanding plantings, and experimenting with integrating animals with commercial scale nut production."

If you're already planning to attend, please stop by! Otherwise, if you're within range of St. Joseph, this year's conference schedule looks like a good one.

What's keeping us busy.

As you know, we're experimenting with incorporating livestock of several kinds into the nut crop practices. The goal being to find pathways that make economic sense, and to sort out at what scale which practices might make sense.

Livestock require attention; 365 days a year; unless you are just buying feeder stock, selling them on, and not over wintering anything. In our case, we're still learning what makes sense, and therefore we do winter chickens, guineas, the sheep, and of course the horses.

About a month ago we suddenly hit an urgent need to increase the protection of our sheep from the local coyotes. In fact the first livestock we acquired were dogs- specifically trained and intended to be livestock guard animals. We have two, who are well trained (now), roam free on the farm 24 hours a day, and who have been doing a fine job of keeping predators at a distance, from both sheep and poultry.

There have been coyotes here from the outset; and while the dogs have been successful so far- coyotes are very intelligent; and very adaptable.

Last month the local coyotes jumped up their pressure. Three times, we caught them in the process of intentionally teasing and distracting the guard dogs- and pulling them away from the sheep. Fortunately for us, we were kind of expecting this to happen some day, and we were able to break up the tactic. Once the dogs were aware, they effectively chased the pack off.

In the long run, however, this is a war the coyotes are sure to win, eventually. Additional safety measures were called for. Out of the various options possible (enclosing the sheep, acquiring a Great Pyrenees type guard dog, llamas...) we opted for this:

Meet Anastasia; our new guard mule. She's a "pony-mule", barely larger than a small donkey; those are some of the Icelandic sheep in the background. She's 3 years old, and only halter broke, but shows a basic friendliness and willingness to put up with nonsense that gives us hope we can also train her to do light draft chores around the farm; perhaps helping haul nuts out of the fields during harvest, for example.

Finding, transporting, and acclimating her to her new world, however- took most of a week for 2 people. Time that was not in our original time budgets; but which the coyote/sheep/research equation suddenly required.

Incidentally- we're currently very optimistic about using the sheep in the hazels- as a "pre-coppice" treatment. They unquestionably remove a great deal of small hazel shoot material, which has low biomass value, but great nuisance potential.

This is the current sheep paddock, which includes about 150' of rows G and H; both in serious need of coppice renovation. As you can see here, weeds have been removed and the way cleared for easy access to the hazel crowns. Less obvious in the picture, since we don't have the "before" image easily available, is that the crowns have been dramatically thinned, and unexpectedly, wood damaged by Eastern Filbert Blight has mostly been broken out and removed. Those stems have decreased fuel value in any event, and are also troublesome during coppice, as they break erratically and escape standard bundling. Now- they're gone.

We'll be tracking the effects of the sheep on soil fertility and pH. Keep in mind that though keeping sheep (and mules) is usually thought of as a practice for the small farmer, we're investigating their potential for larger commercial scale use also. Income is income- and it's possible that even at large scales, integrating animals may make straight economic sense.

There is plenty more to learn here; but at the moment, it's encouraging. It's even quite possible that the extra time required by managing the sheep will be quickly repaid by decreased time and energy required to perform the coppice.

2 new reasons for you to come to the Field Day

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.

Denise Walser-Kolar Presents Badgersett Hazel Paintings Going To London

(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!

UPDATE:  She won!!  A Silver Gilt Medal; one of the top awards, which carries with it the right to show any of her work at this show for the next 3 years!  "Congratulations" just isn't a strong enough word!   : - )

Still time for Holiday Nuts!

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!

Illinois Harvest info-

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...

Your urgent help needed.

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.

Badgersett hazel genetics- and the U of Nebraska-

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?

spare 2 minutes...

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.