harvest days 2023!

Eight-year-old hazelnut bush full of nuts ready for harvest

It’s nuts out here!  

Come help us bring in the harvest and see what’s been going on at the nut farm this year.  It’s our favorite season and we’d love to share it with you!

Friday, September 8thSaturday, September 9thSunday, September 10th
10AM-1PM10-1PM
2-5PM2-5PM
NEW! Saturday, September 16th
10AM-1PM
2-5PM

Please email us with the day/shift and names of people coming!  A potluck lunch will be shared on both Saturday and Sunday.  All ages & experience levels are welcome!  Facilities are rustic.  We recommend wearing good shoes, a hat, and lightweight gloves – the nuts are kinda sticky!  We’ll supply bags for picking and all the nut puns you can handle.

*UPDATES This year we are very excited to be exploring new collaborations with the New York Tree Crop Alliance to process our nuts over the winter.  Read our recent blog post to learn more!  This means that delectable locally-grown hazelnut products may finally become a reality in 2024!  This has been a labor of love for many long years, and we are so grateful to everyone who has been helping and cheering us on all along.

*PLEASE NOTE Hazelnuts are not yet for *sale* (why not?) This year, any pickers who are interested are welcome to take a grab bag of fresh hazelnuts home with them to try your hand at drying, husking, and cracking your own nuts!  Nuts were once the traditional staple foods of the eastern woodlands, and we feel honored to be returning to these roots.  We will lay out some of our small scale processing equipment so you can try your hand at this ancient foodway.

Looking forward to seeing friends, old and new!

got nuts? the whole story

When we first planted hundreds of seed-grown select hybrid hazelnuts from Mark Shephard’s inspiring nursery, Forest Ag Enterprises, in 2016, we were sure that the Eastern hazelnut revolution was about to explode. In a few short years, everyone would be planting hundreds, if not thousands, of hybrid hazelnuts on their farms and field edges, swiftly ushering in the new era of perennial agriculture. Farmers and gardeners alike would soon see the folly of a food system based on annual tillage, the downfall of so many other previous mighty civilizations, and all would unanimously agree that it was time to return to the forest and plant diverse food bearing ecosystems that built soil, rather than allowing it all to wash away.

We weren’t entirely wrong, but we may have been a bit overzealous in our predictions. Afterall, J. Russel Smith published his treatise on Tree Crops in 1929, and we didn’t heard about it until some 85 years later. Like trees, the permanent agriculture revolution has been slow growing. In some parts of the world, a reliance on trees for food has persisted for a millennia or more. But in this country, we have long forgotten, or were otherwise completely blind to the interconnections that once existed between humans and cultivated forests. Imperialist-based plantation landscapes entirely dependent on stolen labor or cheap energy still dominate our imagination when it comes to picturing the quintessential modern farm: a large red barn in the middle of acres of rectangular fields, surrounded by patches of open brown soil with nothing but a mighty John Deere tractor churning through them. At the edge of the field is a line of trees: a forest, the place of abrupt change from cultivated to wild.

After so many centuries spent “taming the wilderness,” it can be hard to imagine anything different. Economic efficiency, with all its externalized costs, will always reign supreme as long as our money is worth what we think it is. But farmers have long had a way of shaping human culture; even today they still mediate our modern day societal relations to the land. And they know, long before most of us, when a thing’s time has come. You can’t argue with soil.

So it seems that the perennial agriculture revolution has quietly begun. Call it ‘conservation agriculture,’ call it ‘regeneration,’ call it ‘no-till’ or ‘carbon farming’ or ‘climate smart’ or what you will. There are plenty of people who firmly believe that you don’t need soil to grow food, but even if that were true, it’s surely not a world worth living in. If we want soil, we need woody plants with deep root systems and abundant leaves to capture sunlight and carbon dioxide and alchemize it into sugar and humus. And if we can pick sweet fruits and fatty acids and dense starches from their wide spreading branches, year after year, without ever sticking more than a spade into the sweet earth, all the better.

Unfortunately, it’s never quite that romantic. Joining the revolution and planting nut trees was the easy part; turning those nuts into (human) food, and an honest living, has not been so simple. Initially, we hoped that in 3 or 4 years before the bushes matured and began producing nuts, somebody would surely figure it out. Small scale nut processing equipment would magically appear on the market and tree crop processing hubs would naturally spring up in every county. As you can probably guess, this didn’t happen. We hand-picked our first half bushel of hazelnuts in 2019, dried them, husked them, and cracked them by one by one. We filled a mason jar. We were elated! In 2020, with the help of a few friends, we picked 20 half bushels of fresh nuts. We dried them, and set to work building a DIY ‘bucket husker.’ We scraped some money together and purchased a drill cracker. We husked and sorted maybe 1/3 of our harvest. [We also had a new baby and started building our house… among other upheavals.] The rest of the nuts we stacked in poly tote bins in our dry barn. In 2021, we picked 35 half bushels. We dried and added these to last years’ harvest, stacking the tote bins higher. We applied unsuccessfully for CARES Act grants to purchase expensive and hard to find European-made nut processing equipment. We needed a village… but instead, we got schooled in mice and mold, and a large portion of our nuts in storage ended up going to feed our ducks the following spring. In 2022, we had a drought, and still picked 43 half bushels of nuts. We got smarter, dried them better, and put them more carefully into storage while we waited to hear back from still more grant applications. There they still lay, while our baby grows and our house nears completion, for the day when somebody figures it out. And just maybe, that day has finally come.

As excruciating as it has been to sit and wait these past few years, the time was simply not yet ripe. We are humble growers, not machinists, not venture capitalists; we knew we might never grow enough to be able to purchase the kind of mechanized equipment that would turn our crop into saleable products. But just because the money hadn’t flowed our way, didn’t mean it wasn’t there at all! As it turns out, a handful of other new and veteran nutheads in New York had also been scheming for a while. Their first big break came in 2019 through a crowdfunder to purchase a commercial nut oil press, and additional grants and investments ealier this year have allowed them to finally begin organizing and assembling the Northeast’s first tree nut processing facility. It’s the first step in a regional collaboration that will allow small growers like ourselves to make this incredible food available to our broader foodshed again, and incentivize more growers to start planting!

Now you know why, after nearly eight years of growing and four years of picking… still no nuts for sale. At 1 acre, we may still have the largest planting of hybrid hazelnuts in the state of Massachusetts. But we really hope that changes soon. Because while we do aspire to inspire, even with accessible processing equipment, we will never be able to supply even the local wholesale market demand – and we get several inquiries every month! But the perennial agriculture movement IS growing – some even say it’s moment has arrived. We certainly know our own reasons for farming with trees, but it may still take a few more enlightened generations to reach the level of transformation necessary to repair our lands and our relations with our deeply excavated mother. And much of it feels out of our hands. But not all.

agroforestry field day

Nutwood Farm was excited to participate in the first Massachusetts Agroforestry Field Day organized by the Service Forestry Program at the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). The Service Forestry program assists landowners to make educated decisions about managing their woodlots and provides technical expertise, services and educational programs. This event was geared towards service providers to help expand the network and knowledge base of agroforestry practices and opportunities in Massachusetts. Many thanks to the organizers and all who attended this event. We look forward to being part of many future conversations about how food production and forestry can coexist and mutually enhance one another!

it’s nuts out here!

September 2022

It’s nuts out here! Come help us bring in the harvest and see what’s been going on at the nut farm this year. It’s our favorite season and we’d love to share it with you!

Friday, September 9th, 2-5PM
Saturday, September 10th, 10AM-1PM & 2-5PM
Sunday, September 11th, 10AM-1PM & 2-5PM
RSVP HERE

Please email us with the day/shift and number of people coming! Potluck lunch on Saturday and Sunday at 1PM, and all-day pickers are welcome to stay until dark for dinner, drinks & fire. All ages & abilities are welcome; please leave pets home. Facilities are rustic. We recommend wearing good shoes and lightweight gloves – the nuts are kinda sticky! We’ll supply bags for picking and all the nut puns you can handle…

Can’t wait to see you!

Kalyan, Seva & Rohan

hazelnut work offering

Nutwood Farm | Cummington, MA

Nut Farm Internship Opportunity: Hazelnut Harvesting and Processing Intensive

Fall 2021

Dates: September 1 – October 15, 2021 (minimum commitment is 3 weeks)

Accommodations: Camping

Food: Provided (can accommodate most diets)

Stipend: $75/week or $500 for 6 weeks

Nutwood Farm seeks 1 or 2 interns this fall for a 3-6 week nut harvesting and processing intensive.  The interns will be highly involved in all aspects of the harvest including assessing the field for readiness, hand harvesting, drying, and mechanically husking, sorting and shelling.  This highly educational opportunity will cover additional topics such as site preparation, planting, and cultivating hazelnuts, and will prepare you for establishing a small commercial hazelnut orchard of your own.

Interns will be expected to work 6 hours per day, 5 days per week, rain or shine.  All meals can be provided with most diets accommodated.  Tent platform overlooking the orchard is available for camping.  No pets, please. 

Nutwood Farm is a diverse ecological farm cultivating a wide variety of edible perennial nuts, fruits, and herbs. Our goal is to produce nutrient dense foods that will regenerate the soil, enliven our bodies, and enrich our community.  Nutwood Farm is part of the leading forefront of small new innovative farms redefining agriculture and shaping the next generation of an appropriately scaled community-based ecologically sound and regenerative food system.

To apply, please email Seva at nutwoodfarmers@gmail.com.  Please include any relevant experience and what you hope to learn through this internship.

nuts on the radio

On The Mark – 89.5FM/WSKB

January 27, 2021

Thanks to our friend Mark Auerbach, host of 89.5FM/WSKB On The Mark for interviewing us! Our segment will premiere on both WCPC15 and 89.5fm/WSKB on Wednesday, January 27, 2021 at 8AM ET. You can watch it on WCPC15, listen on 89.5fm/WSKB and/or stream at www.westfieldtv.org and/or www.wskb.org. The program will also be posted to Westfield Community Programming’s YouTube page.WSKB-OnTheMark-1.27.21

the climate decade

This winter has brought the most exciting new addition to our farm: a new family member!  Seva and Kalyan welcomed their son Rohan on New Year’s Eve and cannot wait to share the joys of farming and being in relationship with land with him.

The development of our innovative farm has been both rapid and slow.  Growing nut trees takes patience, yet the rewards are plentiful!  All winter we have hand-cracked and marveled at the deliciousness of the hazelnuts we harvested last fall, while also wondering how to make cleaning, husking, shelling and processing commercially viable at our scale.  Luckily we are not alone in this question: the Upper Midwest Hazelnut Consortium and the New York Tree Crop Alliance are working on solutions to this very problem, and – now that we have bushes in production – we hope to focus this year 2020 on learning and developing systems that will finally take our enterprise from dream to reality.

Some people are already calling this the Climate Decade.  We are completely on board; let this be the decade when growing perennial tree crops is no longer a niche market but a necessity to stabilize our climate, rebuild our soils, secure our local food supply, and help us to flourish as individuals and as a community.  It will take everyone, grandchildren and grandparents alike, to transform and regenerate our world.

going to the fair!

For the second year, Nutwood Farm has submitted an educational display to the Cummington Fair Agricultural Hall during the 151st Annual Fair!  This year’s display focuses on swale and berm earthworks: how to lay out, build, and plant a swale system to maximize water retention, manage flash flooding events, and mitigate drought on the farm.

Come and see our exhibit!  August 22-25, Cummington Fairgrounds

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Swale-and-Berm Earthworks: Regenerative Agriculture Techniques

What is Regenerative Agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture, also called “carbon farming,” is a set of practices intended to restore degraded lands and improve the health of soils and ecosystems while producing a yield.  It has been shown to increase the complexity and diversity of the life in the soil leading to higher fertility, better drought resistance, reduced need for pesticides, fertilizers and other fossil fuel inputs, and improved soil structure.

What are Earthworks?

A technique often used in Regenerative Agriculture, “earthworks” are practices that alter the slope or contour of the land to better harvest, store, and distribute water.  Installing earthworks on sloped land is an ecological method that has been used by small-scale farmers around the world for thousands of years.  When used in conjunction with low- or no-till operations and perennial crops, it is very effective in reducing soil erosion and improving water retention, enhancing the overall agro-ecosystem.

How it Works: Swale-and-Berm

This style of earthworks involves excavating a shallow band of soil on contour and moving the earth down slope to create a small earthen dam just below.  The concave ditch or “swale” creates a place to collect water during heavy rainfall events, allowing it to slowly seep into the water table below instead of running off and eroding precious topsoil.  The convex dam or “berm” provides a large raised bed for planting multiple species, including perennial shrubs and trees, keeping their roots high and dry while giving them access to ample moisture from the swale above.

Most earthworks projects are a one-time intervention that will vastly improve the health of the agroecosystem for tens or hundreds of years.  Many farms use a side-throwing plow or an excavator to dig and shape their earthworks system.  To be effective, new swales and berms should be planted and mulched as soon as possible to prevent soil erosion and rebuild the soil structure.  The alleys in between the swales and berms can also be planted with annual crops, grazed by animals, or used for hay production.  Integrating perennial crops and livestock has been demonstrated to sequester carbon very effectively and support extremely healthy and diverse soil microbiology.

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How to Build a Swale 1-2-3

  1. Find and mark the contours of your land. This is the line of equal elevation across a landscape that is perfectly horizontal. It is often used in topographic maps to show valleys and hills, and the steepness or gentleness of slopes.  You can do this by hand with a simple A-frame or a water level, also known as a bunyip.  Or you can use a laser level if you are working on a larger scale.  Mark points of equal elevation perpendicular to your slope and “connect the dots” to create a contour line.

NOTE: The number of contour lines you mark will vary by the size of the land and steepness of the slope, and your intended use.  Consider if you will be planting annual crops in between your swales, or grazing livestock, or simply harvesting from the perennial crops on the berm.  For more information on sizing and spacing earthworks appropriately, see Brad Lancaster’s Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Vol. 2, Water Harvesting Earthworks

  1. Dig a shallow ditch along the contour line and move the excavated soil down slope creating a band of earth to act as a dam, preventing water from spilling out of the ditch. You can use a shovel and garden rake for small projects, or you can dig with an excavator for large scale projects. If your soil is sandy, you can also bury branches and other woody debris in the berm to slowly break down and increase the organic matter in the soil.  If your soil has heavy clay, be careful not to make your berms too large or it may cause a landslide in heavy rain events.

 

  1. Plant the swale and berm right away to minimize erosion after disturbing the soil. Clover is a good choice for the swale as it can tolerate more moisture. Larger trees and shrubs can be planted on the top of the berm, and any mixture of quick-growing annuals and deep-rooted perennials can be planted into the sides of the berm.  If you cannot seed cover crops or plant perennials right away, you can mulch the soil heavily with grass clippings, straw, or woodchips.  This will also increase the soil organic matter while preventing erosion and building fertility.

 

Where Has All The Soil Gone?

The FAO led Global Soil Partnership reports that 75 billion tons of soil are eroded every year from arable lands worldwide—a rate that is about 13–40 times as fast as the natural rate of erosion.  This equates to an estimated financial loss of US$400 billion per year.  Approximately 24% of the world’s agricultural land is seriously degraded. According to the United Nations, an area of fertile soil the size of Ukraine is lost every year because of drought, deforestation and climate change.

Soil loss is exacerbated by poor agricultural practices such as excessive tillage and bare soil cultivation.  Wind and water are both natural forces of erosion that can be managed with simple techniques such as continuous cover cropping, reducing tillage, planting wind breaks, intensive rotational grazing, and leaving crop residues in the field to biodegrade.

Not only is soil erosion bad for agriculture, it also causes global climate change by releasing more carbon into the atmosphere.  Conventional agriculture is currently responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions, yet we could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions by switching to regenerative organic agriculture (Rodale).  Healthy soil has the power to prevent soil loss and reverse global climate change.

In the US, overall trends of soil loss have improved over the last 25 years.  Water and wind erosion has dropped from about 7.3 tons per acre in 1982 to 4.8 tons per acre in 2007 (NRCS).  Many farmers are learning to adopt new techniques to prevent soil erosion, improve soil fertility, and increase their bottom line.

 

week on the farm – video documentary

grace1 This summer, Gettysburg College student Miriam Martinez (pictured, right) filmed a short documentary of her week-long internship at Nutwood Farm and unscripted interview with Seva and Kalyan.

About the filmmaker: Miriam grew up in San Rafael, CA and is planning to major in Environmental Science and minor in Women & Gender Studies.  She was the founder and Captain of the San Rafael High School Girls Wrestling Team and is very interested in exploring the intersections of gender, culture, and environmental sustainability.

 

guest blog: summer externship

By Grace Herron, Gettysburg College, sophomore

In today’s world, I feel as though individuals no longer have that same connection to the land that existed so many years ago. Through Gettysburg’s Career Development program, I was able to attend a week-long externship in Massachusetts at Nutwood Farm, run by Seva Tower- a Gettysburg alumni- and Kalyan Uprichard. At Nutwood Farm, they are nurturing several varieties of nut bearing trees and working with the land instead of against it. One of the most noticeable aspects of their farm to me was that their trees were not arranged on a flat piece of land with perfectly manicured rows and sections. The trees were actually planted on a hill, and the soil was formed into berms and swales to help with water intake and drainage in case of drought or flooding. This concept was entirely new to me, and during my week on the farm I got to help maintain them and see the berms working their magic through several hot days and rainy nights.

In addition to learning about the farm’s berms and swales, I was able to have a lot of fun learning about how Seva and Kalyan aim to make Nutwood Farm fully self-sustaining in the future. The property has a plethora of wild blackberries and raspberries surrounding the fields, and I was able to help pick them and learn how to properly make my own jam! Another Gettysburg extern and I were also able to go blueberry picking with Seva for several hours. We ended up with over 60 lbs of blueberries by the time we were finished, which we later made 27 jars of blueberry jam and sauce. They also had ducks which gave eggs for breakfast, and lunch and dinners were made with vegetables right from the garden!

In the tree fields, I noticed that instead of spraying weed killer and pesticides, Seva and Kalyan were encouraging plant growth in the surrounding soil of their trees. It was explained to me that this was promoting the kind of ecosystem often seen in forests, where the soil is nourished by the diversity of plant life and beneficial organisms. By stripping the soil of these plants and insects, it can often deprive the plants of many beneficial microorganisms and soil nutrients that they could have access to naturally. S.A.R.E (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program) has also given Nutwood Farm a research grant that Seva and Kalyan utilized to plant several rows of hazelnut trees with specific groups of plants growing in the surrounding soil to see how they affected the hazelnut trees’ growth and production over several years. During my externship, I was able to also help with bug identification for the research grant to record the various kinds of insects thriving on the farm. This analysis will ideally be able to help assess the field itself by assessing whether or not these insects are beneficial or harmful to Nutwood Farm’s trees. Learning more about the relationship between a crop or tree and their surrounding soil nutrients, plants, and insects will be valuable information for me to consider if I were ever to pursue agriculture myself.

Nutwood Farm is also involved in community outreach and invites local kids and camps to help them on their farm while learning more about agriculture. Thanks to their involvement with the Gettysburg Externship program, Seva and Kalyan are also teaching about their mission and experiences to college students like me as well! This externship is applicable to where I see myself in the future since I have always been interested in making a difference through food awareness and farming. Right here in Massachusetts, I was able to experience and join two individuals who were doing just that. This was a fantastic learning experience for me filled with experiential lessons and the opportunity to meet incredible people who are truly making a difference in this world.