Hazelnuts – Russ and Shirley Davis…Davis Trees in the Oregon
Willamette Valley
As the autumn
leaves color the trees, Russ Davis, of Great Falls, heads to Oregon to tend his
hazelnut orchard.
“There’s always
something to do,” says Davis, referring to his old orchard nut trees that
canopy seven acres of good earth down Firdale Road in the Willamette Valley.
Davis and his
wife, Shirley, spend the month of October harvesting the mature nuts that drop
from the thirty to forty foot trees.
The property has
been in the Davis family since 1933 when Russ’ grandfather found acreage nearby
on a creek. The family cleared the land
by hand which included virgin Douglas fir that needed to be blown up with
dynamite. They worked on Sundays for
several years picking the mess and burning the slash. Then, the grandfather grew hay for a couple
of years. He also had access to
university study and researched what was making money.
According to Davis,
those pages from the past did not always read well.
“One experience grandfather
had was to put in a prune orchard but the trees had shallow roots and blew
down.”
In 1968, they
planted the hazelnut tree orchard. And, then, they waited a decade and more for
a crop. It takes ten to fifteen years for mature trees to produce nuts.
Powered by kids and grandkids, the first
harvests were hand –picked. Davis was among those hand- pickers. In the 1980s,
they started to hire help and incorporated the use of a sweeper. Hazelnuts develop inside a catkin that is
formed from a blooming spring flower. As
they ripen, they naturally fall off of trees. With swivel brushes, the sweeper goes
along and sweeps the nuts into long rows down the center.
Today, Davis
works through a contractor who picks, sweeps, and trucks the nuts to facilities
at Four Ridge Orchards where they are washed and dried. The automatic system,
configured by co-owner Daniel Brown, includes rotating cylinder water baths,
conveyor belts, and gigantic slanted bin dryers. After processing, the whole clean nuts are
loaded in large containers ready for shipment. In Oregon, the majority of the
crop is sold and shipped by bulk (in shell to prevent damage to the nut inside)
to China.
“If you go to a
party in China, Viet Nam, or Russia, that’s what you will get,” said Davis.
Oregon produces
most of the hazelnuts in our country in the Willamette Valley. Hazels are also grown in the Fraser Valley of
British Columbia. In these areas, the
moisture and soils are just right for the nut crop. They get 40 inches of rain
each year (no need for irrigation) and, the temperatures never slump below
twenty degrees.
Though the
environment and the weather energize the growing of the nuts, waves of
squirrels and blue jays impact the Davis production.
“In our crop alone, we lose 2,000 – 3,000
pounds of nuts to the squirrels,” laments Davis.
Hazels are a genus of ancient deciduous
trees. Evidence of hazelnut processing,
some 9000 years old, was found in a pit on the island of Colonsay, Scotland. Long ago brought to the U.S., the variety, or
cultivar in the Davis orchard is Barcelona, a good producer.
“This was our
best year ever,” remarks Davis, “the year we’ve been waiting for some time.”
The nutty little
kernels are gaining recognition and perceptually so. Call them “hazelnuts.” That’s what the industry prefers, notes
Davis, though sometimes the word “hazelnut” is used interchangeably with the word
“filbert.” Although the two grow on
trees of different species, they are related.
With harvest
finished at the Davis Trees farm, the work continues throughout the year.
In the orchard, they
have just finished heavy pruning in order to get the trees to produce for many
more years. All production comes from
the top and side of the trees and they must be pruned when the trees (after
harvest) are not producing.
Annually, Davis
heads back to Oregon in the spring to tend the new crop. He spends two weeks applying herbicide to get
rid of the suckers which grow from the trunk of the trees, and sprays for
worms, aphids and root rot. Then, he ‘flails,’ a process like rototilling, on
the surface, before rolling the soil.
All of which must be repeated again in July.
Eventually, this
carefully tended environment yields delicious nuts. And, Davis admits there are many good reasons
to enjoy hazelnuts.
“They are good
heart food,” he says, “rich in protein and unsaturated fat; they contain
significant amounts of thiamine and Vitamin B.”
The longevity of a hazelnut in the shell
is ten months. They have a longer shelf life with cooler temperatures, about eighteen
months. However, the natural kernel
shelled, won’t keep as long as in the shell.
In Oregon, the nuts that are sold for
consumption are mainly, shell off. The
discarded shells are then recycled and sold to garden and nursery businesses to
be used around plants (roses, rhododendron, azalias, hostas) to keep the slugs
and snails out.
Brandishing
slices of sunshine that sneak between the mammoth trees, Davis proudly conveys
his family history.
“This was my father’s hobby. He could come out here and didn’t have to
talk to people.”
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