sutton023

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 w...

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.

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).

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!

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 respo...

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 pu...

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. ...