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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 announcem...

(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, ...

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...

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 avail...

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 ...

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 T...