Category: Nut Orchard

While hazelnuts and chestnuts are incredibly hardy once established, they are very vulnerable during their first 3 years of life. Here’s our strategy to protect the investment during that vulnerable period, and how we’re going about the daunting task of planting 250 trees. We’ll be planting the trees on contour, using the A-frame level described…

How we’re going about the process This conversion process is a huge undertaking, so having a strategy is important. First off, we need to source some plants. For this, we turned to Z’s Nutty Ridge, a chestnut and hazelnut nursery just to the east of our planting location. I’m thrilled to have a hybrid chestnut/hazelnut…

Hybrid hazelnuts are extremely resilient and hardy! The author of this video is Akiva Silver, who runs Twisted Tree Nursery . He also wrote the book Trees of Power, which you can find in our Sources page. The video gives me hope because it shows that even when totally neglected, hazelnuts have the ability to…

We face several challenges in the process of converting the hay field into a permaculture nut orchard. These challenges also represent an opportunity for us to make mistakes. We hope our mistakes help other people learn so their process of orchard establishment is easier! Distance. While we’re starting the orchard in Spencer, we actually live…

What we hope to accomplish and attain from our efforts Overall Intention: We hope to use the 7 acres of abandoned hay field as a home for a permaculture nut orchard that accomplishes multiple goals. The first goal is to increase our food security as a family. Hazelnuts and Chestnuts are extremely powerful in terms…