Raewyn and her husband Allan bought 25 hectares of her family farm in 2008 and raised their two children in the same house she had lived in as a child.<\/p>\n
Raewyn ran a small beef operation but felt they needed to diversify.<\/p>\n
Following some research, hazelnuts seemed to fit the bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can handle wet feet and frosts, and we\u2019ve noticed they handle the drier conditions around harvest time.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Raewyn does the day-to-day farm work, she says she couldn\u2019t do any of it without help from the family, who all muck in when it\u2019s busy on the farm.<\/p>\n
A five-year wait<\/p>\n
Harvesting the nuts with a commercial vacuum harvester. Photo \/ Catherine Fry<\/p>\n
The first 1400 trees were planted in 2013.<\/p>\n
During the first five years, the hazelnut trees were fed seaweed, and the orchard was constantly mowed using a mulching mower.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the first nuts came, we were all really excited, so more trees were planted.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are now 2500 trees planted over 4ha.<\/p>\n
The 2020 Covid-19 lockdown coincided with harvest time, so the family all stayed home and pitched in.<\/p>\n
A decision was made in 2019 to start the process of certifying the organic orchard.<\/p>\n
The orchard became fully certified organic with BioGro in February 2022, along with food safety certification.<\/p>\n
Working within the organic guidelines, weedmat was laid under some trees as a trial to help control grass and weed growth.<\/p>\n
This has reduced the amount of mowing required and has helped with harvesting.<\/p>\n
Prolific sucker growth is still controlled with regular trimming.<\/p>\n
The hazelnut calendar<\/p>\n
Hazelnuts almost ready to fall to the ground. Photo \/ Catherine Fry<\/p>\n
Seaweed is fed in granular form in spring along the driplines of the trees.<\/p>\n
Summer is spent keeping on top of the mowing and keeping the orchard floor clean and ready for harvest.<\/p>\n
In the autumn, from March to April, the nuts start falling to the ground and are picked up using a small commercial vacuum.<\/p>\n
Several passes are required over different days to capture all the nuts.<\/p>\n
Freshly harvested hazelnuts. Photo \/ Catherine Fry<\/p>\n
cold-pressed<\/p>\n
Winter is important as that is when the trees are pollinated, which is naturally carried out by the wind.<\/p>\n
Raewyn has six different pollinator varieties of hazelnut in the orchard, which release at different times to ensure there will be a harvest.<\/p>\n
The main variety, White Heart, is an attractive table nut.<\/p>\n
Pest control is year-round with DoC traps set for rats, stoats and mice.<\/p>\n
Rabbits damage young trees, and Raewyn is quite happy to see the neighbour\u2019s cat patrolling her orchard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI keep an eye out for Green Shield Veggie Bugs [green stink bugs], and I kill them manually.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raewyn sorts, cracks and roasts the nuts when they are needed, so that she is always able to use fresh nuts to sell and make products.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sell whole roasted nuts, raw nut pieces, nut butter and more recently, cold-pressed hazelnut oil, which can be used on salads, and we\u2019ve found is lovely for skin and hair.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farmhouse Nuts attends the weekly Cambridge Farmers\u2019 Market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raewyn and her husband Allan bought 25 hectares of her family farm in 2008 and raised their two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2840,1863,5195,3390,6326,138,6932,2841,18660,3685,12026,31178,2082,6637,16655,6101,126551,78,8454,296,121522,6187,663,3234,111,43,139,69,4517,15147,6289,762,3175,544,6182,1361,7563,61,1524,121521,379],"class_list":["post-207379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-across","tag-back","tag-be","tag-best","tag-biggest","tag-business","tag-cash","tag-country","tag-crop","tag-events","tag-farmer","tag-favourites","tag-for","tag-gave","tag-glimpse","tag-good","tag-hazelnuts","tag-in","tag-including","tag-into","tag-livelihoods","tag-lives","tag-looks","tag-months","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-past","tag-prove","tag-readers","tag-review","tag-rural","tag-some","tag-stories","tag-that","tag-those","tag-to","tag-waikato","tag-yarns","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}