G. L. Alfieri Farm Tour
On September 11, 2009, CUESA led a tour of G.L. Alfieri Farm.
Pistachios on the tree! Aren't they pretty?
Gary's pecans were not quite ready to harvest.
Conveyors deposit the almond hulls (center) and shells (right) into piles outside the plant.
Almond shells.
The almond hulls and shells were once seen as waste, but not any longer. The hulls are sold as cattle feed and the shell is burned for electricity or sold for animal bedding.
C & G Farms processes around 10 million pounds (or around 5,000 acres worth) of almonds a year, making it a mid-sized shelling plant.
We were super fortunate to get to walk all the way through the pant and see the whole process.
The shelled, raw almonds drop into large wooden crates. From here, almonds go to a handler (such as Blue Diamond, the largest) that roasts and processes them for sale. Gary is one of the few growers who retrieves the nuts after shelling and does his own processing for the market.
The shelling is the result of constant motion; there is a lot of shaking involved, so the plant was pretty noisy.
After they're picked up off orchard floor, the almonds get dumped onto a conveyor belt that separates the nuts from the hulls and shells.
Next we made a stop C & G Farms where Chuck Fields (pictured) gave give us a tour of the shelling plant that processes Alfieri's almonds. Gary praised Chuck for running a very clean plant, and our eyes confirmed Gary's assessment.
Gary and Cindy were very generous hosts. We all went home with grapes and almonds galore. Cindy is also an amazing baker! We loved the brownies she had made with their own homemade almond butter! Yum.
Gary loves offering his almonds locally, but the majority are sold wholesale to larger distributors. 80% of the almonds grown in California are shipped out of the country. Many of them end up in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where marzipan is popular.
Gary's sister Cindy is the resident historian. She told us all about the history of the area, which used to be called Atlanta (named after Atlanta, Georgia), and gave us all a copy of a book their mother had written about the area.
One unfortunate by-product of the almond harvest is copious amounts of dust. If you're driving through almond country and you see a giant cloud of dust, says Gary, you can be pretty sure there's an almond harvest going on.
Gary remembers a time when both parts of the process were done by hand.
It's raining almonds! After the nuts have been left to dry for a few days, another machine comes along and scoops them off the orchard floor.
The shaker moves fast. Experienced operators like Carlos here can shake down three trees a minute!
Gary rents a high-tech almond tree shaker from a neighbor; it has two giant rubber "bumpers" that grab onto the trees and shake them. In order to keep the tree trunks from getting bruised, silicone lubricates the two layers of rubber on the bumpers.
Almonds don't pollinate themselves, so Gary has inter-planted several varieties to pollinate one another. Nonpareil is the most common and most highly valued variety in the industry.
Gary's almond trees are all grafted on to peach tree roots (the two trees are in the same genus), which makes them grow faster. If not, they would take as many as 10 years to start making nuts.
We got to see (and taste) the almonds right before the harvest; the hulls had split open! This is the Carmel variety.
Some grapes are too delicate to take to market, like these seedless muscats that have a wonderful flavor but very thin skin. Gary says he's looking into drying them.
Gary's workers trim the leaves off vines by hand to allow light to get to the grapes; this allows them some control over the ripening process. They also thin the grape bunches early in the season; a bunch that is too full is more likely to have ruptures and when a single grape ruptures, the whole bunch is more prone to rot.
Right after the grapes bloom, Gary and his workers make a thin cut around the base of the vine (3/16th of an inch). If it's a well-irrigated vine, this injury will cause the plant to retain sugar and water and the result is extra plump, sweet grapes.
There is a charming old building on the farm that was built as a barn in 1863 out of bricks made from a material called Madera Clay, which was excavated from the land about 6 feet below the surface. At the time this barn was built, much of the surrounding farmland was planted in wheat.
Gary Alfieri grows his grapes along trellises that arch over the rows to keep the air flowing but allow for more sun exposure than your average vineyard.
Gary Alfieri was a fantastic host. In the course of an hour, he and his sister Cindy showed us around the farm their grandfather stared in 1925. We saw their vineyard (both table and wine grapes), their almond orchard, and a number of additional nut trees. They both had so much to share! We only wish we could have been there longer to soak in all the information.
