K&J Orchards Tour
On October 6, 2013, CUESA visited K & J Orchards, the second stop on “Trail Mix: A Tour of Fruit and Nut Orchards.”
K & J Orchards grows more than 180 varieties of fruits and nuts on a few plots in Winters and Yuba City. Started by Kalayada Ammatya and James Beutel (the eponymous "K" & "J") in 1982, the farm sells their tree-ripened fruit at farmers markets and to more than 80 restaurants around northern California.
Today, James and Kalayada's daughter, Aomboon ("Booney"), and her husband, Tim Deasy, run most of the business. In addition to her full-time job in textiles, Booney manages the farmers markets with her mother, while Tim works full-time on the farm and trucks fruit directly to restaurants.
Our tour group visited a 20-acre plot in Winters, where stone fruit, citrus, walnuts, chestnuts, pomegranates, and persimmons are grown.
Booney showed us the tree nursery. All of the trees in the orchard were started here by Kalayada, who does much of the budding and grafting herself.
On the whiteboard, the farm's workers keep a running tally of what’s harvested every day at the farm's different locations. All fruit is hand-picked to bring fresh to the market and restaurants.
Diversity has been the key to K&J's success, allowing for year-round production. When CUESA visited the farm in October, stone fruit, apples, and pears were at the end of their season, but pomegranates, persimmons, and walnuts were mid-harvest.
In addition to the familiar red variety, K&J also grows a white pomegranate, which Booney says tastes sweeter and less tart, plus it doesn't stain your fingers like the red ones do.
The farm grows 10 varieties of persimmons. These Hachiyas will be ready for harvest in two weeks, when they are soft like pudding. All of K&J's fruit is picked at the peak of ripeness, since it doesn't have far to travel.
Unlike the Hachiya persimmon, the squat Fuyu is harvested when firm.
Pluots and plums were the only stone fruit being harvested in October. The farm grows dozens of varieties of stone fruit. The season begins in May with cherries, followed by apricots, peaches, nectarines, plums, and pluots. Each variety has a harvest time of about two weeks, allowing for continuous production from late spring into mid-fall.
In the fall, apricot trees are pruned before they go dormant for winter. Booney explained that the center shoots are pruned to open the branches up like a fan, allowing the sunlight to enter into the tree.
All of the farm's pears and apples had just finished being harvested from their location in Yuba City and are now sitting in the reefer. They will last up to six months in cold storage, which keeps K&J in the market through the winter, until the farm's stone fruit start up again in the spring.
The farm also grow walnuts. Booney said walnuts are their easiest crop to manage, as the trees require no thinning and only a little bit of pruning. The trees are sprayed with copper, an organically approvied fungicide, to prevent disease.
When the walnuts are ready to harvest, K&J rents machines to shake the trees, allowing the nuts to fall to the ground. The nuts are then swept up and shipped to Mariani Nut Company for processing.
Booney invited our tour group to take home some of the freshly harvested walnuts.
Walnuts.
The farm-goers enjoyed a picnic in the walnut orchard.
The farm also grows chestnuts. The nuts usually fall from the trees in September and must be picked up with leather gloves, because of their porcupine-like husk. The nut is contained within a second shell inside the husk. Chestnut farming is rare in California, Booney explained, as trees are prone to bacterial diseases.
These unripe Satsuma mandarins will be ready to harvest in about two months.
Booney invited our group to take home a bag of freshly harvest fruit. Thank you, Booney!
