About
The name 'Round River Farm' comes from Aldo Leopold, “A Sand County Almanac”. I liked the name as soon as Erica proposed it. Alliterative, evocative of the cycles of life. And inspired by a figure we both hugely admire. Over the years I have wondered if we could live up to such a high aspiration, but we've kept it ever since that inspired moment. Are we worthy of the name? It helps keep us properly oriented.
When we first moved here, we took over a farm from a family who had been here since the 1950's. Established as a dairy farm since at least WWII, it was planted to a walnut grove as dairy declined in the area in the late 1950's. There were several thriving walnut orchards in those days, but now that's in decline too for a variety of reasons: the parcels are small (by industry standards); the old trees bear heirloom varieties are 'out of favor' in the market place, and we are quite distant from the core of the state's nut industry.
But what did we know in 1998? Erica and I saw an opulent plot of land, full of vitality; a home to abundant bird life, with rich, inherently fertile soil: we wondered, how did everyone else miss this one? The air and the water seemed impossibly pure. The oldest trees must have been close to a hundred years old by then, but they all seemed a shiny dark green and full of optimism. Over the years we've experienced the renewal that follows fire. We've seen the forgiveness for our thoughtlessness towards the land. We've come to appreciate the reliability of water, the resilience of the land through flood and drought, and the ever-repeating promise of another chance. I understand a little better the words a wry old farmer told me in my youth, "Farming is a terminal disease".
In 2017, I left my job as a vineyard manager in the winegrape industry to see if we couldn't make the walnut orchard into a more successful business of it's own. Up to then, we would harvest our nuts, send them to a nearby farm with a dehydrator (which gets them cleaned up and dry), and then deliver to a 'handler' who would pay us for the in-shell nuts. We didn't make any money in the beginning growing conventionally: in fact, in 2002 we were awarded "Highest Quality Hartley Walnuts" in the entire state of California (by Diamond of Calif, the farmer owned cooperative), but we were paid less than state average price that year. (One barrier to entering organic production: we were locked in to a 10 year contract with Diamond, and they offered no premium for organic nuts!) We decided to certify organic anyway, starting down that path in 2004. Eventually we were released from our commitment to Diamond, and we sold our first organic crop in 2006. The premium price made it worth it, even as I worked off the farm during the week, then came home to work nights and weekends.
In 2017 we split our crop, selling half to a certified organic handler and contracting a certified 'co-packer' in the San Joaquin Valley (a 4 hour drive from here) to shell and pack the other half into 25 lb case boxes, which I then sold through the Mendo-Lake Food Hub and to local grocery stores. Wow...people really responded positively. Who knew?
But the Central Valley walnut industry is big. Really big. I mean, sheesh. Huge. It has been a struggle to squeeze in between the elephants to get our nuts processed in a timely way, or even to get back the same nuts we delivered (but that's a story for another day). We've worked with 3 different co-packers in a 4 year period (pandemic took us out for 2 years), but never had a completely satisfactory result. Harvesting in October, we could never get nuts shelled & packed before February or March, so we've always missed the holiday market, and that hurts.
We're doing our best to get control of the shelling and packing steps ourselves. More on that soon!