Macadamia Nuts
7 August 2005
Click to watch a movie. (4MB)
We have nearly 250 macadamia nut trees on the property.
Even though macadamia trees don't need as much constant attention as
the coffee trees, they still require plenty of work. Most of the
work is getting ready for the pickers. When a macadamia nut is
ripe, it falls to the ground. The pickers simply come in and pick
up all the nuts off the ground. The problem is, they have to be
able to see the ground first.
Our macadamia nut orchard had been ignored for nearly a year.
The trees are still relatively healthy but the weeds were getting out
of control. Here in Hawaii, if the weeds were truly out of
control I would need a very large brush mower to work my way through
them. These weeds were just "getting" out of control which means
my diesel mower, with some gentle coercion, could work its way
through most of the weeds. As you can see in the picture, it's no
exaggeration to say the weeds can get taller than I am. There are
parts of the orchard that are too steep and rocky for the mower.
Those weeds were introduced to the weed whacker.
Once all the larger weeds are gone, then it's time for the
blower. Imagine a three layer cake. The bottom layer is the
rocky ground, followed by a thin layer of macadamia nut filling,
followed by the top layer of protective leaf cover. That top
layer needs to be removed so the pickers can find the mac nuts.
Some day, I'd like a large PTO blower that I can tow behind my
tractor. Those things are like a
hurricane-on-a-three-point-hitch. But they're also like
$3000. For now, I have a backpack blower. Three of them
actually. The first one is so old it's more rust than
blower. It may be salvageable some day, when I have the time.
The second is an excellent blower. I started it up about a month
ago to make sure it was still working. It started on the second
pull. Then I got it out again two days ago. I pulled and
pulled but the darned thing wouldn't offer up even the slightest sign
of life. Starter fluid, carburetor cleaner, new spark plug, clean
filters... nothing worked. The pickers were scheduled to show up
bright and early the following morning and I still had an un-blown
orchard.
A trip to town and $300 later, I now own a third leaf blower. Of
course as soon as I started blowing the leaves, the rains came.
Leaves don't blow very well when they're sopping wet. I had
cleared enough trees that the pickers could at least get started.
I'd get up early the next morning and see if I could clear leaves faster
than the pickers could pick.
Everyone knows that farmers are supposed to wake up at the crack of
dawn. City slicker farmers have been known to occasionally sleep
in a tad bit longer. But pickers sure don't. I've heard
stories of coffee pickers standing in the field before dawn, waiting for
it to get light enough that they can tell the red cherries from the green
cherries. Mac nut pickers don't have to differentiate colors,
they can start as early as they like. Luckily, on the first
morning, the pickers got lost so they didn't show up until 7. That
gave me enough time to get ready for them.
It's amazing how quickly they can move while looking like they're just
plodding along. They had several dozen bags filled before
lunch. These aren't little bags either. The pickers filled
them but I had the privilege of hauling the bags out of the
orchard. I'd guess that each bag is somewhere between 80 and 100
pounds, depending on how wet the mac nuts are. I may have filled
my little ATV trailer slightly beyond its rated capacity. I was
on my way down the hill with a full load when the trailer came
unhitched. The trailer tongue dug into the ground and the
momentum of the trailer bent it right in half. Now I have three
broken ATV trailers and zero working ones. Anybody know a welder?
In two days, a crew of four pickers managed to pick nearly 10,000 pounds
of macadamia nuts. Unfortunately, we don't have the processing equipment
required to husk, dry, shell, sort and roast macadamia nuts. Instead, all
these nuts will be sold to one of the large processors on the island.
They don't do custom runs so I can't get my macadamia nuts back from
them. I can however buy macadamia products from them at a special
supplier rate. That means that soon, hopefully in time for
Christmas, we will be able to add macadamia nut products to our growing
list of Hawaiian products.
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