Hazelnut Harvest at Lochmead Farms

Every September/October Lochmead Farms harvests its crop of hazelnuts in two periods. The first begins in the last week of September, and the second harvest in October. The reason for the staggered harvest is the different hazelnut varieties ripen at different times, and not all of the nuts drop at once. So farmers have to watch their trees and if enough drop there is a second harvest of an orchard.

At this point, on October 29th, 2024, around 1.3 million pounds of hazelnuts have been harvested from Lochmead Farms. There are 400 hundred acres of hazelnut trees growing on the 3,000-acre Lochmead Farms. In the 1980’s Howard Gibson decided to add Filberts as they were then called to the family farm and planted the first hundred acres. There are 6 different varieties grown on the farm with the newest being the PollyO variation.

The Harvest Process

Before any harvesting can begin, the trees call the shots and drop their hazelnuts when they are ripe enough. Sometimes all the nuts drop at once, and sometimes they drop weeks apart. This is the reason behind multiple harvests within one season.

Next a sweeper machine sweeps the hazelnuts into windrows. Harvesters pick up the nuts and dump them into a truck that drives side-by-side collecting nuts until full. The holding truck drives off to drop its load and is replaced by another truck, rotating until the harvest is complete.

Lochmead Farms has two separators, most of the nuts are sorted through the larger of the two. But the smaller separator chugs along and holds its own. It is operated by second-generation owner Buzz Gibson, now 78 years old also chugging along in his “retirement.” Buzz’s definition of retirement is not going to work until after 8 am, and being home by 4 pm “most days.” I guess when you’ve spent over 60 years working before the sun came up, and not finishing until the sun went down, working 6 hours a day is pretty relaxing by comparison. Buzz doesn’t just run the separator, he designed and built it over a decade ago with the help of fabricator Kyle Hurd. The separator is needed because rocks, sticks, and dirt are harvested along with the hazelnuts. Grandpa Buzz designed the separator to, well, separate them.

The Separator

The nuts destined to be run through Grandpa Buzz’s separator are placed in wooden crates, these crates are dumped one by one using a tractor, often operated by Buzz’s son, Chris, into the holding chamber.

Chris emptying a crate of unsorted hazelnuts into the holding chamber of Grandpa Buzz’s separator.

The nuts slowly filter out of the bottom onto the first conveyor belt. With the belt moving slowly, Buzz can help the separator along and grab large rocks and sticks before they get to the first obstacle. At the end of the first conveyor belt, the nuts and rocks alike drop to the bottom where there is a pool of water. The rocks sink the the bottom and the nuts float.

Video link features the water/gravity process. See the process here.

The rocks are then separated onto their own small conveyor belt that takes and deposits them into a crate to be tossed away. The nuts float to the top of the water and are scooped up by rotating fins onto their next conveyor belt.

Once on this conveyor belt, they are dropped into a new crate of freshly sorted hazelnuts ready to be processed and sold and made into various products like Nutella and hazelnut butter.

Learn more about Lochmead Farms here and at lochmeadfarms.com.

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