In 2018, Baurs Corner Farm owners Rob Baur and Sue Marshall opted to switch their crop from pears to hazelnuts to the tune of 3,200 trees on the 30-acre family farm. Now in 2024, the pair are completing their first commercial harvest.
After waiting nearly six full years for the first big harvest, Baur and his daughter Kelly have been hard at work gathering the nuts. Kelly Baur first drives a blower through the rows of hazelnut trees to move the nuts to the row for her father to collect with the “Getzumall” Orchard Sweeper.
On Thursday, Sept. 26, a total of nine bins full of hazelnuts and counting were ready to be sent off to the next phase of the process, which includes sending them to the George Packing Company in Newburg, Oregon.
“They’ll go to Aurora [Oregon] and then George Packing. They’ll be dried, cracked, and then they separate them out into whole nuts and part nuts,” Rob Baur said. “These are basically for candy. They’re not sold with the shell. The Chinese market is for in-the-shell with big nuts. These are smaller nuts because the nuts are more expensive than the chocolate, so when you have a hazelnut on top of a chocolate, they want a smaller one.”
When the farm began planting the trees in 2018, staff made sure to have both the McDonald and Webster variety as the two pollinate each other, Rob Baur said.
“No tree is more than three trees away from a pollinator,” he said.
In the process of harvesting, Rob Baur has wanted the “right to repair” his machinery multiple times with his 2018 John Deere tractor because in his three years of ownership, he has taken the equipment to the shop a few times. He joked that he has the right to repair a 1960s tractor, but that has only made a trip to the shop twice.
Baurs Corner Farm is a fourth generation family farm located at 4316 NW 169th St. near Ridgefield. Along with hazelnuts, the farm offers pears, dahlias, tomatoes, garlic and more with its seasonal farm store and u-pick goods available. The farm can be contacted by emailing baurscorner@gmail.com and can be found on Facebook at Baurs Corner Farm.
