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About Us
Our little farm started out when we bought one acre in Catalina, next to the Rulaja Arabian horse
ranch, in 1975. I was looking around at the trees and the mountains, and Wayne was picking up the soil and checking
out its texture and fertility. Before long we had a 50 by 100 foot vegetable garden, and a freezer full of corn
and cauliflower. Several years down the road the horse ranch sold some of its property, and we had 5 more acres.
This was the start of the pistachio orchard. We put in the well in 1979, and started hundreds
of pistachio seedlings, 300 of which were planted... a whole orchard of two inch trees! For that story, see The
Pistachio Orchard below. In time the horse ranch sold some more land, and we had 5 more acres. We would grow
corn, melons, acorn squash, even lettuce and green onions in large quantities just trying to see what would sell and how we
could sell it. What we couldn't sell went to the Food Bank. Meanwhile we'd made use of the tree bowls
around the young pistachios and planted asparagus. We sold seedless watermelons on the corner
of Golder Ranch and Oracle before anyone ever saw them in the stores, and even before Bashas moved to Tucson, nevermind to
that corner. We went to the Tanque Verde Swap Meet when it was still on Tanque Verde and Grant Rd. and sold produce.
We sold to a "middle woman" who sold our asparagus at the St. Phillips Plaza farmer's market. We sold
at the farmer's market downtown in the parking lot of the B&B. Finally we
started selling right from the house, "Fresh Local" corn and asparagus, with a series of cardboard box signs
leading the way. That felt as temporary as it sounds, so we laid low for a few years and figured out how to really do
this right. Of course that took money, but in time Wayne and Jesse put up a shed, and we had a shed painting party.
The dogs and rabbits told us we had to fence in the annual crops, so we did. In the summer of
2002 we opened "Our Garden" as a pick your own. It didn't take long to see we'd be more efficient
by selling out of the garden shed, and here we are now, with the berries telling us they need more water.
The new stronger pump went in a couple of years ago, and now there is another row of pecans to eventually shade the berries as
I prefer to dry the fruit on purpose, not on the plants. Winter seedlings still say we need a greenhouse,
though I've been sharing my little one.. and thinning out my own plant collection in the process. Jesse's plants now
have their shade structure, and the birds are happy we haven't done the bird "exclosure" for the tomatoes
as well as a better netting system for the grapes and peaches. We've just grown more tomatoes and now have people
out in the grapes. Wow, I just updated this page a bit and am realizing we've
about added another paragraph to our history already. No wonder I feel older! |
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People keep showing great interest in the
pistachios, and not just in eating them. This 4 acre orchard was what got the ball rolling some 25 years ago.
Wayne had been in grad school at the U of A, in horticulture, and doing his thesis on pistachio cultivation when the
opportunity to buy 5 acres from our neighbor, Rulaja, came up. Finally the thesis gave in to the orchard.. he's
just a doing kind of guy, and had had enough of school by then, ready to learn on the job. That whole orchard
was put in with only a rented Ditch Witch to trench for irrigation lines, and our old Troy Built rototiller. We started
hundreds of pistachio seeds, bought from a grower in AZ. These little guys were transplanted in over 300 sites.
After a couple years the ones who survived were ready for budding. The ones who weren't were replaced, and we are
still replacing trees to this day for various reasons. Once the trees had grown enough, we planted asparagus around
each of them. Each tree had a border to contain its water, a tree well, and we made use of that border with the asparagus.
This is the asparagus we sold at St. Phillips Plaza, downtown at a Farmer's Market, and from the house with the cardboard
signs. It really hit home when we realized we were paying our kids more to harvest the asparagus than we were making
selling it! That is the reality of agribusiness in the US today. So those tree seedlings are the rootstocks, the
variety of pistachio whose root system will do the best in these growing conditions. When you come to our gate, if you
look left you will see 2 of these unbudded rootstock varieties fully grown. They are huge and beautiful, low maintenance
and low water use trees. The buds that are slipped into the bark of the rootstocks are the varieties that give the best
nuts for eating. Once in the orchard you will see how different in appearance these trees are. The only similarity
to the rootstock variety is the rougher bark at the bottom, and that line marks where the tree was budded. They generally
give a heavy crop on alternate years, and 2007 should be one of those. The nuts ripen in the fall, and harvesting
means knocking them out of the trees with a piece of PVC pipe. (The big boys use tree shaking machines.) They
fall onto a tarp and are collected and taken to our processing table, where we rub the husks off. This has to be done
within 24 hours. Then we dry them in the sun. They can be rinsed in a brine solution and seasoned, and dried again,
or can be eaten as is, my favorite way. If there are any left I store them in the freezer. |
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