The field day was at Norm Erickson's Hazelnut Valley Farm, where he had quite a set-up. He had an underground cold storage area, a greenhouse which contained a sorter, a cracker, and "cleaner" for the hazelnuts, and many acres of hazelnut plants. We listened to some presentations on marketing the nuts, a pruning discussion by Lois Braun from University of Minnesota, and a hazelnut enterprise financial model. The afternoon brought processing demonstrations and an orchard tour.
Bags of hazelnuts drying outside.
Catkins!
That's Norm in the white and brown hat and tan jacket.
Dan and Nancy discussing hazelnuts.
Layering technique was shown (propagation technique).
Lois Braun talking about the layering technique.
Hazelnuts ready for processing. (I think ours are bigger) :-)
Hazelnuts with farm in the background.
They inoculated the plants with EFB (Eastern Filbert Blight), and I found some branches with disease on it. I was told later by some experienced professionals, that this probably wasn't a good idea. It would have been better to test them elsewhere after good plants were selected from the orchard.
I have taken movies of the various equipment that Norm has developed.
