Understanding Harvest Times
Understanding Harvest times
Many folks don't realize that most nuts and seeds are harvested just ONCE a year. Macadamia nuts are an exception because they have a longer harvest period that spans a few months. But for the most part, we are looking at harvests (if grown in the Northern hemisphere) in our fall, from late September to December; for nuts and seeds in the Southern hemisphere, harvest is in the spring, March to May.
Now, here's the thing, harvesting is just one small part of the process; there's also drying, cracking, sorting, and packing; then finally, the shipping. It's lots! So that means even with harvest happening in the fall, most of our nuts and seeds are not available to us until December or in many cases January.
Hazelnuts and walnuts are usually our earliest nuts to be ready in mid-December, pistachios, and pecans are usually available in January. Nuts like our almonds coming up from Australia are usually ready in late April, and then shipping up to us in June. Macadamia nuts coming up from Australia are similar, but they get here even later, closer to September.
Cashews are grown in the tropics and are usually harvested in the early part of the year, from February to May, and then have to go through the whole process of drying, cracking etc.
So there in a nut-shell is the breakdown of our major nuts that we sell.