hazelnut lessons learned

 This year's hazelnut harvest is the largest yet, as the trees continue to come in to full production. 

It was a real challenge for just my wife and I hand harvesting, since the ripening nuts start falling to the ground a couple weeks after ripe enough to harvest, and they are impossible to gather once on the ground in the tall grass. The window is narrow with all the other things going on. Research is being done to mechanize harvest, but likely we'll be hiring help for the near future.

Harvest is a one time pass through, and all are harvested even if some of the husks (involucres) are not drying back yet. The genetics of these selected hazels is still variable, so they don't all ripen at the same time. Multiple picking passes would be quite onerous, so we put in drying bins for a couple weeks to finish drying, making the husking effort  much easier.

After husking they are bagged and hauled to where the prototype shelling equipment is, a five hour drive from here. This equipment is far quicker than hand shelling, but again, the genetics of these hazels is still a work in progress, so the equipment has to handle a large range of sizes and properties.

Hazelnuts as a new food crop for the midwest is slowly progressing, but in a low energy future, perennial food crops will be much more central to our diet. Us early adapters and permaculture advocates hope eventually millions of acres of corn and soybeans will be switched to trees like hazels, but the current system does not want to change. 

Here are photos of the processing and kitchen experiments.

These are kernels back from the sheller. Note that in the real world, food is not all cosmetically perfect, and one uses their own judgement as to how much funkiness is acceptable.

Not the greatest photo, but these are hazels that have been toasted a bit and lightly coated with maple syrup, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Crunchy and tasty.

This is some nuts being turned in to nut butter in a melanger. Normally, melangers are used to take cocoa nibs and make very smooth cocoa liquor, but it works fine to break down the nuts. This this has granite wheels that spin around and thoroughly grind the kernels. I've also made a batch of hazel and chocolate spread to replace Nutella, which is yummy, but environmentally poor. We are calling our stuff "chazel". It has hazelnuts, cocoa powder, and sugar- that's it. No palm oil or other stuff.

Here is some nut oil fresh from the press, with fines and water/oil emulsion settling out. I'll pour off the clarified oil and store it that way. The Piteba press works optimally if the nut are at 10% moisture. I checked moisture content, adjusted, and pressed, so this emulsion results. I boil the water off and filter to get there rest of the oil.

Some lessons learned: The nut butter has an odd mouth feel, way more stick to your mouth compared to peanut butter. We will do more experiments with added ingredients.

The nuts are around 30% oil, but this home scale press only gets a little over half the oil. The rest stays in the press cake. We are using the press cake in baked goods, and if nothing else, food for the chickens, who love it.

The volume and weight ratio of harvested nut in the shell with husks still on to the shelled kernels is crazy. Lots of effort to get to useable food.