‘You have to beat the squirrels and the rain’: Ridgefield farm harvests its first commercial hazelnut crop

RIDGEFIELD — For Ridgefield farmer Rob Baur, harvesting his farm’s first commercial hazelnut crop this fall and shipping it off to buyers was a race against time and nature.

“You have to beat the squirrels and the rain,” Baur said.

Baur and his wife, Clark County Councilor Sue Marshall, co-own and run Baurs Corner Farm. Six years ago, they removed most of the 4,500 pear trees on the property and replaced them with 3,100 hazelnut trees.

The trees now stand about 15 feet tall. Each can produce 20 to 30 pounds of nuts a year. Harvesting typically begins in mid-September and lasts just two to three weeks.

Hazelnuts are wind pollinated and need at least two genetically different varieties of hazelnut trees to produce fruit. Baurs Corner Farm grows Webster and McDonald varieties.

“No tree is more than three trees away from a pollenizer,” Baur said.

Unlike most orchards, Baurs Corner Farm plants grass between the rows of trees. As the hazelnuts drop in the fall, the grass helps reduce the presence of standing water and mud. Once the farm gathers the hazelnuts, they go to a receiving station in Aurora, Ore. From there, go to a facility where they are washed and dried before heading to George Packing Co.

“They make hazelnut butter and Nutella,” Baur said.

Marshall said she hasn’t had as much time to work on the farm since her election to the Clark County Council.

“The farm has suffered. More work has been shifted to my husband. That’s just the reality,” she said.

Luckily, that didn’t slow down the harvest, which is a real family affair. Daughter Kelly Baur took time off from her linguistics doctoral studies at Arizona State University to help.

“I was here when we planted them, so it’s fun to be here for the first commercial harvest,” she said. “I’m just here for two weeks.”

Kelly Baur drove one tractor with a blower attached that sent all of the downed hazelnuts to the center of the row, while Rob Baur drove another tractor pulling a Getzumall, which sweeps up the nuts, blows the leaves, twigs and rocks off to the side, and drops the hazelnuts into a wood trailer.

Rob Baur said he thought Getzumall was a German word, so he asked his daughter for help.

“I asked her what it meant in German, and she said ‘nothing,’ ” he said. He found out later from another farmer it was named that because “it gets them all.”

“With this (equipment), my daughter and I can do all the harvesting,” Rob Baur said. “You want to go faster, but then you miss nuts, so you have to go slow and steady.”

Without the tractors and equipment, Rob Baur said the farm would have to hire seasonal workers to rake and gather the hazelnuts by hand.

Rob Baur has been a strong supporter of the “right to repair,” a movement to require that manufacturers provide parts, tools and documentation so independent repair providers can fix broken equipment. Rob Baur testified in favor of a bill proposed earlier this year by U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania. He said an issue with his 2018 John Deere tractor surfaced right before this year’s harvest began, but finding someone who could fix it and get it running was difficult. He believes right-to-repair legislation would help.

He said his newer John Deere tractor has been in the shop five times in three years, while his 1966 tractor has been in the shop twice in 60 years.

Just as the fourth-generation family farm motivates Rob Baur’s political involvement on the right-to-repair issue, it spurs Marshall’s efforts as a county councilor to preserve agricultural lands.

She said one of the fundamental reasons for conserving existing agricultural lands is the soil itself. It’s best for growing, and it’s especially good at retaining moisture, she said.

That ability to retain moisture will become more important as the county adapts to the effects of climate change, Marshall said. During the 2021 heat dome, when temperatures reached 116 degrees, she said their soil’s ability to hold water was crucial.

“Our trees were younger and vulnerable, so we were worried that we would lose some of them because we don’t have water rights, and we don’t irrigate,” Marshall said. “But we didn’t lose a single tree. They may have been stressed, but they didn’t die.”

This story was made possible by Community Funded Journalism, a project from The Columbian and the Local Media Foundation. Top donors include the Ed and Dollie Lynch Fund, Patricia, David and Jacob Nierenberg, Connie and Lee Kearney, Steve and Jan Oliva, The Cowlitz Tribal Foundation and the Mason E. Nolan Charitable Fund. The Columbian controls all content. For more information, visit columbian.com/cfj.