Macadamia Nuts

Picker and bags

This week they picked mac nuts.  First a worker uses a blower to blow all the leaves from underneath the trees so you can see the heavier nuts.  If your farm only has mac nuts, this can be quite a process.  For some reason, with all the mac nut trees we have, they clocked only 10 hours of blowing for over a hundred trees.

In 1986, a farm report stated that the Braund Farm had 220 mac nut trees.  At that time trees were culled, and you can see stumps of trees around the farm.  I haven’t counted, but my guess is that there are 150 trees or more.  One of the nice things about having mac nut trees on a coffee farm is that, obviously you get a crop of nuts, but also the trees shade the coffee plants from the hot sun.

After the ground is cleared, the workers come and “pick” the nuts.  Actually, the nuts are on the ground.  The ones in the tree are too high to pick.  So the nuts are really gathered.  Also, the ones on the ground are the ones that are ripe and ready to gather.  I did not actually see our workers gathering, but I have observed other workers. 



Flower and green nuts

They stoop down and pick up the nuts that have recently fallen, which would be the ones with the green husk still on and intact.  These would be the freshest.  Then the ones with the husk dried enough to have broken open are older.  Then sometimes the husk actually falls off the hard inner shelled nut.  These are slightly shiny and still good.  The nuts with no husk that are dull looking are ignored.  If you don’t pick often enough, there will be these old nuts still on the ground every time.  These are eaten by the rats and the occasional wild boar, as well as chickens and various insects.  Old nuts and nut husks are sought after as soil for growing such things as pineapple.  Sometimes a nut will actually sprout a new tree.

After Thursday night there were lots of big white bags, which the workers had sewn shut with string and piled on the side of the driveway.  Friday, they came again to pick.  There are now 68 of these huge bags of nuts ready to be delivered to the mac nut buyers on Monday.  I have no idea how much each bag weighs, but I don’t want to try to lift one.  I was amazed at how many nuts were gathered.  And they do this about every two months!  The lady up the lane sold her nuts for $.73 per pound.  There may be price variation depending on the quality of the nuts after they get to the buyers. 

There is no mac nut season.  The trees just continue to produce nuts all year long.  I have personally never seen a flower, probably because they don't look like a flower to me. 

All last week was warm and dry weather, unusual this time of year.  The pickers were working in very hot conditions.  However, Sunday night the clouds burst.  Each bag of nuts got wet. 

Loading mac nut bags

Monday the farm manager came to take the nuts to market.  It took two pick up truck loads.  We delivered 5,115 lbs of nuts to the buyer.  He pays $.86 per pound.  The scale weighs the total weight including the 364 lbs of the blue bin.  So the scale showing 1439 lbs had 1,075 lbs of actual nuts.

Unloading bags

The buyer took a bucket sample of the nuts we brought for analysis. Perhaps they will deduct for being wet, I don't know. We got a receipt for the full weight.



Weighing nuts

Scale display

Dumping weighed nuts

Here is some official info about macadamia nuts:

·         Macadamia nuts are not picked from the tree but are fully ripened when they fall and are then harvested.

·         Hawaii’s 700 farms and 8 processing plants employ 4,000 workers.

·         The macadamia tree is related to the protea family.

·         Total Hawaii macadamia nut farm value in 1999 was $37.4 million.

·         Tough nut to crack: it takes 300 lbs. per square inch to break the macadamia nut shell, hardest of all nut shells.

·         U.S. is the largest consumer (51%) with Japan following at 15%.

·         Macadamia nuts are high in monounsaturated fatty acid (“good” fat) and have been demonstrated to help reduce overall cholesterol levels.

·         The Hawaii Macadamia Nut Association’s launching its “100% Hawaii-grown Macadamia Nuts” campaign: “The Hawaiian Macadamia, Grown with Aloha”.

·         Virtually all of Hawaii’s macadamia nuts come from the Big Island of Hawaii.

·         Nuts are high in minerals and protein and are part of a healthy diet.

·         Hawaii growers are the world leaders in cultivation techniques.

Source - Hawaii Macadamia Nut Association

Mike and Mary MacCheyne pick and process their own nuts by hand. Mary is actually the picker. They have about 20 trees. They have a drying rack and dry them until the husk comes off. Then they have a cracker that cracks the hard shell to get out the nut. Then she drys them in a big dehydrator and sells them. When they go to Fairbanks to sell their products at the bazaar there in November, they prepare their chili mac nuts. This is their own very popular recipe. They even grow the chili peppers themselves! Very clever people.