Overview
Hester Orchards has been a reliable partner for over 40 years to small farm owners, large companies, and non-profit organizations that need to keep their walnut orchards viable, and profitable, for generations to come.
We offer a wide range of services designed to fit your specific needs. You can even outsource all aspects of maintenance, harvesting, hulling and dehydrating to us for a complete solution to your walnut orchard operational needs.
Talk to us, and let us help you decide the right services for you. They can include:
- Harvesting
- Orchard redevelopment
- Maintenance such as pruning and orchard floor management
- Hulling and Dehydration
- Shipping to market
Easy to Work With
We know that different business entities have different needs, and we’ve probably worked with just about every kind of farm imaginable. Small farms to corporate farms, and non-profits (such as those that generate their organizational revenue from agricultural properties) all have specific financial terms and approaches that need to be addressed. Most of all, they need open and frequent communication.
We’ll keep you informed, through regular meetings, phone calls, and customized reports. This is more than a status report on what bin we are currently running your harvest through, or how much progress has been made on a given orchard redevelopment project. We will talk to you about where the market is headed, your orchard’s anticipated profitability, and any other business or operational aspects needed to help you. We know how important good communication and collaboration is, and we are here for you.
The Money
So how do you, or we, get paid? This is where working with us can be a tremendous benefit to you. We have the benefit of extensive experience, and so we can identify a lot of financial arrangement possibilities that have worked well in the past for different situations. Perhaps in your situation a per-acre per-month fee is best, or maybe a profit-sharing approach works best where we pay the expenses. The point is, there are a lot of options, and we can present the pros and cons of the ones we thing will work best for your particular situation.
Small private farms with only 20 acres will benefit from a different sort of financial arrangement than large corporate farms. Non-profit entities are again as different, and we have a lot of experience in this regard also that can be very helpful when it comes to sound financial structuring.
After 40 years in this business, we have a lot of flexibility and experience to draw on.
Food Safety
At the forefront of all our decisions, on a daily basis, is the overriding issue of food safety. It has a direct impact on operations, the farm itself, investors, and farm owners. Food safety refers to a wide range of activities and approaches to running a walnut operation. Considerations include things such as herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, plant cleanliness, and more.
We are part of a consortium working closely with the California Department of Food and Agriculture entrusted with the task of defining and implementing an industry-standard for Best Operating Practices for Dehydrators. We take this trust very seriously and believe our demonstrated leadership is very much to the benefit of our clients.
