JUNCTION CITY — The snow just kept falling and falling. Big, wet flakes coated branches of hazelnut trees around Lane County.
Soon, branch after branch snapped.
“(The snow) was just so heavy,” said Tiffany Harper, president of the Lane County Farm Bureau and operations coordinator for Harper Farms. Harper also writes a monthly opinion column for The Register-Guard.
Almost two weeks after the late February snowstorm in the southern Willamette Valley, hazelnut growers are hustling to clear debris and trim broken branches and limbs from their orchards. Using pole saws — small chainsaws on long poles — Harper Farms work crews have been busy reshaping hazelnut, or filbert, orchards.
“We essentially are trying to make them a tree again, otherwise they become a bush,” said Bryan Harper, vice president and principal operator at Harper Farms. The Harpers are fifth-generation hazelnut farmers. He said he hopes to have the orchards cleared of debris and the trees trimmed by summer. Hazelnut trees yield nuts in September and October.
Hazelnuts rank No. 13 of agricultural commodities grown, raised or produced in Oregon, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. That places them right after Christmas trees and right before cherries. Statewide, the crop is worth about $70 million a year.
Hazelnut orchards took the brunt of the snowstorm, said Ross Penhallegon, horticulture agent for the Oregon State University Extension in Lane County. He said the snow broke branches in 10 to 30 percent of the hazelnut trees in the county.
“The wood is very weak,” he said, “kind of like maple trees.”
The amount of damage depends on where the orchard is located and the age of the trees. The Harpers said they have an orchard at higher elevation east of Junction City that was damaged more than their orchards in the valley. The family has 470 acres of hazelnut trees in all. Their orchard with the most damage had snow break branches in about 30 percent of the trees.
Throughout Lane County, “the trees look like a bomb went off” where the storm hit hardest, said Melissa Fery, who advises small farm operators for the OSU Extension in Lane County.
But the late February snow wasn’t as big of a problem for hazelnut growers as the ice storm of December 2016, Bryan Harper said. Ice up to three-quarters of an inch thick coated hazelnut trees for about four days. The ice kept shearing limbs and branches off trees, and caused whole trees to fall. Depending on the orchard, he said he lost up to half of the typical hazelnut yield.
“(The ice storm of) 2016 was horrible,” he said. “It was a demolition of orchards, essentially.”
The recent snowstorm also broke some “hoop houses” — greenhouses with semicircle frames formed from metal pipe, plastic pipe or wood, Fery said. “They just got flattened under the weight of the snow,” she said.
Farmers who sell produce at farmers markets often use hoop houses to start growing crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce a month and a half early, Penhallegon said. Like Fery, he said he has seen collapsed hoop houses, noting three of them near Jasper.
Blueberries and other fruit crops are dormant this time of year, but Penhallegon said he knows of a prune crop near Alvadore that was just about to bud when the snowstorm hit. He said the crop will survive, though it will be late.
“This cold weather has shut down the bloom,” he said.
Hazelnuts are a popular agricultural product for farmers in the Willamette Valley due to overseas demand. But the trees have thick branches, which makes them more susceptible to snowstorm damage than other crops.
The damage to the hazelnut trees will reduce how many hazelnuts they produce this fall, said Bryan Harper. It’s hard to how much that will affect revenue, though.
