April 14, 2017
CapitalPress.com
3
Chapin family grows, dries hazelnuts
Bruce Chapin started farm-
ing when he got out of college
in 1973. He’s the third gener-
ation on the Willamette Valley
farm near Salem, Ore.
His father, Jack, planted
a cherry orchard in 1960 and
Bruce and Jack planted their
first 12 acres of hazelnuts in
1969. In the ensuing years,
more orchards were planted.
Today he farms 100 acres
of cherries and 500 acres
of hazelnuts with his son
Austin Chapin and his son-
in-law Matt Schuster, who
are co-owners of Chapin Or-
chards LLC and Chapin De-
hydrating LLC.
Early on, Bruce also started
a hazelnut nursery to reduce
the cost of establishing new
orchards. Through the years,
the nursery has expanded be-
yond what is solely needed for
his farm. The nursery’s moth-
er trees produced so well this
season that Chapin Orchards
has a surplus of Jefferson ha-
zelnut trees, a variety that has
high resistance to eastern fil-
bert blight.
Many of their first hazel-
nuts were the Barcelona vari-
ety. Later they planted a lot of
the Ennis variety.
“Ennis was a very beauti-
Brenna Wiegand/For the Capital Press
Bruce Chapin prepares for maintenance on his hazelnut cleaner.
During harvest the cleaning and drying plant handles five trac-
tor-trailer loads of nuts per day.
ful, large nut and went into a
special market that resulted
in premium prices,” Bruce
Chapin said, “but when the
eastern filbert blight moved
into the valley we found it very
hard to keep the Ennis orchards
alive. The old Barcelona va-
riety is also susceptible to the
disease but not as bad as the En-
nis,” Chapin said. “I’ve lost all
my Ennis in the Salem area but
I believe I can raise a Barcelona
indefinitely with an intensive
spray and pruning program.”
During 1993-94, seeing that
the blight was coming from the
north, Chapin planted hazelnuts
in Dever-Conner, near Albany,
30 miles south of his home
farm, giving him a six-year re-
prieve from when the disease
hit the Salem area.
“I’ve got a very nice-look-
ing Ennis orchard down there
but every year the blight gets a
little worse,” Chapin said. “The
disease is here to stay; our best
defense is to keep planting dis-
ease-resistant varieties, but re-
placing orchards is a very slow
and expensive process.”
Hazelnuts start yield-
ing a respectable crop after
seven years, but full pro-
duction isn’t reached until
after 12 to 14 years.
“In the filbert industry,
everything we do requires a
long-term perspective and
figuring out ways to make
it better for the next genera-
tion,” Chapin said. “We are
very thankful for the forward
thinking at (Oregon State Uni-
versity) in starting a hazelnut
breeding program. Without
the resistant varieties recently
developed our industry would
be in a rapid decline rather
than the growing, vibrant in-
dustry it is today.”
To further their involve-
ment in the industry, the
farm set up a cleaning and
drying station in 1987 and
installed a much larger one
CALL
Oregon
Varmint
Control
three years ago, going into
business as Chapin Dehy-
drating. They now clean and
dry nuts for more than 40
growers, who sell to North-
west Hazelnut and George
Packing. During harvest,
they clean and dry about five
tractor-trailer loads a day.
Besides working with his
son and son-in-law Bruce en-
joys working with his church
and has six grandkids grow-
ing up on the farm to pass his
knowledge on to.
“Life doesn’t get much
better than that,” he said.
Brenna Wiegand/For the Capital Press
Bruce Chapin separates
bundles of hazelnut trees at his
Salem nursery. Chapin Farms
grows the trees for their own
orchards and those of others.
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