Almond Harvesting

Hi,

Our Spanish.neighbour harvests.from our 110 Almond Trees and retains.the husks. He gives us the nuts which we then give to friends & others.

There is a Cooperative in Puerto Lumbreras very.near the first exit for PL if you are coming from Huercal Overa.

What about asking in the Town Hall in Velez. Hope you didn't loose as many trees as we did with the 2 yr drought.

Best Wishes,

Bob and Sandra

Mojacar Playa and Puerto Lumbreras

Hi Paul,

I know little about the harvest but recently we went to a co op in Rubio, They told us we need to pay a rent for our hectares. The cost was €18 per hectare. They told us if we have no grant, why would we pay into the co op. We tried for the grant for our farm but they said they weren't changing names over this year. We will be looking for somewhere to sell ours this year. 

I hope this helps and this advise has come straight from the cooperative. 

Thanks Bob.  Asking for advice at the Ayuntamiento might be good idea.  I'll look out for the place in PL too.

We bought out place about 2 years ago, and I don't think the land has been farmed for a while before that, so many of the trees are indeed dead.  However many are not, and we have allowed a local guy to harvest them for the last couple of years while we haven't been around much, and I would reckon he took several tonnes last year.  

Thanks again, Paul

Hi Lisa

I have heard that grants are available, though I understand they are conditional on maintenance of certain farming practices / standards which I suspect we might struggle with being part-time amateurs, who just happen to own a quantity of almond trees.  However it would be good to work out whether the financial return from selling the almonds would make it worth the physical and financial investment that we would have to make, or whether in fact we are as well to watch nature reclaim the land.

There is an almond place of some sort on the Poligono - is that the co-op that you spoke to?  If you pay €18 per hectare to be a member of the co-op, I wonder how many almonds one could expect to harvest per hectare, and what the payback per kg might be. 

Many thanks, Paul

Paul

As I understand it there are two types of almond grown commercially and one is a lot more ‘valuable’ than the other. Mary at Casa Joya, up the road from you has researched all of this when they took over managing their own almond crop. You might get in touch with her. Happy harvesting, Malcolm

Thanks Malcolm.  I don't know whether Mary uses this forum, in which case it would be great to hear, otherwise I will try to make contact.