Macadamia nuts!

I know the feeling: you go into the store and see a bag of macadamia nuts. You want them so bad, but they are so dang expensive for such a small amount! You may have seen brands like Mauna Loa which is actually produced here on the Big Island, but macnut products are also kind of pricey here as well. Have you ever found yourself losing sleep over the price of macnuts? Let me ease your restless mind.

As you have heard, Baxter works at a macnut farm. Like any farm, it is a lot of work. But people might be surprised to find out the details of running a macadamia nut farm.

A macnut tree with nuts still in their husk

As these nuts, which are still in their protective husk, fall to the ground, a harvest begins. The "pickers" are called to the farm to collect the fallen nuts from the ground one-by-one. The pickers put all the nuts into 10-gallon bags, then when the bags are full they leave them in piles around the trees. Baxter and his bosses come to the orchard with a big trailer and lift the 10-gallon bags one by one into the back to be brought to the de-husking machine. 

Now this is already no small task. The harvest, which happens somewhere around once a month can yield between 100 and 200 bags. Could you imagine being bent over all day hand-picking a couple hundred bags of nuts? No thank you. 

De-husking machine

The macnuts are then brought to this de-husking machine, which the picture does not do justice. Baxter, or one of his bosses will stand here all day pushing the nuts through a contraption that well, rips off the husk for lack of a better word. If the nuts are too moist, the husk often has trouble coming off and is thrown into the reject pile and then are repeatedly put back through the de-husker until the husk is removed. Tedious is an understatement. 

After the husks are removed, they are emptied into these massive baskets. Still don't look like the macnuts you see in the store? That is because they are still in their shell. It is kind of funny to think about people trying to eat macadamia nuts before modern times considering how much work it takes to get to the core of one nut. The energy it takes would just make me more hungry. 

The "nut house"

After each macnut is de-husked, they are brought into the "nut house" where they REALLY tedious task begins. Baxter has to examine EVERY SINGLE MACNUT! 

Sorting thousands of pounds of macnuts

Baxter has a trained eye to look for shells that have holes or appear to have moldy kernels inside the shell. Those ones are rejected and are produced into mulch later on down the road I think. The smaller nuts are bought by places like companies who use them for ice cream and candies. 

Once all the nuts are sorted, Baxter and his bosses prepare them to be shipped out to customers who often order hundreds of pounds at a time. Baxter's work doesn't crack the shell so they are shipped out as is after they are sorted. The customers are companies who must crack the nuts themselves and produce the final product you see in stores, or interestingly, people with pet birds. 

A happy pet macaw customer eating a macnut in-shell

via: http://mac-nuts.com/Pages/customer.html

Here is a link to a video Baxter made on the farm for his digital media arts class if you would like a cool visual of the process:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIgLu-tfwko

Macnut macnut macnut macnsdfjsdf. There you have it, macnut doesn't sound like a word anymore, does it?