More truffle news

It's snowing again today in Tehachapi so no one's in the mood to plant. The good news is that the 450 trees in the ground look to be recovering from the shock of planting and are doing well and showing new growth.

Rather than plant trees or do my taxes (researching farm profit and loss for those interested), I Googled "truffle cultivation" and found a few more stories on truffle farming in the U.S.:

Click here for an article about Franklin Garland of Garland Truffles in North Carolina and Bob Pasarelli, a North Carolina chef, and their successes with truffle cultivation in North Carolina.

I also found a new truffle company, Truffle Cultivation, Inc., who are based out of Oregon and purport to have a sales office in France. Interesting to this attorney-farmer is the fact that the end of their website presentation states why they chose the corporate structure they did. Kind of funny if you ask me. They don't list pricing, products, or scientific information so I'm not sure what to make of them. I didn't find them in an online search of the Oregon Department of Corporations so if you're interested in them, be sure to check them out.

While at the Oregon Department of Corporations I did happen to search for corporations with the word "truffle" in their name. Here is the link to the list of 29 such names!!! Some appear to deal with those other kinds of truffles (the sweet ones), but several appear to be farms. I'll check into them and get back to you.

I found that kind of interesting, 'cause I'm kind of geeky that way, so I went over to the North Carolina Secretary of State's Corporations page and found these seven truffle-related businesses - all located in North Carolina. Interestingly enough, it shows that Garland Truffles, the above-referenced media darling of the North Carolnia truffle world, has a suspended corporate status as of today's date. This may mean nothing but is something those of you doing business with them should know and clarify who you are sending money to because I don't know about North Carolina, but it's sometimes illegal in California to do business with a knowingly suspended corporation.

Of course, no search would be complete without checking out my home state, California. I only found three "truffle" corporations here (probably because of our high corporate taxes...). Here is the link. Nope, we're not incorporated yet because, well, we don't have any business to worry about until we actually find that legendary black gold. One pound should just about cover the annual fees...

You can do these searches in your own state by going to the Secretary of State/Department of Corporations page and doing a search for businesses with the words "truffle", "truffiere", or whatever turns you on in them.

Back to those farm taxes...

West Side Story

Believe it or not, we planted (me, Diana and Mark (my new husband) 450 trees in just five days. It all started with Mark running the trencher down 420 feet of property line. He claims he wasn't drunk but the row looks like a sobriety test gone bad to me...Still, a trench is a trench, right?
After that, we put my poor new hubby (less than a week into wedded bliss) to work marking rows and digging holes. Doesn't he look happy?
Diana (Mom) and I then followed with trees, tubes and stakes:
Before we knew it, the first row of oaks was in!!! Isn't it pretty?We crossed the gully to the east side and decided to save 20 spare hazelnuts in pots to replace any we might lose over the next year or so. Plus, we were just too darned tired after planting 450 trees to do another row.
And a few days later, the entire west side of the gully was full of oaks and hazelnuts. How cool will this be in five years???
More as soon as we complete the east side (152 oaks to be exact) and our new favorite pasttime - installing drip irrigation.

Note to future truffle farmers: It's a lot of work planting 600 trees so get some help!!!

One bourbon, one scotch, one french black truffle???

If your up on truffle cultivation I'm sure you've heard that Tom Michaels recently harvested his first successful crop of Perigords in the small town of Chuckey, Tennessee. In fact, they are so good he's sold them to restaurants in Manhattan. Here is the link to a nice article on Tennessee Truffles in none other than the New York Times.

The gist of it is that he has about 2,500 hazelnut trees he planted in 2000. So it took seven years. He's getting $50 an ounce for them (that equals $800 a pound).

His success was such big news it even made the papers in the UK - where they are also trying to cultivate the famous fungus and give France a run for its truffle money.

And here is another good link to an article on Mr. Michaels and his success from the Knoxville News Sentinel website. It even has a picture of his hazelnut orchard so you can see what our orchard might look like in seven years!

Finally, here's a link to an inspiring article in the Vancouver Sun about cultivating the spores in British Columbia.

I'm still looking for Mr. Michaels' website to link to and will post it as soon as I find it. In the meantime, I've got some irrigation to install!!!

600 Trees and a Snowstorm

Three days after we received our trees a nice snowstorm blew in. This is what the truffle farm looked like a week after accepting delivery:
Scenic as it is, it's not very good for planting so we threw the trees in the barn (our version of cold storage) and waited for what we hope was the last storm of the season to pass. As happens in life, it passed and we've been busy planting trees ever since. Pictures of the planting to come soon!