JEM Farms
Mr. Desmond purchased the initial acreage we refer to as the Chandon Ranch from Kaiser Aetna in 1973. The property lies on the west bank of the Feather River and consisted of 160 acres of Serr and Tehama English Walnuts. We built the first huller and dryer on the property in 1976 to process our crop.
We discovered that the property directly across the river was for sale and in 1977 Mr. Desmond purchased these 1,200 acres which he called JEM Farms.
In conjunction with our development project we also continued farming the north half, which was planted to Cling Peaches and Bartlett Pears. Unfortunately the peaches contracted a virus and our cannery went broke, putting our plans in a serious bind. The decision was made to remove the existing trees and complete the development of the entire ranch as soon as possible. Instead of purchasing grafted “nursery” trees, we purchased 16,000 seedling Black Walnut trees and grafted them ourselves. We began this project in 1983 and planted the entire acreage by 1989.
The huller and dryer at JEM were built in 1991 and were engineered to be able to handle our anticipated production. It is one of the largest dryers in the area holding and drying 210 tons at one time. Our harvest runs from mid September to early November.
In 1997 Mr. Desmond was able to purchase the property of our neighbor to the north. This added 474 acres to our operation and he called it JEM II. In the development process from an old dairy we removed the fences, laser leveled, deep-ripped or slip-plowed, installed underground sprinkler irrigation and planted Black Walnuts as seeds. We grew the seedlings in place and grafted them the following year.
The gross acres of our three units amount to approximately 1,830 acres. By tree count or net farmable it is 1,583 acres. There are a total of 79,000 trees on the property.
