History
Steven's grandfather Frank Kashiwase was a Japanese immigrant who began farming in the California Central Valley in the 1920s. He bought a 20-acre farm that he planted with grapes, and those 20 acres are still part of Kashiwase Farms and include the house where Steven now lives. Steven's father Henry carried on the family tradition of farming and planted almonds and peaches. He purchased most of the current Kashiwase Farm in 1948. Steven began farming in the 1970s and began making the conversion to organic practices in the 1990s in response to customer demand. Steven's father passed away in 1975 but his mother still lives in the farmhouse on the property. Steven married Lisa in 1995 and they have two young children, Sammy and Rachel. In addition to helping out on the farm and raising their two kids, Lisa helps with farmers market sales.
Kashiwase Farms consists of 220 acres planted with orchards. There are 80 acres of stonefruit and 6 acres of Asian Pears, all certified organic. There are also about 130 acres of almonds, 40 acres of which are already certified organic. 60 acres will be certified organic this year, and the 30 remaining acres will be certified next year. Steven has been very successful at farming stonefruit and almonds using organic practices, but the Asian Pears have proven to be quite challenging. Over the past 6 years, Steven has lost about 90 percent of his crop each year to a pest called coddling moth. He also battles a bacterium called fireblight.
This year, Steven decided that drastic times call for drastic measures. He ordered from Japan a kind of paper bag that can be hung over each individual fruit to protect them from the moths, and then had these bags placed on each fruit as it grew. In addition, Steven used his usual pest control methods of hanging pheremone disruption baits in the orchard and also pruning aggressively to control the fireblight, which was particularly bad this year. He was hopeful that this multi-pronged approach would improve the yield of the crop. Unfortunately, he has already harvested about half of his Asian Pear crop and the loss to coddling moth was extensive. He is currently planning to remove these trees and replant these six acres. He will try planting at least some acres in Asian Pears again, in the hope that in the interim the coddling moth will not have a host and so will lose its foothold in the orchard. This will give Steven the opportunity to proactively protect his crop against these pests.
Steve's stonefruit and almond crops are coming along much better! The young green almonds are just starting to split and the peach harvest is ripe and ready to eat. This year, Steven will sell only about 10 percent of his crop wholesale. This is because wholesale prices on tree fruit are so low that he just barely recoups the cost of growing the fruit, and doesn't make any profit. Farmers markets, he emphasizes, have been the best and only way he's been able to survive as a farmer. Selling the fruit directly to the customer enables him to earn a fair return on his crops.
Products
Kashiwase Farms grows over 80 varieties of peaches, nectarines, plums, pluots, cherries. His specialties include Arctic Rose nectarines, White Lady and Snow King peaches, and Flavor King pluots. He also grows 5 varieties of Asian Pears including Shinsekis and Hosuis. His primary variety of almonds is nonpareil carmels.
Kashiwase Farms distributes to Farmers' Markets throughout the Bay Area Tuesday through Sunday. On Saturday Kashiwase Farms sells their products at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market, Berkeley Farmers' Market, Aptos, Grand Lake, Danville, Orinda, and San Mateo markets. Sunday they can be found at the Marin Civic Center Farmers' Market, Jack London Square, Walnut Creek, Mt. View, Menlo Park and Belmont markets.
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