From the Fields: Kevin Herman, Fresno, Madera and Merced tree crop farmer

By Kevin Herman
Fresno, Madera and Merced tree crop farmer

Figs is our main crop. It’s been a good year for figs. The crop is average in yield, but it’s good quality. With the late-summer cool weather and moderate fall weather, we’re still picking fresh figs. That’s a bit unusual, but people still want them, so we’re making some money doing it.

We have a new fig variety. It’s a green fig, and we call it Emerald. This is our first significant harvest, though we had a small harvest last year. It’s a large piece of fruit. It’s got a creme brulee type of flavor, and it’s got seeds on the inside, so it gives it that crunchy almond flavor. There used to be a variety called Calimyrna, which has gone by the wayside. This is like the replacement for that. We’ve been picking and packing and shipping the heck out of them for fresh, and consumers really like them. A lot of folks are nostalgic about heirloom varieties. They like this fig because it reminds them of some of those heirloom varieties that have come and gone. We’re excited about the future of this variety.

We finished pistachio harvest, and that turned out well for us. The old Kerman variety was a little bit disappointing, but the new variety called Golden Hills did great. We had a good year—good quality and prices—so it’s good to be a pistachio grower.

We had a little bit of a disappointing almond crop, and I think the industry did as well. It was super-hot last summer into the fall, and that’s when the buds for the 2025 crop were forming. It was so hot that the trees struggled to survive and didn’t have any energy left over to generate a good bud set for the 2025 crop. 

We haven’t had many problems getting folks during harvest. You always struggle a little bit to get equipment operators, but we’ve been able to get the folks we need to get the job done and on time.