Loewen Brothers Custom — Almond & Walnut Harvest

Harvest crews and equipment, ready when your block is.

Custom harvesting means we bring the machinery, the crew and the hours so you don't have to own them. Most growers book us for a full season; we also take single blocks and overflow work when the window gets tight. We'll line up the trucking or huller pickup to get your crop off the field, too.

August – early October

Almond harvest

Shaking, sweeping and pickup, scheduled around your varieties so an early block isn't sitting on the ground waiting on the rest.

Mid-September – early November

Walnut harvest

Shaking, sweeping and pickup through the fall, worked around your dryer's intake so the crop keeps moving.

New for 2027

Almond conditioning

Conditioning the windrow after sweeping, to help the crop dry down in the field before the pickup machine runs. Some growers want it done; we'll have it available for the 2027 season.

December – early January

Mummy shaking

Shaking the mummies out of the dormant almonds has everything to do with next year's harvest. It denies navel orangeworm the home it needs to decimate the new crop.

In season

Orchard chopping

Tractor and flail mower through the rows, chopping what's on the orchard floor back down. Book it alongside your harvest or on its own.

Year-round

Other ag services

A range of additional orchard and field work outside the harvest windows. Tell us what you need and we'll tell you straight whether we're the right crew for it.

Our year, not just our harvest.

Harvest windows move a couple of weeks either way with the weather and the variety, but the shape of the year doesn't change. The time to book is well ahead of the bar filling up.

Exact timing on a given block is a call we make together. Some growers hand it to us; others have their own read on their orchard and we work to it. Either way suits us.

Our year — almonds from August, walnuts from mid-September, mummy shaking over the turn of the year
Work	Jan	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Mummy shaking	early in the month					all month
Almond harvest		all month	all month	early in the month
Walnut harvest			from mid-month	all month	early in the month

In the window Part of the month

Booking for the coming season is best done in spring. Late calls get fit in where the schedule allows.

What the work actually looks like.

Our own equipment, our own crew, in Sacramento Valley orchards.

Walnuts crossing from the conveyor cart into the bankout, walnut harvest in full swing.

A hydraulic shaker head clamped onto a limb up in the canopy of an older Chandler walnut tree, walnuts scattered on the orchard floor below. — Limb shaking in an older Chandler block.

A yellow self-propelled shaker mid-shake on a young almond tree, nuts flying through the air and covering the ground below. — Shaking a young block, nuts still in the air.

A windrow of almonds running down a sunlit orchard row into the distance. — Almonds windrowed and waiting on the pickup machine.

A sweeper working an almond block, dust hanging in shafts of low sunlight. — Sweeper working an almond block.

A bankout wagon with its bed raised at dusk, equipment yard behind it under a golden sky. — Bankout wagon at the end of the day.

View from the operator's seat down an almond row, sweeper head ahead and windrow forming. — From the seat, working down the row.

A shaker moving through a dormant almond block in winter, bare trees and green cover crop between the rows. — Mummy shaking a dormant block.

A trailer heaped with freshly harvested walnuts still in the hull, elevator alongside. — A trailer filling with walnuts.

A shaker chained down on a lowboy trailer at dusk, farm dog standing on the deck. — Shaker on the way to another field.

Sixteen seasons of it.

Loewen Brothers Custom is a family operation working the orchard country of the northern Sacramento Valley — Tehama, Glenn and Butte counties. We started running harvest in 2010 under our farm name, JM Farms, and in 2023 split the custom side off into Loewen Brothers as its own outfit.

JM Farms is still going — that's how we farm our own orchards. We're growers ourselves, not just a crew for hire.

There are two of us, and both of us are in the field most days. Marcus runs operations — the crews and the schedule. Jonathan handles the business side along with equipment transport and the harvester that finishes every field. The bookwork gets done in the evenings.

Call either one. Between us you'll get somebody who can actually answer instead of taking a message.

Custom harvest is a trust business. You're handing someone else the one window in the year that decides what your crop is worth. We've kept growers coming back for sixteen seasons by showing up when we said we would and doing the job the way we'd want it done in our own block.

Let's talk about your season.

Tell us your acreage, your varieties and roughly when your block comes off. We'll tell you what we can do. Call whichever of us fits the question — we'll sort it out on our end either way.

Operations

Marcus Loewen

Scheduling, crews and how the harvest runs.

530.828.6192

Business

Jonathan Loewen

Billing, contracts and equipment transport.

530.586.2138

jonathan@loewenbrothers.com

Loewen Brothers Custom · Tehama, Glenn & Butte counties, California

Custom almond and walnut harvest.