Skyline Chestnuts Heritage Chestnut Orchard Invites Locals to Gather for Buckets of Fun
In a mountain grove above Palo Alto a hidden treasure awaits discovery—an orchard full of stately heritage chestnut trees. Chestnuts in California? It’s easy to think of them as strictly an East Coast nostalgia food, but chestnuts have been a part of California agriculture since the 1800s, when Asian and European settlers planted a variety of different species.
A Spanish settler planted 120 chestnut trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains bordering the Peninsula after California was acquired by the United States in 1848. Two successive families tended the orchard until the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District purchased it in the early 1980s. Now managed by Hans Johsens, a thirdgeneration local farmer who painstakingly cleared the neglected 20- acre orchard, Skyline Chestnuts is open about six weeks each fall for locals to harvest sweet and earthy nuts from these magnificent trees.
We promised Hans we wouldn’t quote that holiday song about chestnuts. So we won’t. But we will describe a quintessential fall experience that awaits anyone who ventures up Skyline Boulevard for a lovely autumn outing. Pack a picnic lunch, wear hiking boots and get an early start. Bump up a dirt road to reach the orchard on Skyline Boulevard and get set to gather glossy chestnuts under the spreading branches of 150-year-old trees.
“Make sure you say ‘gather’ chestnuts, not ‘pick’ chestnuts,” Hans tells me. That’s because the chestnuts you want are the ones that have already fallen from the trees. They’re encased in spiky, razor-sharp burrs that have begun to open to expose two or three chestnuts inside. Any burrs still on the tree are not ripe. And hacking or climbing to get at the burrs damages the trees.
Wear sturdy, closed-toed shoes, long pants and socks as the prickly outer skin of the chestnut, called the burr, lies on the ground and sometimes does not fully separate from the gathered nut. When you arrive, you’ll be given a bucket and much-needed hefty leather gloves before you set off on a dirt road into the hilly orchard.
You gather the chestnuts, leaving the burr behind, and then return to the sorting station where you handchoose the chestnuts you want. The smaller, golden brown ones are American chestnuts, considered the sweetest of the pick. The larger, dark-mahogany-colored ones are European chestnuts, prized for their size.
Take the opportunity to learn from Hans about chestnuts. He’ll show you how to cut an X in each nut before roasting. He’ll tell you that chestnut trees can live for hundreds of years but that East Coast orchards were wiped out by a deadly blight over a century ago. His favorite way to enjoy chestnuts is simply roasting and eating them with friends, although he loves a recipe for a chocolate-glazed chestnut cake one of his customers brought him from a family heritage cookbook. There is also a local brewer who uses the chestnuts to flavor a craft beer.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have a chance to buy Skyline Honey’s chestnut honey, gathered from hives right on the property. Described as tasting something like pecan pie filling, this special honey sells out quickly.
When you’re done gathering chestnuts, your outing doesn’t have to end. You can enjoy your picnic lunch on tables by the orchard, or take a hike on MidPeninsula Regional Open Space’s Skyline Ridge Trail, which passes right through the property.
And then it’s back down the mountain, fresh chestnuts in a mesh bag—ready for your holiday cooking and all your best gatherings.
Planning to Gather?
Skyline Chestnuts on Skyline Boulevard in La Honda is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9:30am to 4:30pm for about six weeks, starting in mid-October. The peak gathering time is around Halloween. Chestnuts fall 24 hours a day, so quantities are highest in the morning. Gathering them costs $7 per bucket. Check SkylineChestnuts.com for this year’s opening and closing dates.
