The Nursery

Idaho Panhandle Chestnuts' Nursery

Sandpoint Idaho map

Located northeast of Sandpoint, Idaho on East Shingle Mill Road.

Dedicated to growing commercial orchard-quality chestnut seedlings and young chestnut trees.

Objective of Panhandle Chestnuts' Tree Nursery

Our primary objective for starting Idaho Panhandle Chestnuts was to "grow a lot of chestnuts!" We love them!

I lament that for generations, our society has failed to quickly reintroduced the chestnut back into American culture after the devastating chestnut blight of the early 1900s.

I love to eat most chestnuts. The hard to peel types frustrate me. This country person doesn't like waiting in checkout lines and I don't like wasting a bunch of time to get at a chestnut.

We value the "easy-to-peel chestnuts!"

Chestnut orchards are not get-rich-quick-schemes. Ten years is the typical break-even point.

Nut harvest starts in years 4-7. For us, we must weather many years before fresh chestnut online sales provide our farms with reliable working income.

Why Grow So Many Chestnut Trees?

Chestnut blossom maturing from squid or involucre

Chestnut orchard irrigation reduces risk, offering to double each year's harvest compared to dry orchards. Consequently, we believe orchard irrigation offers north Idaho farmers a competitive advantage in achieving or exceeding the ten-year-break-even point.

Even irrigated chestnut orchards have environmental casualties that either kill or severely damage an occational tree. Examples include:

  • Deer and elk rubs;
  • Mower casualty;
  • Weed-eater; or
  • Midnight deer poachers driving through your orchard.

We expect our orchards to be losing trees annually. Consequently, our chestnut nursery activities align beautifully to replace any trees damaged in our orchards as quickly as possible. When our nursery has thousands of chestnut trees to pick from, you can be assured that orchards planted by Idaho Panhandle Chestnuts will soon grow to be top performing when maintained properly.

Idaho Chestnut Cooperative Recruiting Local Landowners

We will seek other farmers to plant chestnuts in the Panhandle. By 2025, I expect to create an Idaho Chestnut Cooperative to assist local farmers prepare for long-term chestnut growing operations.

In the meantime, we will grow chestnut seedlings and trees at the Sandpoint farm and sell and ship from Sandpoint. Sandpoint, Idaho's unique locality support our nut processing plant, seedling and tree sales.

Our orchards will need thousands of more seedlings in the coming years. Therefore, it makes sense to have a "paying nursery" where we can sell chestnut seedlings and small tress using our online sales team in Alaska.

We will also provide chestnut orchard installation services, which include planting chestnut seedlings sourced from a local north Idaho chestnut nursery. These activities will also require us to grow tens of thousands of chestnut seedings in the coming decade before we realize profits from fresh online chestnut sales.