I just realsied that I only put the new washing line on social media last year and not on our web site, so recified now.
Up to 2025 we’ve used a small PTO driven drum washer from Kadioglu in Turkey, but although this can handle 60-70kg at a time every 10 minutes it was too slow and not great for poorly sealed nuts.
This meant we’ve been looking at a new set-up for a few years that will cope with our increasing harvest here and the harvest we make eslewhere every year, presently 4-5T. Like all small farms it’s how to get there in as cost effective way as possible by reusing existing buildings and linking to the the 2 stage drier from AMB Rousset in France which we brought in 2020.
As part of this process I went to Veld4 in the Netherlands to see thei rset-up and their small self propelled harvester, they also showed be their washing line and advised to get a stick separator, shaking trees causes a lot of dead sticks and leaves to end up being collected. I then worked with Eddy Rognin at AMB Rousset on a design that worked with our restricted layout.
You can see above we ended up with a staggered layout due to our length restrictions, the stick separator is normally mounted directly on the washer in line so we have increased cost with an extra elevator unfortunately.
At the end of the line the sorting table empties into our existing drier elevator, the sorting table enables us to manually take out most bad or uncleaned nuts.
The video shows Joe loading by hand froma full trailer of nuts harvested the day before in Dorset.