The Delta is well known for Bartlett pears which were once planted on our farm.  However, with increasing pest problems and an increasing awareness of the risks of having to use a large volume of pesticides, we decided in 1998 to transition to chestnuts since they have relatively few pests in the Central Valley of California.

We originally planted an orchard of the Colossal cultivar (or variety) of chestnut as it is known for typically producing good yields of very large chestnuts.  However, after traveling to Italy for a chestnut conference in 2001 we were exposed to European varieties for the first time and enjoyed the flavor and texture of these chestnuts much more.  Fortunately, some of these same Italian varieties had already been imported into the USA and we began experimenting with grafting some of our trees to these varieties in 2002.  We began offering limited quantities of the Italian marroni varieties in 2005 and received a terrific response from our customers.  We made the decision to graft all of our Colossal trees to these Italian varieties in 2007 and these are the only variety we now offer in significant quantities.  Based on our own experiences and feedback from customers we believe these are the best chestnuts available anywhere.