Call us at: 559-975-9236
SPECIALS
Braga Organic Farms: a story about pistachios and organic food!
Braga Organic Farms started from our love for pistachios and organic food in general.
We have raised our sons here and now want to share this beautiful ranch (and its pistachios!) with you.
We truly believe that everybody should purchase organic food directly from the farmer. There is no better or fresher way to eat!
Braga Organic Farms' products have been certified organic food by CCOF since November of 2000. We currently have 40 acres of pistachios located in Madera, California. We invite our customers to visit our pistachios farm, by appointment.
Pistachios are harvested once a year in the middle of September. After being harvested, the pistachios are dried and hulled. The hull is a thin outer layer around the pistachios. At the huller, the pistachios are labeled "sinkers" or "floaters" based on weight. The floaters are shelled into kernels and hand sorted numerous times to produce high quality Braga Organic Farms kernels.
The sinkers are run through a color sorter which removes the highly stained pistachios (those are also shelled into kernels). After color sorting, the inshell pistachios are hand-sorted briefly then run through sizing trays.
The two common sizes are 18-20 and 21-25. The sizes refer to the nuts per ounce so the 18-20's are bigger in size. We only use 18-20's for buyorganicnuts.com.
Most pistachios producers sell 21-25's in retail stores.
After sizing, the inshell pistachios that are below 21-25's are shelled into kernels. The 2 larger sizes are run through a needle picker (that is why you will see a tiny hole in the inshell pistachios) to separate the closed shell from the open shell. Also, the closed shells are turned into kernels.
We only process the pistachios that are needed to fill an order so we can keep them in cold storage as long as possible. We hope you enjoy our organic food!
Michael Braga has been growing organic food for 10 years. The trees are about 20 years old.
Questions about us, our organic food or California pistachios? Please contact us at bragafarms@yahoo.com or call us at 559-975-9236 (Fax: 559 661 0345).
