If you talk to Mollie Sitkin of Old Dog Ranch Family Farm, you’ll probably hear the word “quality” a lot. That’s because Sitkin is banking on high-quality walnuts from her family’s farm to fuel their focus on creating walnut-based products that they sell both in-store and direct-to-consumer.

Sitkin is one of a new generation of tree nut growers who are looking for new ways to keep smaller family farms in the black. Competing with large corporations and corporate farms isn’t easy, but it’s important to Sitkin to keep the family farm a viable option for generations to come.

One way Sitkin has positioned Old Dog Ranch to compete is to appeal to environmentally and socially minded consumers. The farm grows regenerative organic certified walnuts, which are then used in their products.

“People understand what organic means, but they’re just starting to learn about regenerative practices,” she said. “Regenerative is more about soil health and overall farm health, including taking care of your employees.

“We’re audited to ensure we pay a living wage, provide safe farm housing and that our employees’ needs are met. Our employees are interviewed to confirm we’re following through on our commitments. It’s about ensuring the whole farm ecosystem is healthy, including the people who work there.”

We asked Sitkin to share with West Coast Nut how her family is navigating the difficult path of a family farm and on the larger state of the tree nut industry today:

Q. Talk about the history of Old Dog Ranch Family Farm and how you got involved.

The farm has been in our family since 1918. My great grandpa farmed sheep, and he would take them to the foothills for the summer and then down to the ranch in the wintertime. It was used as a gravel quarry at one point, and that’s one of the projects we’ve worked on. Well, my parents actually worked on rehabilitating that, and now it’s a nature preserve.

My dad’s farmed a ton. My dad was really the next generation that got involved in farming. My grandma’s generation lived there and leased land out to farmers, but my dad was the next generation of our family that got involved in farming. He’s farmed everything from ornamental kale to beans and bell peppers. That was before I was born.

When I was born, we got into apple farming and grew a few different varieties of apples. But that became something that wasn’t really paying the bills. My dad also planted a small Chandler walnut orchard the year I was born, which was kind of early for that variety. He planted 10 acres just as a test. He’s always into trying new things.

Those have been great. We started with 10 acres, and about 20 or so years ago, he planted another 17 acres where the apples were. We also have another piece of property that my cousins and the larger family own: a 40-acre Chandler orchard. That’s something we’re working on converting to organic and regenerative organic right now.

Old Dog Ranch Family Farm has about 27 acres of regenerative organic certified Chandler walnuts. My dad always farmed with a regenerative idea in mind, but before I got involved, the farm was conventional. In 2012, I came to him and said, “I think we should think about direct-to-consumer products with just our walnuts.” That’s where I was inspired. I did an MBA in sustainable business and thought, “This is actually special; our quality and our farm are really unique.”

In 2012, we started our transition to organic, and we harvested our first organic certified crop of walnuts in 2015.

A few years ago, I started learning about regenerative organic farming while working with Patagonia Provisions. We were actually the first regenerative organic certified walnut farm in the world.

We’re excited about that certification growing, and we’re certified through the Regenerative Organic Alliance.

Q. Tell us a little bit about your story. You obviously grew up on the farm, but what was your journey like?

I grew up on the farm, but when I was growing up, I wanted to get as far away from it as possible. Both my parents were self-employed, and I thought, “I want to work for a big corporate business. I want to wear a skirt suit. I want to be in an office.”

I did that. When I was in grad school, I managed a sustainability program for Jackson Family Wines. I decided that wasn’t for me. It was more compliance-focused, ISO and all kinds of things I considered boring. It wasn’t inspirational like making a difference on a small scale. So, I moved on. I started my own business in the natural food space: an organic certified kombucha business. That taught me a lot about organic certification.

From there, I wanted to get back to the farm. I started very small. Our first year, we had 5,000 pounds of walnuts. I wanted to prove that we could do it. Coming from the beverage industry, I started with walnut milk. I really wanted to make a walnut milk product, but it was complicated. Food safety is significantly different for walnut milk compared to seasoned walnuts and walnut butters, which is what we make now.

The demand for walnut milk wasn’t as high, so the business evolved based on what customers wanted and the logistics of running the business. Now we offer a direct-to-consumer line with seasoned walnuts, raw walnuts, toasted walnuts and walnut butters.

Q. How does being direct-to-consumer change your thought process as a grower?

As a grower, all you have to do is get it out of the field. But as a seller of your own products, the most important thing is ensuring the consumer gets a fresh, amazing product.

It makes harvest more stressful. A few years ago, a rainstorm before harvest affected our whole season. It’s tricky as a high-end walnut seller to have the farming operation tied to it, especially when there are factors out of your control.

To sell a super-high-quality product all the time, you can do as much as you can in the field, but you have to have some luck, too.

Q. Do you only sell direct-to-consumer, or do you also sell through stores?

We sell through stores as well. We wholesale to Good Eggs, which is a grocery delivery business, and Farm Fresh to You, which is a nationally distributed CSA.

We also sell to local grocery stores who have customers who appreciate really fresh produce and to some regional high-end chains like Erewhon in Southern California and to many smaller grocery chains as well. 

Q. How have things have changed in the way you grow nuts over time? How have you moved from being a conventional farm to an organic and regenerative farm?

Honestly, the farming methods haven’t changed that much. When we planted the first 10 acres of Chandler walnuts, my dad spread them out really far. That’s actually our easiest orchard to farm organically because we can get equipment in to mow and control weeds. Weed control is one of the challenging aspects of organic farming.

It is more labor intensive. Otherwise, we just make sure our materials are organic before using them. Farming organically is not that hard. It’s more paperwork and the audit is more intense, especially with the regenerative organic piece, but the methods are similar.

My dad was already farming very close to organic standards before certification. The fertilizers and insecticides weren’t certified organic, but now we just make sure we’re using approved inputs.

Q. Talk a little bit about the regenerative piece.

The goal is carbon sequestration through soil health and preventing topsoil degradation. Early studies suggest regenerative farming creates healthier products for people, but it definitely creates a healthier environment.

Being on the Calaveras River, that’s always been something that has been important to my family: The farm being healthy, passing it on to multiple generations, and there are lots of cool animals and plants there.

We actually work with iBird (formerly Audubon) for an annual bird count. Our property has the most diverse bird count in the county; 71 species were spotted this year. That’s something we’re very proud of.

Q. Is your dad doing most of the fieldwork while you handle the business side?

My dad is in his 70s and turning over a lot of the day-to-day operations over to the two people who work with him on the ranch. I don’t think he would like for me to call him retired, but he spends a lot of time doing fun things. He spends a lot of time working as well. He handles the farm. I take possession of the walnuts once they come out of the field. My job is everything from there on out: flavoring, selling, marketing, compliance, organic certification, and food safety.

I handle compliance-related farm tasks, but I don’t deal much with the day-to-day farming operations.

Q. As a tree nut grower and marketer, what are three things that keep you up at night about the industry?

Something that keeps me up at night is worrying about the regulatory changes that are going to affect my business in a way that it has to be dramatically changed.

We have nine different permits, or certifications that we have to deal with. There’s state, local, federal, food safety, organic, regenerative organic. And then there’s multiple of those different things for the farm vs. production.

For me, it’s like, who’s going to come in from one of those and, first of all, ask me to do something in a completely different way than I’ve been doing or track something a completely different way than I’ve been doing, and just create a bunch of paperwork that is new and isn’t useful for other things? Then who’s going to come in and say, “Oh, the way that you’re doing things needs to be changed.”

And as a really small business without any sort of hole in the industry, I’m not sure what could happen, so that definitely keeps me up at night, and has kept me up at night.

Then also the increasing costs of everything. In terms of marketing, it used to be like you send some samples in, and you might get a story in in Sunset. But now everything’s pay to play. So, if you want any marketing, even getting into grocery chains, they want you to pay and do free fills. Everything just costs more.

It seems like everything is just more designed for large businesses where they can pay the $10,000 to get into a 10-store chain. And that’s easy because they already have a big distribution network.

Then let’s see, for a third thing, I mean, I have a first grader. Just being a small business, trying to run the business in a consistent way while also realizing how time flies and you don’t want to miss fun moments with your kid. My husband and I coach her softball team. I volunteer in her class. I teach her art class, and it’s just a lot to try to balance doing all the things you want to do as a parent and running a business at the same time.

Q. What are you most hopeful about for the future of the tree nut industry?

I feel like I was way more optimistic a couple years ago. But lately, it’s been really tough.

On a personal level, my cousins, brother and sister, aunt and dad all co-own a 40-acre conventional orchard, and I’m excited we were having a conversation last year about what to do with that orchard. Are we going to pull it out? What are we going to do? And the entire family decided they wanted to certify regenerative organic and try to move in the direction of the small little thing that we’ve been doing on the other side of the ranch.

So, everyone is moved and motivated by what that means for the environment. And I’m really hoping that will translate to customers also feeling that way and being willing to pay for that and also grocery and other distribution networks being excited about that, so we can grow a little bit.

Q. What needs to happen within the walnut industry to set it on a better path for the future?

It’s overplanted. I think it’s really sad for the industry. I think some orchards need to be pulled out. Environmentally, I don’t know if that’s like this continual cycle of changing farming because we’ve overdone it.

Because speculators have come in and paid a bunch of money to put orchards in that don’t really make sense in places that are not sustainable.

I think what we need to focus on is the healthier orchards, saving the healthy orchards, and that way if the price comes up, then people will be able to afford to grow walnuts in those places. I know a lot of farmers are really struggling right now.

Q. What do you think are the biggest assets of the tree nut industry in California?

The land. I mean, there’s been a lot of really bad marketing about nuts. And I think that there’s a lot of room for improvement on that.

I’m not sure. It seems like the industry is having a pretty tough time right now. I think we grow a really healthy product that provides great food for people.

Q. What would you say is your proudest achievement?

I think really just coming back to the family farm and bringing it into the future with the farming methods that we’re using. I’m lucky that my brother’s really into regenerative agriculture. He lives in Mexico and is developing composting systems in a small town that didn’t have it before. My sister also is really into regenerative agriculture with her purchasing decisions. To have my family be happy about the direction the farm is moving even though they’re not involved means a lot to me.

Q. You mentioned your dad is in his 70s. What’s the plan for succession?

That’s something we need to be working on, and it’s on our to-do list. But with all the other stuff we have going on just to keep the farm moving forward day to day, it’s something that’s been on the backburner for several years.

Q. How do you give back to the community?

Taking care of our workers. 

By farming, in a way that is good for the environment is how we’re giving back to the community around us. We’re hoping to leave no negative impact with our business in terms of all the different processes and packaging and all of that. We use recyclable plastic packaging, which is challenging for customers to figure out how to recycle, but it is the best option we can find that protects the walnuts. We worked for five years to develop a compostable package that didn’t end up working out. But we’re always trying to think about leaving the world better than we found it.

We also donate to dog rescues. One thing my grandma Patty taught us was to love mutts. She was a dog breeder when I was little, but as she aged she became more of a dog collector. At one point I think she had 13 dogs at the ranch.  Being an adult with a small backyard and a husband who doesn’t support dog hoarding has led me to honor Patty through donations to my favorite dog rescues.

Q. What inspired your focus on sustainability?

I think it just traces back to being aware and being a good member of your community, just being thoughtful about what other people are going through. Having empathy and seeing some of the negative impacts of business.

I did an MBA in sustainable business and that really helped, but even before I did that, I was working in wineries and sustainability. And probably growing up on the farm and seeing what it could be, and then learning about industrial ag is something that was very impactful to me.

Q. Who would you say is the biggest influence or mentor to you in your career?

I’ve always been inspired by Yvonne Chouinard from Patagonia. I read a book about him, so he’s definitely not a mentor. I haven’t met him or anything, but definitely an inspiration

In terms of mentor, obviously my dad, he’s been farming forever. I haven’t learned a lot of the farming from him, but he’s been apt to try new things when I suggest them. So that’s really cool, that he’s open to that sort of stuff.

I think a lot of it I figured out on my own because there’s not really a lot of people doing this. I don’t think I’ve had really a mentor. It’s a been a lot of figuring things out.

Q. What advice would you give to someone entering the tree nut industry today?

That’s a tough one. I remember when I started my first business, I was doing informational interviews and all these older people were like, “This is a bad idea. Don’t do this. You should just get a job.”

And I was like, “Why are these people all so negative? Why are they all saying this?” Now, I think I get it. It’s not easy.

I would say focus on quality. Quality is where you can stand out. And for me, part of that quality is like the environmental piece.

But I don’t know that I’d have any advice for anyone going into just normal commodity farming because I think that’s just a really challenging thing, and you’ve got to be well-financed and well-timed.

But in terms of taking a family farm that maybe needs a little bit of help and changing it to be more of a whole ecosystem, I think that is a fun piece, and you can really see how things come together and then feel pride in it.

Then, even when you’re not making money, you at least know, “Well, I’m contributing positively to the environment, contributing positively to these customers who love our product and, hopefully long-term, making the planet a better place and your land more valuable because of what it’s become.

Q. Is there any advice you would give to a young woman who wants to enter the industry?

I would just say be confident and go for it. Of course, as a woman, we deal with stuff all the time, but I don’t let that really affect me. I just do my own thing.

Q. What advancements or trends do you see in the future?

I think right now I’m kind of stuck in the right now and not so much thinking about the future. For the longest time, I was thinking about the future, and I’ve achieved a lot of the goals I wanted to.

I mean, I’ve always been overly optimistic, and I think maybe that’s starting to wear off a little bit. But I do think there’s going to be a time where we’re going to go back to two bucks a pound for organic walnuts. There’s going to be a time where this becomes what it was, and I just hope that happens soon.

I just hope things stabilize so the people who are truly in walnut farming because they love it and because they want to grow a great product and they want to contribute positively to the environment are leading the way for the walnut industry.