A Hanford Family Eventually Grows Almonds and Pistachios.

Chuck Nichols is the second generation of Nichols Farms in Hanford, which is the County seat of Kings County.

My father moved to the area where our headquarters is in the early 1950s. I think it was 54, 55, and he started farming on a half section of ground, where our plant and the house I grew up is in.

When Nichols’ was growing up, the family was growing mostly cotton “And we grew sugar beets and had a custom sugar beet digging operation. We grew a fair amount of alfalfa, hay wheat, and a little bit of corn,” he said.

Nichols said his father got the idea of planting almonds in 1981 and pistachios in 1983. “We wanted to get away from all the other crops, which were all grown around the world and subsidized around the world and look for something that was a little bit more unique and, was limited and where it was grown or could be grown,” said Nichols

“So that's how we got started in the, the almond and pistachio business. Almost immediately. I came into the operation in 1983. And so, I was there when we planted the first pistachios, that pretty quickly became the focus of the operation,” Nichols said. “Because our ground was better suited to growing pistachios, at least with the rootstocks and cultivars that we had at that time. We harvested the first crop in 1988.”