“These are the trees, the wonderful trees that we’re growing,” Stephen said, explaining that most are female. The pistachio trees are planted in neat rows stretching into the distance over 114 acres. Pistachio trees can live more than a century, which Klytia said was part of the thinking when her father started the orchard as an investment for his grandchildren. Those sticks grew, and the Burchams now have 18,332 pistachio trees. “They take seven years for the first harvest, and so he was able to see the second harvest,” she said. “Nobody had really planted them this far north yet.”

“When he first planted the pistachio trees here, they called him a stick farmer because it looked like he’d planted a bunch of sticks out there,” Klytia said. Klytia’s dad, Larry Gage, planted the trees around 25 years ago. Stephen and Klytia Burcham’s ranch house looks out onto the couple’s pistachio orchard in Firebaugh, California, west of Fresno. Between 20, farmers increased the state’s pistachio acreage by more than 20% to a total of 446,000 acres of trees.īut pistachios - and growers - are grappling with a changing climate. In the state’s Central Valley, some farmers are pulling out almond and walnut trees and replacing them with pistachios, which require less water. American Pistachio Growers, a trade group, has been trying to expand its customer base abroad - in China, Europe and increasingly India.

is the world’s leading producer of pistachios, and much of that production happens in California.

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