A 4 a.m. wakeup call sounds like the least appealing thing to anyone- unless you are farmer Mike Staack, who often sees the sunrise during harvest season.
Staack is an almond farmer out of Denair, Calif., who lives his everyday life doing something he never thought he would.
Staack moved from Iowa to California after being in the Air Force. His original plan was to be an air traffic controller, but that all changed after he met his wife-to-be in 1986.
“I ended up going to work for [my wife’s dad]. I didn’t know anything about almonds…,” Staack said. “So I ended up going to work for him and I worked for him for 18 years and helped build his business. I was a student of the industry, of the almond industry, and bought some land myself with my wife.”
Now, Staack’s life revolves around his almond business. It involves early mornings and lots of hours. As the owner, his responsibilities extend far beyond simply monitoring what his crews are doing.
“Most of the crews usually work 10 hour days, six days a week,” Staack said. “Me, as an owner, I work more than that. So we may have repairs to take care of and other things that force us into more hours…”
“Additionally we have a processing plant too, it’s Grizzly Nut,” Staack said. “So that starts earlier in the morning with marketing overseas with brokers. Sometimes I’m up at four o’clock in the morning talking to different countries, people who we’re selling to and marketing to…”
Staack not only has Grizzly Nut, but he also sends his harvested almonds to the company “Madi K” based out of Los Angeles, Calif. The company sells chocolate covered almond clusters, in milk or dark chocolate, with caramel, among others.
“We raise the almonds, we harvest them, we process them and then we ship them to L.A.,” Staack said. “And then he [his partner in the nut business] takes them, roasts them and then he sells them all over the world. They’re even on airlines.”
For more information, you can visit Madi K’s website at madiks.com. You can also like Grizzly Nut’s Facebook page.
“A lot of people think that we go on vacation… we go when the time’s right to go. We put a lot of hours in.”