Chestnut Farm Tour and Chestnut Farm Blueprint

A working orchard, not a photo-op

This isn’t a pumpkin-patch stroll. It’s two hours on the ground in a real chestnut orchard with the people running it — Brad and Melanie — walking the rows where the wins, the faceplants, and the “we’d never do that again” moments actually happened. Think friend showing you their operation and opening the books, not formal tour with a script.

Before you arrive, we send a detailed questionnaire about your land, your goals, and what you really want out of chestnuts — so we skip the fluffy overview and get straight to what matters for your place.  This information will help the United Chestnuts Academy team develop your Chestnut Blueprint.

At a glance

• Duration: 2 hours, on-farm (video consultation available too)

• Guides: Brad and Melanie, EBB Farms owners

• Location: EBB Farms, Falls of Rough, Kentucky

• Group size: Private — your party only, up to 4

• Season: By appointment

• Includes: Pre-tour questionnaire · live orchard walk and ride· your custom Chestnut Blueprint ·  follow-up recap email.

What we’ll walk you through

• Producing chestnut seedling trees, young trees, and the nursery — how we lay things out when the weather, the soil, and the budget all have opinions.

• Seedlings vs. grafted trees, in real life — cost, time, and how patient you actually are.

• Our Year 1, Year 5, and beyond story — wins, faceplants, and what nobody tells you when they’re selling you trees.

• How we’re trying to make chestnuts pay — nuts, trees, value-added experiments, and why this is part of a bigger chestnut movement.

• How chestnuts fit the whole farm — wildlife, soil, other crops. The orchard as a system, not an island.

Your Chestnut Blueprint

United Chestnuts team will provide a written Chestnut Blueprint built from your questionnaire and what we walked through together:

• A grounded picture of what it takes to do this for real — not for Instagram.

• A rough 5-acre cost, revenue, and timeline sanity check for your land.

• A “first, second, third” priority list so you’re out of research mode.

• Layout and spacing options we’ve tried (or watched others try) — steal the good, dodge the bad.

• Our “wish we’d known this earlier” list on trees, soil, water, critters, and mindset.

• Tree-type recommendations that fit your climate, soil, and patience level.

• A read on where the chestnut industry is headed and how to carve out your own lane.

Who this is for

• Chestnut-curious folks who want to see one real farm doing it up close.

• New or almost-new growers who need to sanity-check a plan with people already in the trenches.

• Row-crop farmers looking at converting acres to nut production.

• Perennial and soil-minded folks who want a crop that matches that energy.

• Families who want to trade traffic for trees for a couple of hours.

Can’t get to Kentucky?

Call us about a Virtual Chestnut Farming Consultation — same brains, same honesty, same Chestnut Blueprint, over video.

About your hosts

Brad and Melanie run EBB Farms.  It is  working farm lab behind United Chestnuts run by Kim Douglass and Melanie Jones— the national platform modernizing the U.S. chestnut industry.  If you need help with a marketing plan foundation and SEO analysis, purchase in the United Chestnuts Academy.  EBB is the transparent live case study: every layout, tree choice, spray, sale, and stumble is on the table. Buying trees from us is always optional but appreciated.