Burroughs Family Farms Flips the Almond Script

In 1894, Benjamin Burroughs journeyed from Illinois to California to start a new life—and a new farm. By 1906, his dairy was up and running, the start of a farming legacy that’s now four generations deep. Today, Ward and Rosie Burroughs, along with their children, carry that legacy forward at Burroughs Family Farms, nestled in California’s San Joaquin Valley beneath the distant outline of Yosemite’s Half Dome.

The family’s commitment to health, nutrition, and environmental stewardship has made Burroughs Family Farms a leader in regenerative organic agriculture. Their diverse operation includes almonds, olives, eggs, grass-fed beef, dairy, and poultry. Every acre is certified organic, and regenerative practices are embedded in daily farm life.

That commitment is especially visible in their almond orchards—a crop often criticized in water-scarce California. Almonds are water-intensive (it takes roughly a gallon to grow a single nut) and dominate the Central Valley in vast monocultures. Conventional almond farming has been linked to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and overdrawn aquifers. Billions of bees are trucked in each spring for pollination. This process puts stress on the bees, risks the spread of honeybee diseases, and leads to poor honey bee nutrition because only almond nectar and pollen are available, not their normal diverse diet.

Burroughs Family Farms offers a different model. In 2022, they became the first almond farm in the U.S. to earn Regenerative Organic Certification. Their approach focuses on reducing the need for water in the first place—building soil that retains moisture, using cover crops to maintain shade and microbial activity, eliminating synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that can disrupt soil biology, and using low-impact harvesting technology.

Hedgerows across the farm are planted with a diverse mix of trees, shrubs, and flowers. Their varied root depths boost carbon sequestration and nutrient uptake, while year-round blooms attract pollinators, provide windbreaks, and help stabilize the soil.

Drip irrigation and real-time soil monitoring help target water where it’s needed most. Livestock graze the orchard floors, mowing down cover crops, spreading nutrients, and preserving soil structure.

And when harvest comes, Burroughs turns to a Tol Harvester—a piece of advanced equipment that shakes the trees and catches almonds above ground before funneling into bins. Conventional methods shake the nuts to the ground where they are later swept up and collected. The Tol Harvester minimizes ground contact and allows burroughs to keep a layer of grass in the alleys. The result: cleaner nuts, minimal erosion, less dust, reduced compaction, and lower overall impact on the soil.

This regenerative approach flips the script on the typical almond operation. The farm soil is dense with organic matter and they are able to use about 40% less irrigation than neighboring farms.5

Ward and Rosie also believe education is part of the work. They’ve trained interns from around the world and helped establish the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems. And they remain students themselves.

“Farming is a journey,” Rosie says. “You are always learning and always improving. There is so much that we don’t know about the soil, its microbial life, and the impacts our actions have.”

You can taste the difference. Rootstock is proud to partner with the Burroughs family to offer their single-ingredient almond butter—small-batch, additive-free, and packed in recyclable jars. Enjoy it knowing you’re supporting a farming model built for generations to come.

Sources
1 TOL Twin-D Harvester – tol-inc.com
2 Burroughs Family Farms – csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture
3 Regenerative Almonds – farmsense.io
4 Soil & Food Safety in Orchards – foundationfar.org
5 Regenbrands Podcast #82 – regen-brands.com

(This story also appears in the July 3 edition of the Rootstock Gazette)

Generations of Regeneration

Rootstock Gazette