AURORA, Ore. — Maryclair Birkemeier and David Stehman were married on a sunny day under a canopy of orderly hazelnut trees at Meridian Orchards in 2010, simultaneously becoming partners in life and in the organic farming industry.

Maryclair’s grandfather, Richard Birkemeier, was a pioneer in the Oregon hazelnut industry, buying up land that blossomed into the 370-acre Birkemeier Farms. Meridian Orchards was carved out of Richard’s farm in 2010, and the Stehmans started their two new lives that year.

Although organic practices have been the rule since 1997 at Birkemeier Farms and then Meridian Orchards, after the couple took over, “regenerative” became the new watchword for their 80-acre hazelnut operation.

Maryclair said her efforts going forward with a regenerative organic certification is because it’s a way of distinguishing their product from Turkish organic hazelnut imports.

“Regenerative organics takes things a little bit further,” Maryclair said. “It means the nutrition comes from the soil; it’s all about soil health, and there’s different tiers to it.”

David added that those tiers include animal rotation and cover cropping. The cover crops include triticale, vetch, peas and ryegrass, and “we contract sheep that graze between the rows,” he said. “But you need to rotate them so they don’t overgraze an area.”

He noted that the sheep have to be out of their 40 acres of mature Barcelona hazelnut trees about 90 days before harvest, which typically occurs around the first part of September when the nuts begin to fall, to prevent crop loss from the sheep.

Other regenerative organic farming “tiers” include efforts to “increase diversity in the soil as well as optimizing natural predators and encouraging symbiotic fungal relationships,” Maryclair said.

The Stehmans’ other 40 acres are planted to McDonald, Jefferson and Yamhill hazelnut varieties — too young and tempting for sheep cropping operations.

Meridian Orchards harvests, washes and dries their nuts on-site, then ships around 50 tons in an average harvest year to an Albany processor for inspection and shelling.

They are then cold-stored on the farm in a walk-in cooler, where buyers pick them up.

“Twenty-five years ago, we were one of the only ones growing organic in Oregon,” David said. “That’s really changed, especially in the last five to seven years. There’s a lot of bigger players that are getting interested in organics.”

That includes foreign competitors such as Turkey, which also sees an economic advantage to marketing organic nuts.

As an adjunct to their wholesale hazelnut business, the Stehmans have a few fruit trees such as peaches, apples, nectarines, pears and plums. Those crops are harvested and sold along with various hazelnut-based products as part of their regular offerings at the Oregon City Farmers Market.

Their market stand operation was dubbed Squirrelly Jane’s by Maryclair, a limited liability corporation through which she sells 1-pound, 8-ounce packages of roasted, raw and in-shell hazelnuts along with fresh fruit and dried fruit-and-hazelnut mixes, plus several varieties of hazelnut butters.