“Since we have so many volunteers if we can sit here and pry them open now, they can go right into the fridge now,” Saielli said.

Otherwise, the unopened pods would be put in a warehouse to finish ripening before the next step in the breeding process. The next step is putting them into a fridge to keep them cold so they can root. Saielli said chestnuts can root without a period of cold the wintertime would normally provide, but they aren’t happy and the happier the seed, the better.

“Then we can do anything from plant them directly into an orchard or pot them. Eventually these seeds will go into a seed orchard or they will be bred with another cross,” Saielli said.

While his mission with TACF is to develop abundant chestnut trees once again, other chestnut orchards in Nelson have the sole goal of production. The Virginia Chestnut, LLC — an informal chestnut cooperative in Nelson — does just this.

The Virginia Chestnuts, a local industry group founded in 2015, is made up of Seamans, Helbert, Hopkins, Breidablik, Bryant Farm and Nursery and Jefferson Farm. The growers of each orchard harvest their product and have the option to bring them to David and Kim Bryant for selling to the public every year.