A truly ‘magical place’ in La Honda

Johsens, who has a year-to-year license that allows him to manage the property and keep it open to the public, became a steward of the chestnut orchard in 2004, when the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District was seeking a caretaker for the land. Before Johsens, the preserve was managed by another family who sold it to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District in the 1980s.

“It had been utterly neglected,” Johsens said of the state of the property when he took over — mentioning bush overgrowth and lack of tree maintenance as key problem issues.

“For five years, the district was asking me, and then with every year more and more urgently, if I’d like to take a look at it,” he said. “It was five years before I decided to actually give it a shot. And that was kind of a life-changing thing.”

Johsens has been a steward of agricultural open spaces for more than 45 years, he said, originally marrying into a family of Christmas tree farmers and running a tree farm, also on Skyline, with his now ex-wife.

For the first five years after taking a leap with the chestnuts, he made no profits at all from the orchard — where a pound of chestnuts now goes for $10 cash and $10.50 card — because all money was going into refurbishment of the property. But the rewards he’s reaped from managing the property have been far beyond his original imaginings.

“I am surprised at how much I’ve grown to love, not just this property, because look at it, how can you not, but it has become a personal member of my family. It’s just a magical, magical place,” he said. “And that’s not just during the harvest season, but that’s outside of the harvest season as well. I really, really enjoy spending time here.”

Johsens is intimately familiar both with the trees and the wildlife that frequent the area, including deer and a flock of wild turkeys that approached during a tour of the property and also enjoy the chestnuts — “There’s good food for them here, I don’t begrudge the wildlife a meal,” he said.

“It’s not a good living. But it’s a great life,” he later quipped.

One of the most unique elements of managing the orchard is the great variety of people who visit — around 85% of customers are not American-born, Johsens said — and their various uses of chestnuts, particularly in Korean, Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian cultures for soups, rice and other festive dishes.

“There are a lot of very close cultural connections to chestnuts in various cultures, and you’ll see that reflected in the different cultures that we see here,” he said, adding it’s common to hear probably a dozen different languages.

In the early years of managing the orchard, when some days no customers would visit, Johsens recalled an older Korean couple visiting, harvesting chestnuts the entire day, and hauling back more than 250 pounds in rice bags. They returned several times over the course of the season, and Johsens said he eventually offered them a wheelbarrow to help with the load.

The couple spoke no English, and Johsens no Korean, but frequented the orchard every year before they died, bringing him lunch when they visited.

“I’ve eaten food I never would have been exposed to, had it not been for this place,” he said. “The people that come here have become — outside of that first five years — very, very kind, and welcoming. The first few years when I’m going through all this strife and conflict, there were a handful of customers that would teach me phrases in Korean. ‘Goodbye,’ ‘See you later.’”

The first-five-years conflict Johsens references was about the change in management style. Before Johsens took over the property, it was a free-for-all, he said, with the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District implementing an honor system for chestnut picking that was often exploited.

“Not only was I working hard to clean things up and make things more accessible, I was also changing the culture of the people that were here, and how they were treating the trees,” he said.

Knocking chestnuts out of the trees is now banned on the property to allow the nuts time to grow to full maturity and to protect the trees themselves. Previously, individuals would use practices like these or cart away truckloads of chestnuts from the property free of charge, and they weren’t always happy with Johsens’ new style.

“Frequently, they would call the open space district or the Sheriff’s Office and say that I’m here illegally and stealing, so I had the sheriff called on me at least twice a week, three times a week for the first five years,” he said.

This isn’t the only conflict Johsens has had on the property — he says his lease with the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District is rather restrictive, and although he’d like it to be longer than year-to-year, he hasn’t received the approval. He also can’t implement irrigation systems, trim upper-canopy deadwood, or create clearings the way he’d like because of strict regulations.

Aside from bureaucratic conflict, Johsens also battles Lyme Disease and lung issues, which has, at times, incapacitated him and made it difficult to care for the land. He’s doing better on his health journey — citing bee venom as an ingenious disease treatment — and said both the physical orchards and their visitors have played a role in that.

“Right now I look better than I have been in over 20 years. The customers tell me that, and that is it’s just really a beautiful thing,” he said. “The amount of love that I get from people in different cultures, different ways, families has just really helped me on that journey.”

Aside from the chestnuts themselves, Johsens also sells chestnut honey from beehives on site, and said he’d like to keep maintaining the property, meeting new visitors and experiencing the joy of adults and children alike visiting the orchard for as long as he’s able.

“I’ve been told, from people from all over the world, that these are the best chestnuts they ever tasted,” he said.