Story by Cyndee Fontana-Ott • Photos by Frank Rebelo Farm-based business helps siblings secure their future
Even though she’s only 15, Haley Christensen has nurtured a family business for roughly half her life. She and brother Hank operate a fruit and nut company from the family ranch in Tehama County, some 120 miles north of Sacramento. They buy, package and then sell dried plums, walnuts and almonds—stocking bags of natural goodness in several retail locations. But this isn’t a typical farm-based business. Haley is a sophomore at Red Bluff High School; Hank is 18 and a senior at Red Bluff. Yet together—and with the indispensable help of their parents—they’ve run the College Fund Nut Co. since 2012. Do the math and you’ll see Haley was just 7 and Hank 9 when the venture started at the family’s Red Bluff home. “I was pretty young—second grade, I think,” Haley said. “I thought, ‘OK, that sounds fun.’ I didn’t really know what a business was when I was 7, or how much work it would be.” And it has been work, Hank and Haley agree, from those early days of learning to sell and make change to today’s push to recruit customers and master the intricacies of farming and accounting. “We work really hard for everything in this business, and nothing comes to us,” Hank said. “We work for what we want.”
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