Californians take pistachios for granted – as if they grow on trees or something.

We love them sprinkled liberally over ice cream. Shaved over salads. Toasted and chopped for a halibut crust. Packed for some crunch punch in cookies. Sunken like treasure in soups. Dusted with tangy spice rubs.

Even straight up with a drink at the game – they can give peanuts an inferiority complex.

Well, they do grow on trees, but it took a while before that happened in California. We know because we met a man who helped establish them here, Harry Dewey.

Dewey, 82, lives in the town of Yolo, just north of Woodland. Dewey's family has been farming the Sacramento region since the 1860s, when his great-grandfather bought 180 acres from a Spanish land grant. The Dewey family farmed the area he describes roughly as bordered by Winding Way, Rustic Road, Dewey Drive and Fair Oaks Boulevard in Fair Oaks. Dewey Drive was named after his great-grandfather, Harold Dewey.

In the 1960s, most of the original land was sold to developers. Harry and his wife, Jane, moved to Yolo where they continue to farm several nut crops, including walnuts, almonds and pistachios.

"My great-grandfather had a typical farm," said Dewey. "He had oak trees, grains and farm animals.

"My grandfather planted almonds in 1912 when the industry was just getting started. He was quite an entrepreneur. Everyone else was doing dry-land farming, but he dug a well on the highest part of the property and he put in two miles of cement pipe for irrigation. That's how he was able to grow almonds.

"Of course when he was farming, we didn't grow pistachios in California."

Pistachios are a relatively new crop to our region. They are native to the Middle East and are likely the oldest cultivated nut tree in history. Archaeological evidence shows traces of pistachios as far back as 7,000 B.C.

"Their natural climate is Mediterranean," said Dewey. "They need low humidity, which is why they grow so well here."

A few trees were planted in California as an experiment in the early 1930s, but up until 1979 nearly all of the commercial pistachios were imported from Iran.

"President Jimmy Carter imposed an embargo on Iran," said Dewey. "So there was a shortage. (The) University of California had been experimenting with varieties that would grow here. I had 10 acres of walnut trees that I planned to remove because they had been planted too close together.

"I offered to plant pistachios for UC to find out if it was a viable crop for our area. They did really well. That's really how we began growing pistachios in Northern California."

The first commercial pistachio crop was grown in California in 1976 and it produced 1.5 million pounds of nuts. Last year, the California crop produced 400 million pounds.

"It takes about five or six years for a tree to produce a good crop," Dewey said. Today he has about 30 acres planted in pistachios, with about 100 trees per acre.

Many of us have probably driven through pistachio orchards and thought we were looking at fruit trees. The nuts grow in large, grapelike clusters on trees that are no more than 30 feet tall when fully mature.

The nuts have a husk similar to an almond. Just before harvest, the husks turn shades of gold and pink. Inside each husk is a shell, and inside the shell is a plump, sweet nut.

Harvest begins in mid- September when shakers, small tractors with large tong-shaped extensions, roll into the orchards and shake the nuts right out of them.

Walking through his orchards in Yolo, Dewey gave a lesson on growing pistachios.

"The trees are wind pollinated," he said. "It takes male and female trees. In an orchard about every fourth tree is a male. They produce no nuts, they just produce pollen for the female trees."

The trees alternate between high and low production years. So, one year you have a large crop, the next year it's smaller.

Though both almond and pistachio trees are shaken during the harvest, almonds fall to the ground. Pistachios are caught in frames and not allowed to touch the ground.

"They need to be hulled and dried immediately to keep the shells from staining," Dewey said.

Nearly all the pistachios consumed in the U.S. now come from here.

Years ago, all you could find were red pistachios.

"That's because most were imported from Iran where they use ancient drying methods, which left stains on the shells. The nuts were then dyed red to hide the stains," Dewey said.

"Our nuts go immediately to the processor where the husks are removed until the nuts are dried." It keeps them fresh and clean and eliminates the need to dye the shells.

Jane and Harry Dewey run the farm with the help of one full-time employee. On Sundays and Wednesdays they load their truck with pistachios and head to farmers markets.

You can find them at the Sunday farmers market at Eighth and W streets in Sacramento and at the Wednesday farmers market at Cesar Chavez Plaza at 10th and J streets in Sacramento. Their pistachios are also sold at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op and Nugget markets.

Call The Bee's Gwen Schoen, (916) 321-1146.