ELKTON — For whatever reason, chestnuts “just made sense” to Elkton’s Matthew Jefferson.

When he bought his 13-acre property in eastern Rockingham County in 2004, he wanted to do something different with it. After talking with his dad, Danny, and running the numbers on logistics for other ideas, the pair landed on something they said is unique: a chestnut farm.

“Everybody has wineries and pumpkin patches,” Jefferson said. “And we wanted something different.”

With help from his family, Jefferson planted 160 trees in 2014, and another 200 the following year. Now, he’s at about 600 trees, but they’re“still babies,” he said.

Still, Jefferson’s orchard will yield about 3,000 pounds of chestnuts this year, he said. Harvest starts in mid-September and goes until the end of October.

“We pick up nuts every single day,” he said.

“Rain or shine, we’re out there picking up nuts.”

Chestnuts fall off a tree when ripe, Jefferson said, and he created a “sweeper” with a four-wheeler to pick them up from the ground. The sweeper is able to pick up about 75% of the dropped chestnuts, but there’s still a lot of manual labor involved.

Jefferson grows Dunstan chestnuts, a cross between American and Chinese chestnuts.

“It’s a bigger, tastier nut,” he said.

Once collected, Jefferson and his wife, Amy, father Danny, brother Brian, mom Janet and stepmom Geraldine separate the burr, sort and “visually inspect” each nut before peeling and packaging. Jefferson’s three children are also involved, he said.

“Without family, I wouldn’t get it done,” Matthew Jefferson said.

Jefferson’s full-time job is in facilities at James Madison University, and Amy works in admissions at the school.

Maintaining the farm is an investment, he said, which may explain why growing chestnuts isn’t very common. He joined a co-op of chestnutgrowers in Virginia — there’s only a couple of them, he said — and they meet once a year to discuss farming techniques to produce asuccessful harvest.

“We’ve learned a lot along the way,” he said. “The chestnut community has been great, very forthcoming and willing to share knowledge.

”Most chestnut farms in the United States are less than 10 acres, which makes it “very much a mom-and-pop business,” he said. The next closest grower is in Nelson County, and there’s also one in Buchanan.

“When we started out, we wanted to get it to be self-sufficient,” he said. “It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme, more of a work-yourself-to-death scheme.

”For the next couple of weekends, Jefferson invites the community to his orchard, aptly named East Rockingham Chestnuts, to pick-your-ownchestnuts at $5 per pound or pay $7 per pound if picked and packaged by the Jefferson family.

So far, there’s been positive feedback from people who visit the orchard, he said. In addition to using the nuts for the Christmas stereotype, roasting on an open fire, people also say they use them simply as a “quick snack” by heating them in the microwave and eating them, Jefferson said.

East Rockingham Chestnuts is located at 13079 Model Road in Elkton, and operating hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

“It’s been fun not only for our family, but having the community enjoy it as well,” he said.

Contact Kellen Stepler at 574-6279 or kstepler@dnronline.com | Follow Kellen on Twitter at @KellenSteple