The forecast that came from the United States Department of Agriculture, the Almond Board of California, and other sources as early as May and as late as July called for another bumper crop of almonds this year.

But the reality is somewhat different for some local growers as they started shaking, sweeping and picking up the early varieties such as the nonpareil in the last few days.

“It’s too early to say,” almond grower David Phippen said Friday when asked about this year’s yield of San Joaquin County’s $134 million crop that ranked No. 6 in the Top 10 leading crops of 2009.

They just started harvesting the week before and were only running partial work shifts instead of 24/7 in the orchards, but they expect to “go in earnest on Tuesday” and will know for sure by then, he explained.

However, it is anticipated that the 2010 almond crop will be “smaller than last year” which is what “most farmers expected,” said Phippen, co-owner of Travaille & Phippen, an almond grower, packer and shipper in the Manteca and Ripon area.

 Manteca almond grower Richard Phillips echoed Phippen’s observation.

“We’re way down. But I guess, what I know is what is right here in our area,” said Phillips who is a partner in the P&P Farms almond hulling plant on South Union Road north of Lathrop Road.

It is indeed not a great year for the nonpareil variety, lamented Diane Phillips who is a member of the family-farming operation in Manteca.

“The nonpareils look like just half of last year’s (crop). It rained at the wrong time for the nonpareils (in early spring) because that’s the early crop. We didn’t have too good a weather down here, and when it rains the bees don’t want to come out to pollinate,” said Diane Phillips who, with her two brothers, take time off every year from their regular jobs to help in the almond harvest. For Diane, it means taking time off from her hotdog stand in Stockton and leaving it in the capable hands of her workers.

In late January and early February, which are the critical times for the early almond varieties’ blooming time, heavy storms accompanied by wind gusts of up to 45 miles per hour knocked down scores of mature almond trees in the Manteca-Ripon and surrounding farming areas. A 300-acre orchard on West Ripon Road alone lost more than 100 trees in the storms. Among the luckier ones was almond grower Stanley Van der Veen who lost “maybe 20” trees on a 200-acre spread alone.

But for every dark cloud, there’s a silver lining somewhere. As the news spreads that this year’s crop is expected to be smaller than that of last year, the price of almonds is “moving up,” Phippen said.

The banner year for almonds came two years ago, said Richard Phillips.

They called that year’s crop “the hundred-year (harvest), which is like when they talk about a hundred-year flood. It will be another hundred years before they are that good again – 2008 was the big year (for almonds),” Richard Phillips said.

There’s another silver lining on the horizon as far as he is concerned.

“The next variety looks pretty good – the hard shells – like the carmel, mission and padre. They all look pretty good. They look a whole lot better than the first ones (nonpareils) because they bloomed a little bit later, so that gave a little more time for the bees to go out and pollinate,” said the longtime Manteca farmer.