Tag Archives: agroforestry

Acorn Acknowledgement; ‘Nuts as Staple Foods’ with Osker Brown; and More – for “The Creation of a Thousand Forests is in One Acorn.”

Acorns have great potential as a staple food. This may seem like it takes a lot of processing, but compared with conventional staple food sources with similar nutritional profiles and palatability, this and many other tree crops require less energy overall to enjoy, potentially require less capital as a cost-of-entry, and have numerous co-benefits. This calls for a different culture however, as there’s a shift in where much of the energy is expended in enjoying regional nuts and trees for basic needs:

In conventional systems, energy use and negative externalities occur “Not In My Backyard“, in rural areas and in far away oil and fertilizer producing places. In systems offering greater food sovereignty, resilience, and positive externalities, energy use is brought closer to the point of consumption and after the point of sale.

Shelf stability of acorns highlights a trade-off of this shift in the point of energy use to enjoy the crop: acorns and many nuts are very shelf stable, but when they’re processed enough to be ready to eat (e.g. as acorn tortillas or roasted hazelnuts) they become less shelf stable. This is not a critical issue, as acorn flour and many value-added nut products can last for weeks dried or refrigerated and be preserved for months or maybe years frozen. This trade-off affects the culture of use and markets for local nut crops:

Tree nuts are long-lasting, resilient, more intimate staple foods which require more labor close-to-home, but

tree for basic needs also bring home closer with the source of one’s well-being and being well in ecological mutualism with that which supports oneself.

And with this in mind, I give thanks to Osker Brown and Living Web Farm for the information below about acorns for landscapes and livelihoods.


Distribution of time for tasks to enjoy acorns:

  • 1/3 labor gathering and drying
  • 1/3 labor cracking, leaching, processing
  • 1/3 labor quality control, removing nuts with signs of mold

Gather & quality-control red oaks, dry, store in-shell . . . here is a very informative video series, starting specifically at part 5 which details home and community-scale acorn gathering.

Ready to prep for meals? De-shell red oak acorns using hammer, nut cracker, nut crucible…or for large home-scale (e.g. ‘5lbs batch weekly for two months’), Davebilt #43 nut mill has been found effective and robust.

Sort and quality-control, winnowing kernels from shells. Discard kernels that are not a shade of brown whether dark or cream colored, e.g. remove nut meat colored white, yellow, green, or blue), discard shells for mulch or fuel or tanning.

Leech (various methods) until astringent flavor is no longer noticeable when tasting nuts. Dry. Break down further into flour using food processor or similar methods. To begin with cut with 50:50 all-purpose flour and use as you would all-purpose flour. Acorn flour can replace all purpose flour for many recipes.

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Myrica pensylvanica – Northern bayberry, aka candleberry

A relatively unheard of N fixer that I planted this spring and am liking so far is northern bayberry. It’s a shrub that has waxy berries. The height is pretty variable according to the nursery at 3-8′. One really nice feature is that it’s semi-evergreen. It’s a deciduous shrub with larger leaves (kind of like an oak) and they turn burgundy in the fall and hang on until spring when the new growth appears. I’m using it as part of a screen from the road so that I have some privacy in the spring. The berries are good for the birds and you can make candles from them. One other name for it is “candleberry”.

via Tj Jefferson on https://permies.com/t/96216/
https://kiefernursery.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Myrica-pensylvanica2.jpg
via https://kiefernursery.com/product/myrica-pensylvanica/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrica_pensylvanica

Field Tree Seeding (Acorns) – April 28, 2020

A nice day planting tree seeds in a field with a dear comrade. This completes my Winter 2020 seed stratification plantings. About 80 acorns went in modular air prune beds, with probably 100 more going in a section of a field that will no longer be mowed (last mowed last summer). In adjascent sections as seen in an image below, there is an area of hybrid hazelnut and shagbark hickory seed plantings (see images & video from that planting), and an area of black walnut dispersal.

As these areas stopped getting mowed they will begin succession toward forest. With some extra help from existing plant and animal communities, these planted seeds making their way up, and ecosystem management / caring disturbance from above: may this field become a bountiful food forest.

What does productive ecosystem restoration look like to you? What about mutual benefit? I consider these questions as I watch this water and seed this field.

Photos from this workday field planting trees from seed are shown below. As I work out a system for sharing photos and videos, I appreciate feedback on viewing options! Please let me know how the gallery works for you and if you have any suggestions.

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Pond Muck Plantings – April 19, 2020

This post begins an exciting series in the Alchemecology project. I’m starting to post media from an agroforestry project I describe on the Willows Edge Agroforest page.

I’m exploring different image gallery options and am open to input. Please let me know suggestions or feedback in the comments below!

Small 3 pool hand dug pond
Field Scuffin’, Pond Diggin’, Mound Muckin’, Tree Plantin’. And some nursery bed seeding with a significant friend.

In those post I share photos from a workday digging small pools in Willows Edge’s wet field. Each pool was dug independently, dammed from the other pools during digging. I did this to get easy access for filling up 5gal buckets of water and to get various other benefits of small ponds in agroforest systems. Some important benefits I’m working with: soil for plantings and mounds, and improved drainage and landscape complexity for the surrounding environment. Read more to see pictures and descriptions!

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Field Tree Seeding (Hazels and Hickories) – April 06, 2020

The surplus of my Winter 2020 seed stratification is going toward the seed bank of this back field as it rewilds. I had planted around 80 shagbark hickories and 800 hybrid hazelnuts in air prune beds earlier this Spring. The field section being planted was mowed Summer 2019 and most of the field has been hayed for years in the past.

These seeds serve as a subtle bump toward hazels and hickories in the decades to come for this forest. The potential of these seeds will be supported by my attention and selective-removal or support for certain species as ecosystem succession brings this field through the stages of life. In adjacent sections I’ve broadcasted and planted some black walnut seeds [and later on planted acorns], and I’ll continuing building the seed bank of useful ‘provision’ trees as this area reforests. In this area, I’m aiming for low-input food forest restoration.

Photos and a video from this workday field planting trees from seed are shown below. As I work out a system for sharing photos and videos, I appreciate feedback on viewing options!