Nuts For Thanksgiving! Chestnuts!

In spite of everything Mom Nature has thrown at us this year, (starting with an actual tornado), Badgersett will be getting chestnuts shipped out to our customers in time for Thanksgiving.

We'll be shipping the first orders out tomorrow, Nov. 16; later than our usual target date of Nov. 10. We delayed shipping for the extra days to allow the chestnuts' flavor to develop further; because of the extraordinary harvest weather- temperatures well above normal for us, and high winds, day after day, the "curing" process we put our chestnuts through simply took longer than usual. We didn't want customers to be disappointed with nuts less flavorful than they're used to.

Chestnuts fresh off the tree taste bland- little sweetness or complexity. Genetics does make a difference in flavor; and we've got the best there- but the other factors involved in bringing a chestnut to peak mouth and stomach joy require time, and knowing the secrets. One of the secrets to developing maximum chestnut sweetness is drying them - a little. Some of our secrets, though- are secret. :-) And we'll be keeping them that way.

So you'll know: our chestnuts this year will average a little smaller than usual. The growing year was bizarre, from start to finish; so cold early on that the trees flowered later than we've ever seen them do it, entirely in July; then finishing up hot, but with cold flashes. The chestnut trees seemed to be uncertain about when or how to ripen their nuts; then with the heat, decided to ripen everything all at once. Trees that normally ripen late were dropping nuts at the same time as early trees, and dropping them unusually fast. But a little smaller.

From the "food crop" standpoint, we did far far better than our neighbors with corn and soybeans. Both those crops grew slowly and poorly- and had their development stopped dead by an early frost. Soybeans were estimated to be only about 80% "ripe"; corn only a little better. Those crops were still harvested; but their value, both monetary and nutritional were down considerably. The chestnut crop was abundant; not affected by the little frost at all, and fully ripe.

In case you haven't run into it before, we have had authoritative expert opinions that Badgersett chestnuts; "intensely flavored nuggets"; are among the best anywhere.

You'll recall, of course, that we put out a new video about "how to peel chestnuts" last year. The video is thriving on YouTube - the original, very crude one, is still the all-time most viewed clip; but the "improved" versions are gaining steadily!

We have (of course!) learned something from the responses to the video- in particular; there are times when our cut/steam/plier peel method doesn't work.

We now know why. We were truly puzzled at first, because it always worked, either literally perfectly (on our own nuts) or 98% perfectly, even on store-bought European nuts we bought for testing. The thing is; we were always careful, whatever nuts we tested, to buy nuts we were sure were fresh. That's the problem, right there.

Chestnuts that have been dried moderately will likely not peel so very perfectly, using our pliers method. Two things happen; partly dry nuts may actually cook, during the steaming, and will then crumble when you try to squeeze them out of the shell; and not uncommonly, the "skin" of the nut, the pellicle, may stick tight and refuse to slip off.

We found this out looking for reasons why the peeling method didn't work so well; and found this year that some of our own chestnuts, dried far more than usual by the hot winds during harvest, are "sticking" when we peel them. You can predict when you may have this little difficulty; if you squeeze the nut, and the shell dents, or gives, more than 1/8 inch; it may be dry enough that peeling will take a little more work.

The upside is- the dryer nuts are almost always sweeter. And- the plier peeling method is still light-years ahead of older methods, or the old "cut an X on the palm of your hand" method.

Do remember that we have full instructions (some looking for 1 sound bite think too full!) on chestnut handling posted on our website; as well as a good sampling of recipes.

Now- the really amazing news! We can now offer you another nut, ready (now!) in time for Thanksgiving. Due to a very recent change in food regulations in Minnesota, we are now allowed to sell pre-cracked hickory/pecan nuts. Nutmeats are now considered "produce" in Minnesota, and can be sold directly by the grower, without the farmer having to become a licensed "manufacturer". Next post- hickory/pecan hybrid nuts arrive!

And; just to keep you on your toes- the hickories this year- are uniformly bigger than last...

Chestnut fed beef?

A comment from the previous post- my answer started getting long, and it dawned on me it would work best as a post-

"Hello, my name is Elinor. I am a farmer from MN and today I read this article. http://www.allaboutfeed.net/news/chestnuts-for-cattle-feed-12326.html

"This story fascinated me! I wanted to learn more about chesnuts and see if there were any growers in Minnesota.

"What do you folks do with leftover chesnuts?

Hello Elinor, and welcome. Many thanks for the link to the chestnut fed beef story, we'd missed that. After googling it, I can see why; as far as I can tell there's only one farm selling it right now- and they're in Australia.

The farm in Florida is just feeling their way into it. Reading as much as I could on the Titania Farm beef; they mention having to learn how to feed it to the cows, which concerns me slightly. The well known problem of cattle eating acorns is a major reason we have not tried it; while acorn poisoning in cattle is usually attributed to tannin related chemistry, I've also heard that if cattle eat too many acorns they can get gut blockages from the rather indigestible acorn "shells". Chestnuts have shells that are quite similar to acorn shells, and while the nuts themselves have virtually no tannins, the shells certainly do.

So- there may be a serious learning curve to it all- it would be good to go slow.

On the positive side- we have been feeding chestnuts to ruminants here, pretty much daily, over the past few months. Our Icelandic sheep came "trained to corn"- a common practice. Icelandics in particular don't usually need supplemental feed, but giving them a little corn at regular times keeps them trained to come to you, and the promise of the treat can be used to lead them, from one place to another. They're pretty good on rough feed- they eat Japanese honeysuckle, wild parsnip, and prickly ash- by preference, not just when the pasture is low. So I decided to try- just a little- chestnut in their diet, and see how it worked out.

At this point, I've replaced the corn entirely with chestnuts- in this case, very old, very sprouted chestnuts from cellar storage; and the sheep jump on them with exactly the same enthusiasm they do corn; it's candy to them, apparently. Still not feeding much, though; the equivalent of a 1/4 cup per animal per day; this is just for training. While we intend to eat lamb someday, that day is not in the next year; we're building the flock; so there's no push to fatten them. No signs of a bellyache anywhere, at least.

Those nuts in the cellar are our "leftover" nuts- a small supply we didn't get around to selling last season. We've also tried, a little, to work on chestnut fed pork, a much more common practice than feeding them to beef. The attempt did not last too long; primarily because of logistics. Picking up nuts, storing them, then feeding them to pigs - is just really expensive, from the human labor input aspect.

It will make far more sense to let the pigs pick up the chestnuts for themselves- someday. But the problems of containing pigs on pasture are not trivial of course, and again, we've been stymied there by a shortage of labor. It's on our list of things to try soon- but it also needs to be done in a fashion which does not damage the trees, and hogs are notorious for rototilling pastures. But- it was one of the reasons we got sheep- we intended to learn how to use moveable electric mesh fencing, with the pigs in the chestnuts very much in mind. We're getting used to moving the mesh fence, and it really is pretty easy. Pigs coming soon.

One thing that concerns me about the stories from Australia- I'd like to see the nuts they're feeding their cattle. My guess is that they are actually chestnuts; but that's not a given. Particularly when dealing with other dialects. In the UK, when a person says "it's a chestnut tree", about 95% of the time they mean it's what we would call a buckeye, or horse chestnut; genus Hippocastanum, not Castanea. What we call simply "chestnut", they call "sweet chestnut" or "Spanish chestnut" - never mind that chestnuts were brought to England by the Romans.

And in Australia, it's worse; it's not impossible they have a grove of Castanospermum, Moreton Bay Chestnut; which is in fact native to New South Wales, where that farm is located. The info on Moreton Bay Chestnut states that "The seeds are poisonous, but become edible when carefully prepared by pounding into flour, leaching with water, and roasting." But- lots of things can be fed to animals that would give us a tummy ache; I'm just not sure about this one. The fact that one of the chefs talking about the chestnut fed beef attributes some of the characteristics to the "oils" in the chestnuts, makes me wonder-

"Compared to wagyu, it's a little bit leaner and the marbling is not as pronounced. "It's slightly younger beef but the thing I noticed is the texture. It's got this quite buttery, silkiness to it which comes from the the oils in the chestnut," he said."

Chestnuts are unusual among nuts in that they are very low in oil, an almost negligible 5% or so dry weight. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Moreton Bay Chestnut, which is actually a member of the legume family, had more oil.

So- some of that doesn't quite add up. Which doesn't mean the beef isn't terrific. I think we should find out! But we do have a lot to learn, from harvest on through feeding.

More wind; more good press-

We have a new aspect to the chestnut harvest: the Armor Warning Flag is flying today.

If you have to be among the chestnut trees, for harvest or any other reason- you really better be wearing armor; head, face, shoulders, legs, feet and hands. The trees are throwing bombs, all over.

The high winds are not funny for us, at all; particularly combined with this record hot spell; it's making the chestnuts ripen all at once, drop fast, messily, with leaves and burrs hiding them, and subject to rapid drying (which is NOT good for chestnuts) from the wind and hot sun.

So, we're trying to pick up nuts working just on the north sides of the trees; away from their target areas, today. Can't afford to just not pick them up; we need them for all the reasons there are.

The good press bit: today, Oct. 7, the Rochester Post Bulletin is running two stories on neohybrid hazels, that are nicely complementary. Take a look- if you go on line, you'll need a subscription to see the entire article. Or- pick up a copy of the newspaper, if you're anywhere in the region here.

http://postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1471083

http://postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1471090

Urgent harvest

The weather has been weird all year- and while it hasn't been urgent for the tree crops before; the heavy rains early, record heat later, record dry September, early frosts- all have been tolerated well; we're getting slammed now by - again, near record heat; and high winds.

The chestnuts in particular, ripen and drop rapidly when the temperature hits 80° in October. It always does, and is usually welcome, to get the crop in. Right now, though, we've got a string of 80° days; and a wind warning up for tomorrow.

That's not only going to have the trees throwing nuts far from the normal drop area; it's going to be ripping off leaves and burrs, making the harvest all the more tricky.

So- we're in "max" harvest mode; dark to dark. Not much time for anything else for the next few days.

More harvest updates

We've machine picked the hazels here in Minnesota for the second time; one week after the first picking, and the results were again- better than anticipated. Many bushes which refused to be picked the first time, were very successfully machine picked on the second pass.

Right at the moment, though, our next emergency has arrived. We work with two other crops here, as not too many folks realize; chestnuts and hickory hybrids are also quite important to us.

Because of the rather strange growing season, we've been unsure until quite recently whether we would get any chestnut crop this year or not. They flowered extremely late, in mid July, and developed slowly, as from extreme heat we shifted to cool drought.

All these nut crops have the ability to alter their ripening behavior, from year to year. This year, the chestnuts have decided to all ripen at once; early and late varieties; and in a hurry; many of the nuts now dropping are not fully colored.

Then, today- we've had heavy winds; steady at over 30 mph, gusts over 45 mph, all day-

(the quality of this video was low to begin with; shot in very low light- but it looks like Blogger still has no clue about how to handle it. But you get the idea.)

Far far from ideal weather when you have ripe nuts in tall trees-

the wind throws loose nuts far from their normal drop zone; and due to the fuss and hurry associated with the new machine hazel picking- we don't have the chestnut and hickory plantings mowed down tight enough for easy harvest. Too late now. And today; it was really too dangerous to be out in the fields picking up nuts- the air was full of bombs; some of them with not-funny weaponry-

You truly do not want to risk being hit by one of these, flung at 30 mph from a height of 30 ft. Yes, you can wear protective gear, but a hard hat is not enough; you need a heavy jacket at the least- all of which adds up to nearly impossible working conditions.

Tomorrow; we hope. Meanwhile- if you have an urge to help out with harvest- now would be a really good time.