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Nuts & Seeds

Blighty walnut
Blighty walnut

Already I am falling behind. Weekend before last was a nutty, seedy time, marked by intermittent rainstorms and – for my part – a missing battery from my camera, so the photos are few.

On the Saturday morning, some of the Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers went out to Bailiwick Farm, where Barbara Brennan led us round her nut tree orchard. We went nose to nose with a herd of alpacas, dodged the hanging fruits of a bumper kiwi crop, and got some honest advice about how not to make one’s fortune from growing nuts, .

Piñons , aside from being slow growing, yield sticky cones that are messy to harvest and whose nuts are difficult to extract and hull. In addition to which, despite advice to the contrary, the juvenile pines did in fact turn out to appeal to the tastes of the resident alpacas, so they were looking a bit nibbled.

Hazelnuts, on the other hand, are easier to grow and harvest. Maybe a bit too easy: the squirrels and crows got Bailiwick’s entire crop this year. The walnuts have done pretty well, and although the crows and squirrels helped themselves, there was still a fair crop left. Unfortunately some of that had been hit by a blight, so the Brennans were going to have to sift through the nuts that they had managed to harvest. And walnuts are not a huge money-spinner either.

The crop that was doing well for them was kiwi, which grows well in our climate, and our amazing growing season this past summer had yielded an excellent crop, still a couple of weeks from harvest. Kiwis store well, too, so can be sold right through the winter.

SeedsOfDiversityTableOn Sunday I went to Fernwood to join in the Seeds of Diversity Canada annual meeting which marked the organization’s 25th anniversary. It’s been an important presence in this crazy world where seeds have been removed from the natural order to become patented commodities, and there was much passion in the voices of members invited to pass their issues on to the board.

I attended a seed saving workshop in the morning, led by the very able Michelle Smith, from of Northwind Farm, Cape Breton. She talked about the value and principles of growing open-pollinated seeds. This practice offers plants a gradual adaptation to local conditions, strengthens the plant lines (since you save only seeds from the best plants) and frees growers from having to purchase hybrid seeds (which don’t grow true if harvested and saved).

Of course it’s not a simple process, since plants can cross (squash and brassicas for example will cross readily within their respective plant families) so there are planting or isolation distances to take into consideration; and you’ll need to know your plant families. Seed savers grow a number of the same plants (minimum population) from which to save seeds in order to preserve genetic diversity. You need to know if your plant is wind, insect or self-pollinating, as that will affect how it reproduces and what conditions you may need for producing seeds. And you’ll need to take season extension into consideration: seeds ripen well after most crops are harvested, so if you’re in a climate where the plants may freeze before you get the seeds, you’ll have to find ways to keep them warm or bring them inside.

The keynote speaker who followed an excellent lunch (ah the season of butternut squash soup…) was the always popular Linda Gilkeson, with a talk on all-season growing. She drew on her science background and peppered the discussion with notes on seed needs – for example, she warns that the number of winter cauliflower varieties has dwindled from over a dozen 20 years ago to only two at present. The story is the same for most vegetables: fewer varieties commercially available.

Most seed companies grow to sell in high volumes, and in reaching a wider market will grow seeds poorly suited to many climactic regions. Less profitable and harder to grow plants will fall by the commercial wayside. So the message to all backyard growers is that the seeds we save really do matter: our small work with local varieties helps to keep them strong and well-adapted, and most importantly, available within our regions.

Breaking bread with Capital Nuts

I attended a workshop yesterday organized by the Victoria Transition Capital Nut Project in Playfair Park, a restored Garry Oak Meadow in Victoria. It attracted a couple of dozen brave souls willing to stand in the November chill and learn how to make Garry Oak acorns edible. Being the proud custodian of a very large tree myself, and being overshadowed by a number of others, I thought it would be a worthwhile skill. We were led through the process by ethnoecologist and wild food forager Abe Lloyd.

We learned about defects to watch for. Sprouted acorns (Garry Oaks are white oaks, a class of tree whose seed germinates in the autumn) are not necessarily a problem, although they are often cracked, which may allow insects or mould into the nut. Acorns with caps still in place when they fall are no good because the cap usually covers some mould. A small hold indicates that a worm has eaten the contents and left the premises. Spotting – especially dark discolouration – can indicate damage. The best way to find out is to open the nut (they are soft enough to crack with your teeth) and check. This time of year – October or November – is the best for hunting acorns. Early falls (August, September) are usually unripe or damaged nuts so should be avoided.

 

 

 

 

 

He showed us some samples – with a couple of English Oak acorns for comparison (there are a few of these trees in Victoria, though Garry Oaks are the native species). The ones that were still in their shells had been dried; his guideline for readiness was when the shell could be cracked easily by hand or nutcracker (or hammer). The shelled samples included some black ones which he said were still fine, but he’d hastened the drying process and discoloured them (they can be dried on racks, with fans or with a dehydrator). After drying, he ground them to flour in a blender. Because they have an oil content of about 10% they’re not well-suited to grain mills that use stone grinders, as they might gum them up (there is less oil in flour grains like wheat).

 

 

 

 

 

As it circulated, Abe invited us to have a sniff and a taste of the flour. We could smell the sugars in the flour, but it tasted bitter, because of the high tannin content in these acorns. The next step was to leech out these tannins, by soaking the flour in water for four or five days, pouring the liquids off morning and night, and then tasting the final product to check for bitterness. The colour of the liquid changes, growing lighter as the tannins are removed. The final sludge can be used straight away as a batter for flatbread, or dried and used with flour for flavour (bearing in mind it is low in glutens so wouldn’t make great yeast bread on its own).

 

 

 

 

 

Abe demonstrated his flatbread technique. He usually adds maple syrup to sweeten the bread a little, but it worked well without.

 

 

 

 

 

A morsel of hot acorn flatbread: just the ticket. Someone had brought some Spanish chestnuts – the edible variety which unfortunately don’t have quite enough time to ripen in our temperate climate. And local agrologist Kendell Neilsen was on hand with a sample of hazelnuts she’d gathered in the area.