Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["elderberryjam" <elderberryjam@zippytech.com>]

"It might also be that the wildlife (squirrels,etc) have been stocking up
for a cold winter???And maybe the tree that was still full of fruit was
closer or protected in some way?? Kinda reminds me of someone on another
list who was complaining how the "foreigners" in her mixed neighborhood had
stolen all her parsley. Upon closer inspection she found that it was really
caterpillars that had eaten them all.

Barb"

Nut and squirrel education time...

It is not the squirrels. The nuts haven't matured and fallen yet. I'm basing 
my count on what I see looking up into the trees. We have lots of red 
squirrel, and I can vouch for their laziness. I have never seen a squirrel 
collect a hard-hulled green nut off a tree, but I won't guarantee it has 
never happened. My bedroom window growing up (now my daughter's) overlooks 
the black walnut trees, and I've watched the squirrels for hours on end 
throughout my lifetime. I have collected fallen nuts in past years into a 
pile on the driveway to run over to get them cleaned off. Some people put 
them through a corn sheller. We pick them from between the stones and bring 
them in to crack. I have sat in my living room looking out the window, 
watching the squirrels come and take the nuts from my piles in the process 
of being cleaned in the driveway one at a time until the piles were nearly 
gone. They don't take the ones with hulls usually until they are fairly 
rotted off (after falling); and they much prefer my already cleaned ones. 
Hence their laziness.

That said, last year and this year are the first years I have "seriously" 
collected black walnuts. An Ohio nut association (yes, there are such 
entities), has had a booth at the Ohio State Fair for several years. This 
past August, I got to talking with one of the people there. He told me there 
is a much greater demand for black walnuts than there is a supply. There are 
several drop-off points where they will buy nuts-in-the-hull by the pick-up 
load. This year I wanted to try collecting to sell for the first time. Last 
year, I filled a feed sack with cleaned walnuts for my folks to crack. These 
people want them in the hull, so filling a pick-up is feasable. There were 
far more than I could collect while pregnant and working. It is a tradition 
in our family to use our black walnuts. My grandpa had a professional black 
walnut cracker, and he would give away bags of cracked nuts to his 4 
children and 19 grandchildren for Christmas each year. My grandpa had a 
degree from OSU in agriculture. He once found a tree that made "5" meats 
instead of "4" and made all the women of the family jewelry from the walnuts 
shells.

Imagine my dismay when this year I went outside and stared up into the trees 
in anticipation of selling nuts, only to find most of the trees virtually 
empty! These trees aren't any more or less protected than they were the past 
20 years. I'm new to the idea of selling. I feel like it is sort of a divine 
message that the walnuts are not for profit!

But, if it is just a matter of cycle, I can look forward to trying next 
year; or maybe I need to figure out which trees produce when. Some of the 
younger trees are off cycle with the older ones because they're loaded.

Gwen