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nafex - [NAFEX] My Butternut experience here in zone 3

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  • From: "Jim Fruth" <jimfruth@charter.net>
  • To: "NAFEX" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] My Butternut experience here in zone 3
  • Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 08:31:31 -0600

Squirrels do an excellent job of hiding Butternuts in places where I can't find them so I tricked them into putting some of the nuts where I can find them. I learned that a favorite place for squirrels to hide the nuts is along the sides of logs. Culverts and pipes work too and the bigger the diameter the more nuts are stashed there. They place the nuts as far into the sides of the logs as they can and pack leaves to camouflage them from view. Wipe away the leaves and there are the nuts. I guess that I get half (or less than half) of the nuts produced on each tree - the balance of the nuts are in the squirrel's lair.
The nuts are messy/sticky to work with so I put them in burlap sacks storing them away until Winter for cracking them. Freezing temperatures make the once-sticky husks less messy to handle.
Yield..............that's another story. I drilled shallow holes into both jaws of my bench vise so the nuts could be placed in end-to-end. Crank the vise tight until the nut shells snap and that yields mostly perfect halves (nut meats). The upside is that it takes nearly two bushels of nuts to yield a coffee can full of nutmeats. Butternuts have a high oil content and if nutmeats are stored in a warm place, they tend to turn rancid over the space of a few months so we stored ours in the freezer.
There are no Butternut trees where I live now which is good because I'd feel compelled to process them and I don't have time to do some necessary tasks during my Winters.

Jim Fruth
Brambleberry Farm
Pequot Lakes, MN 56472
For jams, jellies, syrups and more:
www.jellygal.com
1-877-265-6856 (Toll Free)
1-218-831-7018 (My Cell)



  • [NAFEX] My Butternut experience here in zone 3, Jim Fruth, 11/03/2009

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