Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [nafex] re acorns, history, mice and Lyme

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Kieran <holycow@frontiernet.net>
  • To: nafex mailing list at ibiblio <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] re acorns, history, mice and Lyme
  • Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2013 10:31:55 -0600

My husband pointed out that I might not want to kill too many squirrels just yet, after what a friend showed me. He had a book from the college library on oak trees. It had a chapter on Lyme disease. It said after a big mast crop, the mouse population builds up near the oaks, right where the deer were dropping ticks as they fed on acorns in the fall. So the next year, lots of mice mean lots of ticks. About 18 months after a big mast crop, the potential for catching Lyme goes way up. That makes me so happy that I had bought 3 Nigerian dwarf goats this fall, who really seriously worked under the oak trees all around close to us eating acorns. Now that the acorns are mostly gone, my son has finally got settled into the place that needs them so I have inflicted them on him, and just kept 3 little fainters that aren't much trouble. I hope the 6 goats reduced the future mouse population for us, while saving on feed bills. Oddly enough, the goats hardly ever have ticks. I feel pretty inspired by all this squirrel trapping discussion that I think I'll try cutting the population down in the spring, well before any fruit tempts them. 2013, squirrels ate the Kieffers 2 months before they'd have been ripe.
I had so much fun with acorns this fall. As I have to avoid gluten, I prefer to eat something better tasting than that awful excuse for bread they sell for $$$ to celiacs. I made bread for 25 years, I know what bread should taste like. This fall I read the Wheat Belly guy's interview in ACRES USA about rice, potato, and tapioca flour having a higher glycemic index than even wheat, and the same week I read a Paleo book. So I gave up the awful bread, and started making pancakes, mostly out of oats because the GI is lower, and now even with yeast overnight or sourdough like. Soo.... that's all very nice, and then the white oaks started dumping their crop. I picked them up, cracked them with vice grips or pliers, put a handful in a small food processor, learned not to chop them too fine, rinsed carefully in a bowl till they quit making the water white, and used them in my pancakes. They fell for nearly 2 months, so mostly we ate them fresh. I know they don't keep too long so I put some peeled but unprocessed in jars of water in the fridge. I also would process 2-3 days worth at a time and keep them in the fridge.
Then we went to a place south of Lebanon TN (pay attention if you travel I-40 that way) called Sellars Mound, where a group of Mound Builders had lived for about 300 years. We were walking along, and I saw these humungous Bur oak acorns on the ground. I started filling my pockets, and as we went along following the path by the creek I picked up several variations in shape from different trees. We don't have bur oaks over here, 40 miles away but 500 ft higher, so I don't know how big they are usually. My botanical fanatic friend raved over the size of the acorns I collected, he'd never seen any so large. Seems like a couple Lucky sent me were that big, but then comes the question of where Lucky's stock came from. Because later it dawned on me that it would have just been downright dumb for the people who lived there NOT to have planted acorns from the best trees they could find. Three hundred years... people thought differently in those days. You'd want your descendents to have good food that literally fell from trees. With agriculture, they'd be picking and choosing which trees to remove, and which to keep. I'm sure the trees growing there now are merely the descendents of the trees the residents planted and selected. What else might we find at old native sites???
I saved most of the bur oaks to plant where my son is now, might have a few to spare. I felt horrible guilty, but we ate a few too. They were later than the white oaks, so they were the last ones to be decanted from their jars of water in the fridge. I missed the acorns a lot for a couple of weeks after they were all gone. The flavor is not very noticeable except where they are toasted on the surfaces. I have put them in cookies before, and in whole wheat bread back in the old days. I have read since that there was a large industry in the early 20th Century devoted to the production of acorn flour. It was considered nutritious and especially good for people with TB.
As I am interested in mast crops for livestock, I found that the white oaks made a nice sized acorn for goats. Chestnut oaks have a thick layer inside the shell that is probably high in tannin, not as easy to prepare for human food, and maybe not as good for livestock, though sometimes you are stuck with what will grow where you are. Eg, we have white oaks, post oaks, and a few chinkapin oaks, the latter I am favoring where I find them in the edge of the woods. Not enough to sample acorns yet, but maybe in 2 years.... Bur oaks seem to be good for humans, but to tell you the truth, I don't think goats would do well with them. Bison would have no trouble, and Lucky and I have already discussed how they seem well suited to the fox squirrels that live out along the rivers in the plains with them. I don't know about cattle..... maybe the trick is to have enough demand by humans that the cattle only do the cleanup and don't get too much tannin for them. Donna




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page