North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Kieran <holycow@frontiernet.net>]

    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