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