Four Years Between Harvests

This was supposed to be a bearing year for the hickory nuts, but the long drought put a stop to that plan.

How the hickories know which is the year for the crop is a mystery to me.  Perhaps they circulate a newsletter so all the trees can have nuts and there won't be some sneaky hickory upsetting the market by being the only source some year.

In 2010, I discovered I had twenty-four bearing hickories on my land.  The clay soil and steep hills were great for hickories.  Learning that it could take as much as thirty-five years for a tree to bear, I realized I had a potential gold mine.  A buyer promised to come fetch the nuts.

It was great fun finding all the trees, some of which I named for the grandkids.  This bronze beauty  is Shelby.  I went out daily and brought back ten gallons.  Sometimes, I sat under the tree and popped off the thick hulls to save weight in carrying them home.  I was thinking that this surely was a suitable enterprise for me when I was bopped on the head by a falling nut.  It really hurt, and raised an immediate goose egg.  After that, I wore my hard hat when working under the tall trees.  I named that tree The Bonker.

Growing under the trees were wild roses, red cedar trees and other nasty underbrush that I cleared out as best as I could.  Identifying the trees by a Missouri Department of Conservation Field Guide, I discovered I had some shagbark and some shellbark.  Of course I got beaned by one of the bigger ones, the shellbark, about the size and heft of a hardball.

The record for most nuts went to a tall tree down by the river, giving a total of 48 gallons.  That one I named Bountiful.

The hulls popped off readily with the twist of a small screwdriver.  Then I put the nuts in a bucket of water.  The floaters had worms, so had to be discarded.  The next step was to spread the nuts out on screens to dry in the sunshine.  Then I put them in mesh bags to hang in the breeze during the day.  At night, I put them in galvanized cans to keep the mice from getting them.

Only when I had 150 pounds of choice nuts did the buyer flake out on me.  I put an ad on Craig's List but didn't get any response.  It must have been a great year for hickories because everyone had plenty.

    The hulls made a nice mulch in the border, weathering to a restful gray.

Reading  that the nuts would go bad in hot weather,  I took the precaution of  putting some in the freezer.  However, the ones stored in cans in the hot workshop are still good, so I guess I'm all set to wait for the next crop of nuts, in 2014.  Since I can't bear to waste food, this delay may be a blessing in disguise.