Ginny and I attended a fascinating training seminar in Ithaca this month that focused on growing nuts from nut trees. The two presenters were established nut growers who talked excitedly for two hours about chestnuts, hazelnuts (“filberts” if you prefer), walnuts, hickory nuts, and acorns.
So now we have a bunch of chestnut and hazelnut seedlings on order. We’ll plant them and hope they grow up without first becoming deer food. If all goes well we will be harvesting in “only” 7-10 years.
In the meantime, we can do some gathering of wild nuts and acorns that are already dropping from trees scattered about Kettle Ridge Farm. I suspect it will turn into a race to see who gets to them first: us, or the squirrels.