I wouldn't mind food preparation in this setting

Yesterday I visited the site of a very cool oak restoration project near Springville, CA - a project in which I'm privileged to be playing a small role, supplying tree tubes to protect the newly planted acorns from getting eaten by deer and/or trampled by cattle. 

A creek runs through the 330 acre property and all along the creek, wherever there is a stone outcropping, there are mortars carved out of the bedrock.

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In simpler - and I will always contend it's not overly-romanticizing things to say better - times, folks sat on these stones grinding acorns in these mortars (foreground, filled with rain water) overlooking, and listening to, this beautiful creek.  It was BYOP - Bring Your Own Pestle.

I loathe cooking.  The kitchen is like a prison for me, with too much happening at once in an enclosed space, and with meal time always corresponding to a time when I'd rather just be talking with my family about the events of the day without interruption from timers, food processors and boiling-over pots of pasta.

Or maybe, as my family contends, it's because the same guy who can juggle 50 different things at work can't handle having food cooking on more than one burner at once.

But I could sit for hours - days - in this spot preparing food for the coming year.  The creek, of course, played a vital role in the process.  Shelled acorns would have been placed in baskets in the creek, allowing the water to leach the bitter tannins from the them.

Oh yes, and if you look in the other directions you see this:

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Then this (turning your head a bit):

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And finally this:

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 And this is on a "bad" day - foggy and overcast.  Two days earlier this place was bathed in golden sunlight.  Two weeks from now the grass will be green and vibrant.

Yes, even a kitchen-hating dude like me could get used to food preparation - gathering and grinding a years' worth of sustenance within a week or two of work - in a place like this.

And yes, in speaking with the US Department Fish & Wildlife guy who is supervising the project (is it just me or do these guys keep getting younger and smarter?) this area would have been much more heavily covered with oaks - primarily blue oaks (Quercus douglasii) in pre-settlement times.  Most were cut down for firewood, building materials, and to grow more grass for cattle (although the success of this is debatable - studies show that the grass growing in the shade of oaks is more more nutrient-rich).

All of the grass you see is non-native - European annual grasses that replaced the native perennial vegetation, and then got its seasons flip-flopped; it turns golden brown in summer and greens up in winter.  Or what passes for winter in California.  Said the native Minnesotan.

Acorns Good For Your Brain

I knew it all along!  Eating acorns makes you smarter.  Literally.  Or at least it could help stave off dimentia. 

Interpretive Summary: In this paper, ARS scientist collaborated with scientists at the Rural Development Administration of South Korean government to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation with acorn (Quercus acutissima CARR.) on brain dementia using a mouse model. To assess the effect of acorn, the level of acetylcholine which is a very important neurotransmiter was measured in untreated and acorn treated groups. The results showed that dietary supplementation with acorn gave a slight increase in the acetylcholine level in mice fed acorn diet compared to untreated mice group. These results indicate that acorn (Q. acutissima CARR.) plays an effective role in an attenuating various age related changes such as brain dementia including learning and memory impairments (emphasis mine). This information will enhance our understanding of how diet such as acorn can improve learning and memory function and will facilitate the application of dietary use of acorn as a functional food to improve brain activity in human.

Brain activity in human?  I wonder which human they are referring to.

Of course I have eaten more acorns than anyone I know and I still can't remember where I parked my car (usually with the lights on) at the mall, but in my defense I've been like that ever since I can remember.  So to speak.

Walden Acorns

In Walden Henry David Thoreau writes, "According to Evelyn, 'the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman praetors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor (emphasis mine).'"

A) I guess we, as readers, are supposed to know the Evelyn is John Evelyn

B) I wonder how often I would have run amok of the praetors in my acorn gathering excursions!

Welcome New Readers!

I finally have the site set up with Google Analytics so that I can monitor traffic on the blog. The amazing thing is that there actually is some!  And it's growing! 

The interesting thing is that the #1 search term that brings people do this site is: acorns + poisonous, or the question are acorns poisonous?

The answer will be a quick primer into what this site is all about, and could, I hope, change your life.

No, acorns are not poisonous.  Not at all.  (Disclaimer: certain types of livestock should not eat too much of certain acorns - cattle, sheep and goats shouldn't eat white oak acorns, but they thrive on other types of acorns).  Acorn-fed pigs produce the highest quality pork and prosciutto in the world. Poultry love acorns.

More importantly, acorns are an extremely nourishing food for people.  Humankind thrived on a diet rich in acorns for hundreds of thousands of years. Every indication is that the acorn eating cultures of the past (all the way up through the late 19th / early 20th century in California and Oregon, parts of Spain and parts of Asia) have been among the best fed, happiest and most peaceful cultures ever to live.  The amount of man-hours expended per unit of nutrition was amazingly low, and therefore the amount of leisure time was incredibly high.  Giving these cultures incredible amounts of time to devote to activities such as fishing. And bocce ball.

When we first started cultivating cereal grain crops, we fed them to our animals and saved the acorns for ourselves.

Our fall from Grace (either literal of symbolic, depending on your religious bent) came when we stopped living on the fruit of the trees, and started living by the toil of our back and the sweat of our brow, when we started our annual war with the soil in which the plowshares are the swords.

In 1929 one of the great geniuses the United States ever produced, J. Russell Smith, wrote a book called Tree Crops, A Permanent Agriculture  in which he decried the destruction of soil (the true measure of a nation's wealth) in the production of annual grain crops, and eloquently argued for a system of agriculture based on woody perennial plants - trees and shrubs - which would produce more nourishment with less soil erosion (and as our awareness has grown in the meantime, less pollution and less consumption of fossil fuels).

Smith was almost entirely ignored.  His landmark book was quickly followed by the Dust Bowl (which he foreshadowed), the Great Depression, and World War II.  By the time WWII ended we had stockpiles of chemicals that could be converted to producing more and more corn and soybeans, and nobody wanted to hear about going back in time to a time when we lived high on acorns, chestnuts, and hazelnuts.

Smith's time has come.  And this blog is just one tiny part of making it happen. And now you are part of making it happen.

Eat acorns.  Some are sweet and can be eaten right off the tree.  Some are high in tannins and curl your toes if you eat them right off the tree.  It is easy to leach the tannins and prepare delicious breads, cookies and more.  I'm the world's worst cook, and I've done it.  I'll show you how if you stay tuned.

Plant oaks.  They grow much faster than you think, and will feed our children and our children's children.

Conserve oaks.  That doesn't mean we never cut one down. I am, first and foremost, a forester.  It means we manage, we regenerate successfully, we don't lose oaks to avoidable, preventable diseases, and we work together to find solutions to the disease and insect threats oaks face today.

So Welcome.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Wanted: Oregon White Oak Acorns

A reader is looking for Oregon white oak acorns to plant, and apparently the crop in the northern Willamette Valley is poor this year.  They need about 200 or so.  Can anyone help?

Acorn Exchange

I'd like to start an Oak Watch acorn exchange.  It is exciting to get acorns in the mail (at least for oak geeks like us!) to try out and compare.  I have several acorns ready to trade:

Oregon white oak
English oak, PA seed source, Swedish parentage
English oak, OR seed source, parentrage unknown
Northern red oak, Northfield MN from mature red oaks saved from oak wilt by S&S Tree Care
Northern red oak, large acorns from a very fast growing young tree
Sawtooth oak, southern seed source, parentage unknown

Let's make a deal!  Dwarf chinkapin, Gambel, Garry and Emory oak are the top 4 of my (very long) wish list.  Let us know in comments if you have acorns to trade or acorns your looking for.

Acorns in the mail

My 4 favorite words are: Acorns in the mail.  These beauties are sawtooth oak* (Quercus acutissima) from a buddy down South.  These have several futures:  some will be planted next spring, some will be eaten very soon, some will be analyzed for nutritional content.

In the short term all will be fridged, much to the chagrin of my family (who operate under the bizarre assumption that refrigerators are for food storage and were not invented for the sole purpose of stratifying acorns; sheesh).

I have never in my life been so anxious for the arrival of spring, which is a bit depressing since it's only October 8 and I have about 9 months of winter to go.  In part that's because every winter, as a result of some promise I don't actually remember making, my kids get to choose a sledding hill for me to go down and a jump for me to go off.  So far it has worked out OK; I haven't actually broken any bones (contrary to what I thought at impact) and my kids get a new story they can laugh about all summer ("Papa I never knew you could fly that far, ha ha ha.  I  thought you probably broke your arm, ha ha ha").  But I'm not getting any younger, and the jumps keep getting bigger.  So if I stop posting sometime about January 20, it's because I'm in traction somewhere.

But mostly I'm anxious for spring so I can get planting.  Nothing makes winter seem longer than having acorns starting to germinate in the fridge.

* Remind me soon that it's time to have a little discussion (and by that I mean multi-sided audience participation!) about native versus non-native oaks.

Really?

A guy at the airport last night was reading the latest issue of Scientific American. The cover story was, "Human Evolution Is Not Over."

And here I thought that the Earth's 4.5 billion years of existence and hundreds of millions of years of evolution culminated with... me.

I am sure the article is not nearly as inane as the headline, and that it makes valid points about the ways in which natural selection is at work within the human population without us thinking about it in those terms or being aware of it.  (Luckily for me - although decidedly not for my sons - baldness doesn't set in until after we have found the person who against all odds and reason became my life's partner.)

However one thing is certain regarding human evolution:  We sure haven't evolved as fast as our diet has changed.  The cultivation of grains is about 10,000 years old - the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.  The complete corn-ification of our diet is less than 50 years old.  I was just reading in The Omnivore's Dilemma that the ratio of Omega-3 fatty acids (from fish and grass fed animals) to Omega-6 fatty acids (from grains) has changed in a relatively short period of time from 1:1 to 1:10.  Many people (including me) believe that this change is an underlying cause of the complex of diseases considered to be "Western diseases":  Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, etc.

We are what we eat.  And we are what what we eat eats.  Say that five times fast.  And we're meant to eat nuts, predominantly acorns, and we're meant to eat animals that eat acorns and perennial grasses.

Maybe the sign that humans are truly evolving is when we realize what our slavery to cereal crops has done to our planet and ourselves, and go back to food production systems that are "less evolved."

OK, so that didn't work...

(1. Click to enlarge.  2. Notice the highly manicured lawn!)

The first step in going from bags o' acorns and assorted debris to tasty meal is to separate the acorns from the debris.  One brilliant idea I had was to dump the acorns & stuff into a bin of water, thinking (more like hoping/wishing) that the acorns would sink and the debris (twigs, acorns caps, weevil larvae swimming for their lives, etc) would float.  Or vice versa. Or at least separate themselves with the use of various screening devices (my fingers, a rake, plastic fence mesh).

The result: Big pile of wet acorns and debris.  At least it's a little cleaner! It's now spread out and drying in the sun.  Wet grass is especially enjoyable to work with; clings to everything, particularly acorns.  I can see why indigenous people burned the area beneath their favorite oaks in preparation for the harvest season!

Not to worry, other methods have worked better.  In the next installment: Idiot discovers mass + gravity.

Happiness is...

... Acorn weevil grubs crawling across your desk... not because I'm an especially big fan of grubs in general or acorn grubs (and their negative effect on germination %) in particular, but because having acorn grubs crawling across your desk means... You have acorns on your desk! sent to you by good friends who believe in the power of acorns to change the world.

Happiness is also testing the rest of the acorns and finding that the % with weevils is very small, and germination should be excellent.

Drat, I should have taken a photo (a grub shot?) before, er, disposing of them. Sorry, I know you're disappointed. There will be more!

Mesa Verde Gambel Oak

A friend came back from a family vacation to Mesa Verde with the perfect gift: A pair of Gambel oak acorns (click to enlarge). What cool friends I have!

Tiny little things. I already have them in pots to germinate (apparently they don't need - or want - a lengthy stratification period). The plan is to grow them indoors, and then plant them outside next spring. I'll keep you posted on how they do.

I have never grown Gambel oak before, although I have grown Burgambel hybrids from Oikos Tree Crops in Kalamazoo, MI. Planted as seedlings in fall, 2008 they seem to be doing extremely well in 3 different Minnesota locations. According to Oikos owner Ken Asmus these trees will begin producing acorns in 3 to 6 years from seedling. The ones I planted are the Ecos seedlings: "Developed by using hand pollination from the sweetest (bland) and most productive selections by Miguel Marquez. Ecos are seedlings grown from five different trees that began producing when only 4 ft. tall."

I see that Ken also has Western Burgambel oaks grown from crosses made by the late Dr. Walter Cottam (not "Eugene" Cottam as his name is given on the Oikos site). Now I know what to ask for for Christmas! (Since for my birthday I have already asked for membership in the International Oak Society.)

One Species: Wavyleaf Oak

I was struck by the description of wavyleaf oak, Quercus undulata Torr., as listed in Oaks of North America by Miller & Lamb.

LEAVES: deciduous or evergreen, thick and leathery, varying in size and shape but generally about 1.8 to 6.25cm long, wavy lobed or toothed...

FRUIT: acorn matures in 1 year, 1.5 to 2.1cm long, borne singly or in pairs, set shallowly or up to one-half in cup.

See any problems with the taxonomy of this "species?" Apparently you're not alone. To quote further from Oaks of N.A:

"Little, 1979 Checklist (of American Trees), has reduced Q. undulata Torr. to a hybrid of Q. gambelii with one of six other species. Over vast stretches of the range of Q. undulata, the only parent available is Gambel oak. Thus, it is difficult to see what other parent may have been available to produce a hybrid. For this reason it has been described as a species in this publication. However, the wide range of variation in size and shape of leaves and acorns across the range of this oak tends to strengthen the hybrid theory."

Yes, I should say it does. I give very little credence to the authors' contention that since Gambel oak is the only other oak present across large portions of the range of wavyleaf oak, it can't be a hybrid simply because no other oak species currently occupies a large portion wavyleaf oak's range.

We know that the ranges of many oaks have moved in response to changes in climate. Cottam identified a population of natural hybrids of Q. turbinella (scrub live oak) and Gambel oak in northern Utah, outside the current range of scrub live oak. Cottam theorized - no doubt correctly - that the range of scrub live oak advanced into northern Utah 7,500 years ago during a period in which the mean temperature was 4 degrees warmer than it is now. These scrub live oaks hybridized with Gambel oak, and then died out as temperatures cooled, leaving the hybrids behind.

... so there easily could have been another oak whose range migrated or expanded to intersect that of Gambel oak across a wide area, and this oak could easily be the other parent of wavyleaf oak. Or perhaps I should say these oaks (plural) could easily be the other parents of several "wavyleaf oak" hybrids. Again from Oaks of N.A:

Wavyleaf oak is considered to be the offspring of the following crosses:

Quercus x pauciloba (Q. gambelii x turbinella) - Aha there's our Cottam tree
Quercus x (no name given) (Q. gambelii x arizonica)
Quercus x (no name given) (Q. gambelii x grisea)
Quercus x (no name given) (Q. gambelii x havardii)
Quercus x (no name given) (Q. gambelii x mohriana)
Quercus x (no name given) (Q. gambelii x muelenbergii)

Good grief. Perhaps a better Linnaean name for wavyleaf oak is Quercus x I don't know what the hell it is.

We need a genome map to determine parentage... or a special arboreal episode of Maury Povich.
All I know for sure is that the same variation that makes oaks virtually impossible to classify into species and hybrids also hold the key to feeding mankind and saving our planet. If only we would devote 1/1,000,000th the time to breeding oaks that has been devoted to annual grains.

Acorns du Jour

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California live oak... easily our most aerodynamic acorn!

I helped a customer unload a container of product (of course it had to be the hottest day of the year - 107 degrees), and this tree provided some very welcome shade for a couple of water and rest breaks.

Acorns Poisonous?

Good grief.

The columnist, a gentleman named Bill Hayes, appears to work at the Master Gardener Office of Aiken County South Carolina Extension Service. He was asked if acorns are poisonous. He decided to make the question the subject of his column in the Aiken Standard.

He spends most of the time confusing the concepts of bitterness and toxicity. He spends the rest of them time equating acorn diets with a short lifespan and reduced population numbers.

One gem: "I found all sorts of stories about Native Americans eating acorns as part of their daily diet. I also found one article that said that the average life span of the American Indian was 30 years but made no reference to acorns as being part of the problem." For Pete's sake. For starters we don't really have any clue what the average life span of Native Americans was pre-European settlement. Post colonization there were minor issues like disease epidemics that tended to limit life span.

If you leach acorns they are perfectly tasty, and incredibly nutritious. Native Americans knew how to leach, process and store acorns in a way that rendered them edible decades later when settlers uncovered abandoned caches. Acorns have extremely high food value. It defies reason to suggest they might somehow shorten lifespan. Lots of other things faced by indigenous people would conspire to shorten lifespan: The vagaries of weather, the dangers of hunting, warfare, and again and most importantly devastating diseases brought by Europeans. Acorns were not one of those things.

Another doozy: "I finally located an article about squirrels and acorns. It turns out that gray squirrels have an enzyme in their system that protects them from the effects of red acorns. It doesn't change the taste, which is very bitter, but it does prevent a toxic reaction in the stomach. Most squirrels in Aiken are gray but we do have a few red ones too. Red squirrels are not as lucky as the grey and have no protection against the toxins in red acorns. Maybe that's why we have so few red squirrels."

First of all gray squirrels (and blue jays) cache acorns in a way that allows rainwater to percolate and leach the tannins for them... which apparently makes them smarter than many people I can name (and their remarkable ability to find the acorns they cached the previous autumn always amazes me, a guy who can't find my own car at the mall). Secondly red squirrels don't have the enzyme that helps break down tannins primarily because they eat other plant seeds, mushrooms, etc. Or perhaps they eat those foods because they lack the enzyme. Chicken, egg. The point is that their evolutionary niche is different from gray squirrels, so I doubt red squirrels shed a lot of tears over their inability to digest acorns.

Speaking of evolution, yes there are some kinds of livestock for whom acorns can be toxic, such as cattle and horses. Meanwhile, hogs + acorns = tasty. Can we put on our Darwin caps and figure out why that might be? Perhaps the difference between domestic animals who are meant to graze on grasses and forbes (and not, incidentally, feedlot corn) and domestic animals descended from woodland dwellers?

I know that mostly Mr. Hayes was trying to write a fun, light-hearted column with some interesting factoids meant to entertain readers, and there is some valuable information. But look, we are talking here about a food crop that sustained humankind for millenia, and that has the potential to feed millions and heal a damaged planet. Let's not make jokes about acorns shortening life spans, OK?

Toxic? Have you seen what's in most of the food we eat??

Thanks.

Happiness Is...

1. Spending the first cool, low humidity evening in weeks collecting acorns with your amazing, beautiful, talented-far-beyond-anything-that-could-possibly-be-explained-by-either-Nature-OR-Nurture children.

2. Being faced with the can't lose choice between preparing those acorns for eating or storing them for planting next spring... then doing some of both.

3. Gathering acorns from the feet of giants... from the trio of matriarch bur oaks behind Farm House on the Carleton College campus, with massive branches stretching 50 feet from the trunk and sweeping almost to the ground... from the red oak next to our friends' driveway with the largest trunk I've ever seen on a Minnesota oak but with half its time-ravaged crown missing after decades of storms and lightning strikes - who know how many more years it will rain down acorns, so every year counts... from stately bur oak right behind it, with the chain winch wrapped around a stalwart branch for lifting engines from the Volvos our friends' neighbor restores for sale - a true shade tree mechanic!

4. Acorns in the fridge to provide sustenance through the winter and the promise of new life in the spring - a feeling of security that extends deep into the mists of human history, but which we have forgotten.

5. Showing your kids some multi-colored oak galls and having them say, "Oh, cool!"

6. Realizing how blessed you are to be living this life, in this place, at this time.

Cool Recipe? Yes!

OK so I made the Acorn Black Walnut Bread last night, and…

1- For visitors coming over from My Minnesota Woods, here's the highly anticipated photo (of what's left of a whole loaf made just last night):









(Click to enlarge) Looks good, eh?

2- Again, I was working from this Acorn Black Walnut Bread recipe, which in turn came from this very cool site. I stuck with maple syrup (hand produced in Rush City by tree farmers David & Carole Cartwright – delicious!) instead of the suggested alternative agave nectar. I went with Persian walnuts rather than black walnuts, for the simple reason I had them on hand. I went with applesauce instead of canned persimmons.

3- As is usual when I am in the kitchen, there was a bit of a mishap. Luckily this one did not involve an emergency room visit like usual (think Dan Ackroyd as Julia Child on SNL, except with more blood). I had the wet and dry ingredients mixed together before I realized I was supposed to have added a Tablespoon of baking powder instead of the teaspoon I had done. So I had to add a Tablespoon minus a teaspoon at that point and it never really got mixed in properly. My wife Alice got an especially large clump of baking powder in her piece. When I bake it's a surprise in every mouthful! (Of course that's better than the pancakes I made for my daughter's birthday when I mistakenly used baking soda instead of baking powder. I still think that the metallic tang those pancakes left on your tongue wasn't too bad. My daughter still hasn't forgiven me. Nor should she.)

Even after that, the bread turned out fantastic. Really tasty, very hearty and filling. Highly recommended. We did agree that if (when) we make this bread again we'll add either some nutmeg or vanilla (or both) for just a little extra flavor. We might try agave instead of syrup as well just to see the difference.

And we'll try again with acorns we gather and process ourselves. Acorn drop is almost here!

Acorn Crop Failure?

OK, time to get back to saving the world. It's always funny - in a heartbreakingly sad sort of way - that it's possible to be too busy to save the world. Business has been ridiculously good of late, which from a mundane perspective (paying the bills, feeding the children... the little things) is great, but has cut into my writing time.
Balance, Chris, balance.

I'm starting to read Gary Paul Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat, which chronicles the author's effort to spend a year eating only foods grown, fished or gathered within 200 miles of his Tucson home. The book holds a special interest for me, as a born-and-bred Minnesotan who lived in Tucson for three years and never was able to acclimate myself to desert life. Then again, within 200 miles of Tucson there's a lot more than desert. It's a matter of both altitude and attitude.

In one of those great coincidences you find every day if you're looking for them, after I picked up Nabhan's book at the library I was reading an article in Smithsonian magazine about the work of Joshua Tewksbury, who is doing fascinating research trying to determine why chiles are hot (other than the obvious reason of trying to embarrass Midwesterners at Tucson dinner parties)... and Gary Paul Nabhan is mentioned as a friend and collaborator of Tewksbury.

Me being (unfortunately) me, the first thing I did upon picking up the book was to turn to the index and look for passages about acorns. There is one listing, p141. I flipped to the page, eager for a story of an easy harvest, a season of nutritious meals, a parable for our times. Instead I read a story of... complete and total acorn crop failure.

Nabhan took a trip south of Tucson toward Nogales (thus going up in elevation) hoping for a harvest of acorns and chiltepines, the northernmost wild chili. But when he arrived he found that neither crop was ready to harvest. The chiltepines were still green and "not fiery enough for me," Nabhan writes (meaning they would probably set my tongue on fire) but there were no acorns to be seen. A late freeze and snowfall had caused a complete failure of the acorn crop that year.

For Nabhan the trip was not a total loss. On the way home he stopped and gathered a variety of wild greens. Upon arriving home he fixed a meal of grilled scallions and poblano chiles and hand washed greens heated in a sauce pan only long enough for them to wilt slightly. What follows is a brilliant piece of writing: "Their flavors were so fresh, so buzzed with their recent photosynthetic surge that my meal sizzled with sunshine. Within minutes of devouring them, I felt greener, as if I were on some folic acid high. I dreamed that night of having chlorophyll in my skin, as if I had become green as the Green Giant himself."

But, of course, we're not here to talk about greens, even when the writing is that good. We're here to talk about acorns as food, and in that context this passage in Nabhan's book is deeply troubling, especially when considered within the context of the question I have been asking: Why did mankind walk away from a life of acorn eating to take up the plowshare and grow grains?

This passage might give us a glimpse, at least, of how it might have happened in one place... and then another. A warm spring, causing the oaks to flower. A late frost. A freak snowstorm. The flowers are killed and the acorn crop is a total loss. Sure the locals were smart enough to have enough acorns stored up to survive a year without an acorn crop. But then it happened again, and maybe a third time. Running out of reserves for both people and livestock it is decided to plant some grain seeds next year as a back up plan, just in case. Then for a while there is both, grains and acorns. Archeological evidence suggests that in these cases people did the logical thing: fed the grain to their livestock and kept the acorns for themselves.

But from that point on, they were grain people. Tied to the land - to a particular piece of land to be defined as mine/not yours - to tend the crop. Building a new economy in which some control land and seed, and others must provide labor in exchange for a share of the harvest.

It didn't happen everywhere at once. Where it happened it was a gradual process spanning generations, so that no one even noticed a change was happening at all. It's interesting to speculate, as Michael Pollen does so eloquently, who was really using whom: Were humans using grains to gain control over land (and other humans) while (in theory) reducing risk of catastrophic food shortages, or were grains using humans to take over larger and larger portions of the Earth's surface and resources?

Just a glimpse. A complex puzzle. But in the answer the answer to my question of "Why?" is not nearly as important as the answer to the question: "How to we go back to a tree crop-based culture and economy?"

California Dreamin'

I was just in California.
When not crusading to go "back to the future" and establish a modern balanoculture (culture of acorn eating) I sell horticultural and forestry growing supplies. Always have, always will. Coming up with ways to grow things better and help plants overcome the unique stresses they face in a modern world of uncertain climate, increased deer damage, and a plethora of exotic and invasive weeds and insects is what I do. It's in my blood.

The trip was fantastic in two respects. First it was a great reminder that even in these difficult times there is opportunity everywhere if you look hard enough (and many times even if you don't).

The second was to see the oak-dotted hillsides (with the grass dried to its summer golden brown) with new eyes, the eyes of a balanophage. It was in California among its many indigenous cultures that acorn eating survived the longest, well into the 20th century as common practice and to the present among those who are working so hard to preserve their traditional way of life.

I love the work I do in the vineyard & orchard industries, and the endless creativity and drive to do things better and more efficiently on the part of the farm managers I call on. But driving through California I see constant reminders that this industry is an artificial construct, the happy but temporary and ultimately unsustainable marriage of virtually unlimited sunlight and extremely limited irrigation. Turn off the water and within months you're back to desert with just the skeletons of grapevines or almond trees.

I see the fuel that goes into growing these crops, and the unbelievably hard work that it takes. I have immense respect for anyone who makes his or her living by growing crops.

But when I see the oaks on the hillsides of California I see both the past and what I hope will be the future. These oaks were actively tended by the Native Americans who relied on them for a large part of their diet, but since those oaks evolved to grow there they didn't require much work - just occasional burning to reduce competition and make acorns easier to gather come autumn. These oaks supported a very large population - a pre-European contact population that was, by all accounts, extremely healthy and well fed, and a population that could gather a huge percentage of its caloric and nutrients needs for the entire year in a few short weeks of work.

... and yet everyone I know in the horticulture industry works extremely hard and is constantly complaining that they never have enough time to do enough fishing or just plain relaxing.

The answer is right there, on those golden hillsides.

And if I could get me cell phone camera to talk to my email I'd have pictures to show you... I'll work on that tomorrow.

UPDATE: Here's one photo of an oak-dotted Central California hillside. Makes me hungry. Makes me long for a simpler life.

Cookies Devoured...

... and deemed delicious! We made acorn cookies last night, this time with commercially available Korean acorn flour (if having a friend purchase the flour in an Asian market in California and mailing it to Minnesota can be termed "commercially available").

I substitued agave for the pure maple syrup I used in a previous batch of acorn cookies. Here's the recipe we used:

Preheat to 350 for 15 minutes

1/2 cup butter (local organic)
1/2 cup agave
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
2 eggs (local farmer's market)
1/2 cup acorn flour
1-1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Melt the butter then add the agave. Add the rest of the wet ingredients to the butter/agave mixture.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.

At this point I noticed a couple of things:

1. The resulting batter could easily double as a very effective construction adhesive - very sticky!
2. Like last time I tried this recipe, it need a little extra flour - about 1-1/2 tbs.

I dropped spoonfuls of batter onto a parchment paper lined air bake cookie sheet, and baked for about 13-15 minutes.

They turned out great! They have a much more "cake like" texture than the cookies I made last fall from acorn flour I ground myself, which makes sense because the Korean flour is extremely finely ground (just trying to measure a half cup results in a cloud of acorn flour dust!).

My son wanted to bring them to school for his teachers, so that's definitely a vote of approval.

In separate posts I'll discuss in more detail the acorn flour and acorn starch sent to me by Dr. David Bainbridge, and I'll look more in-depth at what these simple cookies can mean in the big scheme of things. Math might be involved.

Cookies Resumed...

After a fruitless search for acorn flour here in the Twin Cities area comes great news: a package with acorn flour and acorn starch is on the way from a friend, reader and oh, by the way, the world's foremost expert on balanoculture.

What culinary delights await? What kitchen disasters will result? Well with me in the kitchen we know two things for sure: 1) something's gonna get burnt - and it's not always the food, and 2) if a little butter is good, a lot of butter is better.

Julia Child I ain't... but if I can create delicious food from acorns, anyone can!