Sanguine Tenacious Tidings

Some Nutty Facts

Its national nut day tell us about your favorites:

With nuts its difficult to tell which are my favorites: I eat peanuts, which are a legume, walnuts which are a drupe, pistachios, almonds, Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds. Peanuts are the cheapest and easiest to buy in quantities. Coconut to eat is not my favorite but I love the oil from coconut to cook with and use in hair oils and other ways. Oil is a totally other topic.

Something I just learned is the definition of the word Drupe:

{Linkhttps://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/what-are-the-differences-between-nuts-and-dr...}

Some things we call nuts are actually Drupes.This is something new to me. We have black walnut trees in our yard. Black walnuts have an outer shell. It is green when it drops from the tree. But as the nuts lay on the ground the outer husk turns black and eventually rots off. Apparently, this is true of all walnut trees.

I once had a talk about the black walnut trees here with a veterinarian who was afraid the trees were a hazard to my horses. The trees were here during my youth and I never removed them. After we built the new horse barn the animals were never grazed or stabled near the trees. It seems that horses and not other livestock can have an allergic reaction to black walnuts. The veterinarian felt that the trees themselves can make the ground toxic. No one ever used the nuts, therefore the shells were rotting off every year and the nuts were also laying on the ground year after year in one small part of the yard.

With further research, I learned that horses have to come into contact with the wood shavings of black walnut tree , like you would find in sawdust or bedding of some sort sold for livestock. The allergic reactions horses have to the shavings were never experienced here because we never used Black Walnut shavings for bedding. More knowledge is known now because of investigations into Black Walnuts over the years. Black Walnuts have a large amount of tannin in them which is also found in tea.

We also have Butternut trees in our extensive yard. Butternut trees do not have the tannin content that is found in Black Walnut trees and nuts. Butternut is also called White Walnut. Like Black Walnut the trees seed themselves and can be quite prolific. They are gradually dying out in the yard and there are only a few left because we mow under them. The Butternut tree grows very tall and needs to be the tallest tree in a tree canopy in order to continue to grow because it needs the light.

At one time maybe 100 years or more ago, this property was owned by someone who was a prolific gardener. There were many varieties of fruit trees in a small orchard, grape vines of a northern variety and nut trees. I am sorry to say many of those have vanished with time. I like to garden but, I have never been the most knowledgeable about growing trees. I also never put the most of time and energy into plant production. Even though my grandparents and parent owned the property before me I never observed them doing the spraying and pruning that trees require. Nor, was that a topic of conversation I ever heard.

Because of keeping a family garden of fresh food for the table over the years, I came into possession of books that would help me keep a garden of lettuce, beans, squash, and other vegetables for the table. I came into more knowledge about fruit trees as well, but still have not extensively applied that knowledge. One year I purchased spray for the trees another year fertilizer stakes. Just that small of an effort proved a fruitful one as the apples were larger and free of the creatures that like to attack apples when they start to ripen.

This is a small property, even so, it would take more than one persons effort and some ready cash to properly maintain and rejuvenate the orchard. I buy nuts for eating, cooking in breads and cookies, and using in salads from the stores.

One year K and the children harvested the black walnuts. It was not an easy harvest as the husk needs to be removed then the meat of the nut needs to be removed from the shell. They had a rich flavor. Since then, I have never eaten the nuts produced on the trees here. Nuts are good for your health. They provide plant protein and needed nutrients.