The Nutty Buddy Collective
Acornucopia Project
"There plenty to go around and more to be had."
- Old squirrel proverb
Heading 4
Do you know...yer nuts?
Do you know...?
33 pounds of feed produce 1 lb of steak.
Black Walnuts are 25% protein
1 lb of walnuts meats equals in food value 5 lbs of eggs, 9.5 lbs of milk, or 4 lbs of beef loin.
1 acre of walnut trees in good bearing will produce every year food approximating 2500 lbs of beef, 3500 qts of milk, or the equivalent of 1.5 tons of mutton.
R.T. Morris -Nut Growing
(If what this man said was true then one pound of walnut meat would equal 132 pounds of feed that it took to grow 4 pounds of beef loin.)
The two major families of the oak are the White Oak and the Black Oak. The white oak acorn is primarily a carbohydrate like corn and wheat. The Black oak family acorns contains variable amounts oil and protein and is like the soybean. Our "Black oak", Quercus Velutina has up to 30% oil. which is comprable to sunflowers. Hickories are generally too difficult to get the nut meats out, but make a nutritious milk. Black walnuts produce a distinctly flavorful nut meat that is revered for baking because it maintains its flavor.
All human crops were once inconsequential wildlings at one time. Apart from the pecan, our native nuts have received little "education". Oaks hybridize readily which means that they can be improved over time to have higher oil content, flavor, protein. Their potential usefulness to man hasn't even begun to have its shell scratched. To improve the genetics of native nuts for the economy of man is one of the many horizons of the Acornucopia project.
Though acorns are quite literally this project's bread and butter, the Acorn project also incorporates black walnuts, hickories, and pecans.
"It only takes one plant to create an entire industry" - Luther Burbank
Do You Know..? There are over 500 hundred species of oaks adapted to all manner of growing conditions circumventing the temperate regions around the world. Oaks hybridize readily. and this statistic doesn't even account for the infinite possibilities of hybridization. In North Carolina alone we have 28 native species of oak growing in a diversity of ecosystems from the sandy maritime dunes all the way to the highest mountaintop on the east coast- Mount Mitchell.
It is estimated,through archaeological sites containing 1.5 million year old pitted stones used for grinding, that humanids have been harvesting and eating acorns for at least that long a period and still are to this day in parts of the world. Clearly, we are well adapted to them as food. The relatively recent addition of annual cereals to our diet in the last 5000 years, and the genetic engineering and development of processing in the last 50 years have wreaked havoc on the health of many people in the form of diabetes, immune disorders and inflammation caused by gluten intolerance, and bad teeth.
If we were to take in account the excessive chemical inputs it takes to grow commodity annual crops, Oaks and Chinese chestnuts can far exceed the the productivity of soy beans and corn. Cultivation of corn, soy, and wheat diminish the soil, while trees like oaks rebuild the soil increasing productivity over time. What if I were to tell you that we could have all our future needs met from tree crops? And that life flourishes under a stable climate and a perennially based agriculture will stabilize our climate and regenerate the Earth?... and that a well nourished and low stress human population is our best chance of finding equinimity with our environment...?
...would you think I'm nuts?