sutton023

A comment from the previous post- my answer started getting long, and it dawned on me it would work best as a post- "Hello, my name is Elinor . I am a farmer from MN and today I read this article. http://www.allaboutfeed.net/news/chestnuts-for-cattle-feed-12326.html "This story fascinated me! I wanted to learn more about chesnuts and see if there were any growers in Minnesota. "What do you folks do with leftover chesnuts? Hello Elinor, and welcome. Many thanks for the link to the chestnut fed beef story, we'd missed that. After googling it, I can see why; as far as I can tell there's only one farm selling it right now- and they're in Australia. The farm in Florida is just feeling their way into it. Reading as much as I could on the Titania Farm beef; they mention having to learn how to feed it to the cows, which concerns me slightly. The well known problem of cattle eating acorns is a major reason we have not tried it; while acorn poisoning in cattle ...

We have a new aspect to the chestnut harvest: the Armor Warning Flag is flying today. If you have to be among the chestnut trees, for harvest or any other reason- you really better be wearing armor; head, face, shoulders, legs, feet and hands. The trees are throwing bombs, all over. The high winds are not funny for us, at all; particularly combined with this record hot spell; it's making the chestnuts ripen all at once, drop fast, messily, with leaves and burrs hiding them, and subject to rapid drying (which is NOT good for chestnuts) from the wind and hot sun. So, we're trying to pick up nuts working just on the north sides of the trees; away from their target areas, today. Can't afford to just not pick them up; we need them for all the reasons there are. The good press bit: today, Oct. 7, the Rochester Post Bulletin is running two stories on neohybrid hazels, that are nicely complementary. Take a look- if you go on line, you'll need a subscription to see the e...

The weather has been weird all year- and while it hasn't been urgent for the tree crops before; the heavy rains early, record heat later, record dry September, early frosts- all have been tolerated well; we're getting slammed now by - again, near record heat; and high winds. The chestnuts in particular, ripen and drop rapidly when the temperature hits 80° in October. It always does, and is usually welcome, to get the crop in. Right now, though, we've got a string of 80° days; and a wind warning up for tomorrow. That's not only going to have the trees throwing nuts far from the normal drop area; it's going to be ripping off leaves and burrs, making the harvest all the more tricky. So- we're in "max" harvest mode; dark to dark. Not much time for anything else for the next few days.