Kathleen Sanderson

The only downside to having chestnuts as your primary staple crop would be that once in a while, the crop fails. Best to have several strings to your staple crop bow! But they are definitely worth having if you have room for large trees.

Rick Valley wrote:I grew up in the NE: New York, Ohio, and moved into the East Coast, New England, Maryland. I'm used to going t the Farmers Market and getting fresh roasted chestnuts, or roasting them in the fireplace. It's always fun to leave one un-pierced, so it POPS!
If you have the time,  roasting, peeling and maybe slicing them into cassaroles and stir fries. Or boil them and make cream of chestnut soup. But most definitely: Turkey Stuffing on Thanksgiving, with Celeriac and red pepper slices* that's un poco picante pero dulce. *slices must be of a size to have a reasonable stuffing texture: not too big but distinct, not minced. Dammit, I've planted chestnuts all over, and here in Eugene I don't know any trees to gather from. I'll just have to buy some.

If you don't mind a trip over to the coast, I can tell you where to find some chestnuts. (If someone hasn't cut the trees down in the last twenty years since I last gathered nuts from them.) I sprouted some, right before we moved with my grandmother over to Klamath County, but they didn't survive the winters over there. I think it's too late for nuts from those trees this year - I gathered them in September. But the nuts fall on the road, and in the ditch. (The trees are high up on a steep bank above the road - not sure you could even reach them.)  My grandmother's grandparents settled near those trees in the early 1870's - the first white family to live there; she was born there in 1913. She told me that the parent tree was old when she was a little girl, and nobody knew who had planted it; the only settlers before her family moved there were single men, who her family knew, and none of them had planted it. I've wondered if there was a chestnut-tree 'Johnny Appleseed' (Johnny Chestnut?) who went around planting trees in weird places....And when you consider that there was no road up there until the late 1920's (the settlers used the river, mostly), someone had to have walked up the river, or over several hills, and stopped on the bluff above the river to plant a chestnut.  Definitely an odd place to put one.

They are European-type.  If you want to go looking, head towards Florence. Shortly before you reach Florence, you'll cross the North Fork of the Siuslaw River; turn right on the North Fork Road. Go between five and six miles up - sorry I can't be more precise. I know the house we used to live in is at seven miles up, and those trees are between one and two miles back down the road towards town. The trees will be on your left and well above the road as you go upstream, with a pasture on the right side of the road (and just before that, the river is on the right side of the road). Just a little past the trees is a low pasture on the left side of the road, then a hill with a house on the side of it, back a ways (one of my cousins lives there). It would make a good excursion! If you hit it right, you'll probably see some nuts on the road, but you might need to park (carefully - there's no shoulders) and walk the ditches looking for nuts.

Otherwise, if you want to plant trees, look at Burnt Ridge Nursery - they have really good prices for very small trees of some varieties.

Brian Cady wrote:There are different types, which are best prepared differently:
European & American are great roasted quickly at high temperatures, after cutting through the shell.
Chinese chestnuts are starchier, typically, and best roasted slowly at low temperatures, without cutting the shell.

Below is James Nave's Chinese chestnut cooking guide:

Brian
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How to Cook Chinese Chestnuts – J. M. Nave

If you have some favorite way of cooking Chinese chestnuts, I'm not trying to change that. I'm just trying to show people how you can best bring out the flavors of Chinese nuts and get better textures. Cooking Chinese nuts the same way you would cook European or American nuts is not optimal because Chinese nuts are much denser. And if you are cooking Chinese nuts optimally, you don't need to cut the shell. Low and slow is the optimal way to cook Chinese chestnuts.
The most interesting way, and most common way, to cook chestnuts in China is to roast chestnuts at low temperatures (240F or less) for extended periods of time (60 minutes or more). Roasting at lower temperatures for longer periods of time breaks down the dense Chinese nut and fully releases the flavors in the nut. It also gives the nut a softer texture, more like an American or European chestnut. A  Chinese chestnut that is cooked at 350F or above for short periods of  time (30 minutes or less), will normally have a burnt or hard exterior and an almost uncooked interior. The flavor will not be well developed. Cooking Chinese chestnuts in this manner has led to the common belief in the US that Chinese nuts are inferior to American or European chestnuts. American and European chestnuts that are cooked at high temperatures for short periods or time will be mostly cooked and falling apart and the flavors will be well developed. Because Chinese chestnuts are much denser than American and European chestnuts, they benefit from slower more thorough cooking at lower temperatures. Their density also gives Chinese nuts greater versatility in cooking. For example, Chinese chestnuts can be used in many dishes such as soups and stews without falling apart.
To fully understand how the density of the nut impacts cooking, it may be helpful to compare cooking chestnuts to cooking beef. Different cuts of beef have different textures and densities. Tenderloin (so named because of the soft texture of the meat) is quite different than brisket. Tenderloin may be cooked at high temperatures for short periods of time. The result is beef that is soft and full of flavor. Brisket on the other hand is a much denser cut of meat. Cooking it at high temperatures for short periods of time will result in a burnt exterior and an uncooked interior. The meat will also be tough and difficult to chew. To properly cook brisket requires cooking for longer periods of time at lower temperatures to allow the heat to penetrate to the interior of the meat. This results in a much more flavorful brisket with a softer texture. Chinese chestnuts are the brisket of the chestnut world. They are exceptionally good eating when properly cooked.
Another benefit to cooking Chinese chestnuts at lower temperatures is that the shells do not need to be cut. In the US, chestnut shells are normally cut when nuts are to be roasted to allow heated water vapor to escape. If the shell is not cut, the expanding water vapor will cause the shell to explode. But when a Chinese chestnut is cooked at 240F or below, it will not normally explode because the buildup of water vapor is very slow and it can escape without exploding the shell. This also results in another benefit. When the shell is not cut, the cooked nut retains more moisture which results in a better texture for the nut. To some extent, not cutting the shell also results in a partial steaming of the nut. It’s simply a better way to cook Chinese chestnuts. Which brings up the point that Chinese chestnuts can also be cooked by boiling for at least 60 minutes. Boiling is not optimal for American or European chestnuts because the nuts tend to get very soggy and fall apart which also makes them difficult to peel. Because Chinese nuts are denser, they don’t absorb much water and tend not to fall apart after boiling, which also makes them as easy to peel after boiling as they are before boiling.

Thank you for explaining the difference between Chinese chestnuts, and American and European. My only experience has been with the European types. This may also explain why Chinese chestnuts are considered to be not quite as good as the other two by some people - they don't know to cook them differently.

Leigh Tate wrote:My neighbor gifted me with a bunch of chestnuts. I've never had them before. So except for the old seasonal song that mentions them roasting by an open fire, I don't know what to do with them. I tried one raw but wasn't too keen on that. Does anyone have some ideas to share? Recipes?

I haven't done much with them, but we have a young chestnut tree in the yard (and I'd like to put in a couple more). They seem to do well in our area. I've had some canned ones that seemed a little sweet - don't know if any sugar had been added. But I liked them. A lady at church, every fall when she has chestnuts from her own trees, brings them to church dinners wrapped in bacon and roasted. That's good! I would say, experiment. They work with both sweet and savory flavors, and are more starchy than oily like most other nuts.

Cassie Martin wrote:I don't know if they do this everywhere, but potatoes are tenacious where I live. If you miss just one or two little potatoes, they grow big, healthy plants next year. There are potatoes growing in the lawn areas where we had garden beds years ago. They could hypothetically be harvested any time, you would just need to know where they were in the winter.

Could you mark the plants with stakes?

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:The sunchokes would probably grow just fine, but I suspect my daughter (adult, handicapped) can't eat them. Most plant foods seem to trigger extreme gut problems for her...Daughter tolerates sauerkraut well (and dill pickles); it seems likely that kale could be made into sauerkraut...

It might be worth trying fermented sunroots. There's some chance that the fermentation is what's making hard to handle veggies work, and if it worked for these, you might have a staple.

That is definitely something worth trying. I have been planning to do a variety of fermented vegetables, and see what she (and I) tolerate. We both tolerate fermented dairy much better than non-fermented, too.

Been reading through this and pondering our options here in south-central Kentucky (growing zone 6b or 7a, depending on which chart you look at, though I think it's more 6b, given that we've had temps down to minus 10 F the last two winters, and minus 5 just about every previous winter since we moved here).

The sunchokes would probably grow just fine, but I suspect my daughter (adult, handicapped) can't eat them. Most plant foods seem to trigger extreme gut problems for her, leading to her not being able to eat and losing way too much weight (possible Crohn's, but definitely something along those lines). We've found a few things that she seems to be able to safely eat, but sunchokes are high in fiber and I suspect those wouldn't work for her. On the other hand, she seems to be okay with winter squash or sweet potatoes, and those both grow well in our climate. Both keep quite well, given appropriate storage conditions, and are pretty hardy even in adverse growing conditions, and are easy enough to plant. Daughter doesn't tolerate nightshade family plants well, so potatoes won't work for us.

The walking onions should be fine, since onions are used for seasoning, rather than as a primary vegetable. Our diet now is primarily meat, but we still use some onion and garlic.

The kale - I'm not sure about. It's a good choice in a lot of respects. Daughter tolerates sauerkraut well (and dill pickles); it seems likely that kale could be made into sauerkraut, though it would be a little different....

My major focus is on raising the meat portion of our diet, complicated because we are both sensitive to eggs (which qualify as meat for diet purposes); she's extremely sensitive to eggs, and eating them causes her autistic behaviors to come roaring back. We have about an acre and a half of pasture, and currently have eight goats on that (feeding hay in the winter), but we've had issues with parasites with them, in spite of regular worming, and I want to sell the goats and get some St. Croix sheep instead. Don't know if we can raise all of our meat, but if we could raise all of our red meat from ruminants, we could continue buying some poultry and pork (and fish).

I have a fenced garden area (it's only 32' x 52'), and dogs on the property that keep deer and most other pests away, so don't have to worry too much about my stuff getting eaten, just out-competed by the weeds!

Because of the goats, I haven't progressed much on tree-planting, but would like to put in mulberries and persimmons (which are native here), and chestnuts, all widely spaced in our small pasture. There are wild black walnuts all over the place which usually have a fair crop, too.

So that's where we are at.

I have no amazing dishes to post here. I've been admiring, and drooling over, all of yours! But daughter and I are essentially eating nothing but meat, salt, and a little fermented dairy. The only plant foods I've found that I'm sure are safe for both of us are sauerkraut, dill pickles, and blueberries (in moderation). Once in a while, we get away with a little garlic powder or onion. Last time I tried lentils (cooked in the pressure cooker, in hopes that would help), my daughter lost ten pounds or so because she was in pain and couldn't eat regularly for several weeks. Pepper (black or capsicum) is even worse, triggering autoimmune conditions for both of us.

So, right now I have about five pounds of ground beef in the oven - that's lunch today and tomorrow for the two of us. Then there's a big ham in the frig to use up, followed by some chicken legs. I'm not really complaining - our food is tasty enough (you come to appreciate the base flavor of the food, if you aren't putting a lot of seasoning on it). But I have to admit that I do miss some of the flavors of the plant foods we can't eat.

Thankfully, contrary to some of the information floating around out there, meat is highly nutritious, and yes, you can live just fine on an all-meat diet. So we don't NEED the plant foods, they'd just be nice.

Hugo Morvan wrote:It's awesome! Some critical thoughts i had. I've heard this moss can last for a long time, but i'd rather have a straw bale. Anybody else doubt that the bark of birch overlapping will last a long time? I can believe it's a good foundation because the roots will grow into it, looking for water come summer. Which will help it to stop the snow sliding off those shallow roofs.

I saw that video a few days ago, too - I watched it because I'm from the Interior of Alaska, which has a similar climate to Siberia. My thoughts on your thoughts, LOL!

You can build with straw-bale construction in that climate - if you can find the straw bales. In Alaska, farmers who grow grain and have straw for sale are few and far between (though they do exist - for a price; the straw is in high demand with people who have horses). Logs are much more available, and moss is an excellent chinking material for the gaps between the logs. It actually lasts quite a while, and when it does need to be replaced, it's easily available, usually for free. I would absolutely not chink between logs with straw, even if it was available. It wouldn't do nearly as good of a job at stopping drafts, and it's more attractive to anything that eats stuff like that than moss is. And believe me, if it's fifty degrees below zero (F) outside, or seventy below, or even colder, even the tiniest crack in your walls will become a whistling breeze letting your heat out and the cold in.  

Birch bark actually is very rot-resistant and long-lasting. It is so waterproof that if you cut birch trees down for firewood, you must split the chunks of wood open, or the bark will hold moisture in and cause the wood to rot out, leaving a tube of bark in a fairly short time. It's a little tricky using birch bark to shingle/waterproof a roof, because there will be a hole anyplace that there was a branch on the trunk of the tree, but with care, it's possible to make a very good water-tight roof with birch bark (remember, birch bark used to be used for building canoes, too). Eventually, several decades down the line, it will start to rot and will need to be replaced, but again, like the moss used for chinking the log walls, the birch bark is usually easy enough to come by, and free.

As for snow sliding off the shallow roof, first, the roof slope is shallow to keep the sod from sliding off. The sod is there primarily to protect the birch bark and to insulate the roof in the summer, helping to keep the house from getting too hot inside (because in a Continental climate, summers can get quite warm). The sod also prevents the winter snow from melting and sliding off of the roof; and the shallow slope of the roof is additional protection from the snow sliding off the roof, because you absolutely want that snow to stay there! That's why the roof is built so strongly, to support the snow loads. Although, most years, in Continental climates such as the Interior of Alaska, and much of Siberia, there really isn't that much snow. It's not like areas east of the Great Lakes, for example, which get 'lake effect' snow dumped on them many feet deep. But you need whatever snow you can get for insulation. Snow has about the same R-value as wood, depending on how densely packed the snow is (from .5 to 2.0 R-value per inch); a good snow cover on the roof can make a huge difference in how comfortable the inside of the house is when it's extremely cold outside. We used to shovel snow up against the sides of our cabin as deep and high as we could get it without blocking doors or windows; this helped keep the floors warm, too, because we didn't have the cold air under the floor.

We always had a space under the floor dug out for cool food storage, too; whether it was accessed through a trap door in the house, or via a doorway on the outside with steps down (or both) just depended on the builder. This space would work reasonably well as both a refrigerator and a root cellar most of the year. We raised potatoes to sell, and my dad's parents' house had a basement which stored potatoes very well.

We never actually lived on permafrost, but the method they used in the video for the foundation is very similar to what is recommended in Alaska for construction on permafrost. (Permafrost tends to be patchy; if the ground is well-drained, you won't have much of it, if any.)

It's a rough climate to live in, and a rough climate to build houses in - one reason houses tend to be small cabins is because you only have a few months of good weather for building. You can add on later, but if you try to start with a big house, you are likely to not even have it closed in by the time winter arrives.

A masonry stove, whether rocket mass heater or the standard Russian masonry stove (in it's many iterations), is the ideal method of heating one of these small houses. When you need heat ten months out of the year, reducing the amount of firewood you have to cut is huge! We usually had a barrel stove; those eat firewood really fast, and, even lined with sand or firebrick, they don't hold heat at all. Wish we'd known about the masonry stoves back then.

Phil Stevens wrote:Kathleen, if parasites are an issue where you are (they're a massive problem here, to the point where the commercial sheep farmers are talking about Drenchageddon) you might want to try feeding biochar. Lots of studies and anecdotal stories out there saying that biochar will reduce or eliminate intestinal nematodes and also help with general health. My sheep like small pieces, like the size of whole grains, and screened to remove dust (makes them sneeze). I mix some sea salt minerals with it for some extra enticement, and they butt one another away from the trough when I give it to them.

On the browse topic, I feed lots of tree branches whenever the pasture growth slows down. I grow a lot of coppice willow for this purpose (as well as to produce feedstock to make more biochar -- stacking functions), and make tree hay in the summer with that and fruit tree prunings.

I don't have any sheep right now, just some meat goats and some Nigerian Dwarfs, but I've had a lot of trouble with parasites with them. For one thing, we have meningeal worms, also known as deer worms. I'll have to try the biochar and see if that helps, because commercial wormers just don't cut the mustard. (I'm planning to sell the goats and replace with St. Croix hair sheep, specifically because of the parasite problems. Though I haven't lost any goats to parasites for several months. Sigh. Maybe the ones that are left are the more resistant ones, and I should keep them....)