Fruit's and Nuts

[stingray]

Some of the most under utilized food in the world is fruit and nut tree's. They are in parks, school yards, library yards and all sorts of public places.

Could you imagine if you walked by an apple tree and picked 2 or 3 apples everyday how many you would accumulate? Close to 2 dozen a week. With all the different apple tree's planted you could be picking apples from late July all the way through November. Apple's can be turned into pie, sauce an cider. And cider can be turned into ACV (Apple Cider Vinegar), which has many healing properties. Apple's are definitely a staple in our house.

Another tree that is rather abundant is the acorn tree. These tree's are everywhere. Most people think they are a nuisance. Well after doing some research I came to find out that the Native Americans would wash out the tannins, peel them and grind the nut for flour. Each tree can produce more than 200 or 300 lbs of flour. I wander what you can use to make with flour???

See how great God is. He put all this free, natural food on the planet and us humans neglect it for twinkies and ho ho's.

[hearingGod]

best way to pick up acorns:

we will be doing this soon. i've seen lil' nut pick up rolling machines too, but bird netting on sale works great too and can be used for many other purposes as well.

only thing w/ acorns is you have to leach out the tannins for human consumption. the indians did it by putting them crushed into some kind of bag & left in a stream for a bit (or soaking & changing out the water multiple times)...dry & then grind down like flour.

we have an old commercial coffee grinder to repair & will use on coarsest setting on these acorns, hulls and all. then dump into a bin of water and the hulls will float (skim off top)...in the meantime... the soaking will also leach out the tannins and then will put out to sun-dry.

after dried, it can be further milled as a flour and used in w/ flour (not recommended as sole flour, but as a good additive)... but we will likely use it as chicken feed. the protein content is not so great for chicken feed & it's not recommended for only feeding it w/ nothing else... but another additive in their diet (can affect egg laying production if you're too heavy on it)

have also read that letting them go to sprout (for chickens) and then crushing them...the tannins are reduced (yay, no tannin leaching work) and the protein content goes up as well (yay, what they need anyways).... sprouting anything is a winner it seems, LOL.
have seen suggestions for 'crushing' them by dumping some in the road & letting cars do the work (sweeping up later). and also putting a bunch between 2 flat surfaces (like sheets of board) and driving over them to smash many at same time.

there is much to be said about acorns for sure, but well worth looking into as a viable food source for rough times and pinching pennies

[warrior]

Please check the leaching time. You can use it as a thickener but acorns can also be fed directly to pigs.