III. THE NUTS OF THE FARM 



"The auld guidwife's weel-hoordet nits 

 Are round an' round divided." 



— Robert Burns (Hallow-e'en). 



Nature puts up some of her products in neat packages for 

 keeping. Among the choicest of them, preserved in the 

 neatest and most sanitary of containers, are the nuts. Richin 

 proteins and fats, finely flavored, and with a soft appetizing 

 fragrance, these strongly appeal to the palate of man and 

 many of his animal associates. Squirrels and other rodents 

 and a few birds gather and store them for winter use. In 

 pioneer days hogs were fattened on them. It was a simple 

 process: the hogs roamed the woods and fed on the nuts 

 where they fell. And it is credibly claimed that bacon of 

 surpassing flavor was obtained from hut-fed hogs. In earlier 

 days the Indian, who had no butter, found an excellent sub- 

 stitute for it in the oil of the hickories. He crushed the nuts 

 with a stone and then boiled them in a kettle of water. The 

 shells sank to the bottom; the oil floated, and was skimmed 

 from the surface. 



Most nuts mature in autumn. A heavy, early frost, and 

 then a high wind, and then — it is time to go nutting; for so 

 choice a stock of food, clattering down out of the tree-tops 

 onto the lap of earth, will not lie long unclaimed. It is real 

 trees that most nuts grow on — not underlings, like fruit trees, 

 but the great trees of the forest cover; trees that are of value, 

 also, for the fine quality of their woods. They are long-lived 

 and slow-maturing. So, in our farming, we have neglected 

 them for quicker-growing crops. 



Practically all the nuts found growing about us are wild 

 nuts, that persist in spite of us rather than with our care. 

 Here and there a valued chestnut or walnut tree is allowed to 



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