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 andmostsanitary 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 nut-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 arelong-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. 
Hereand there a valued chestnut or walnut tree is allowed to 
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