The Thousand-Watt Smile

Chuck, long-distance runner and trail patrol volunteer, and his partner Chris

Sometimes you meet someone whose physical appearance so closely matches your unconscious image of a personality type that something very odd has to happen for you to be jolted into seeing that person as an individual instead of a stereotype. Same, same, same, BANG, different.

The Dusty Cusp of Summer

First rain Sunday night. September and maybe October will still have hot, dry days of Indian summer, at least our western version where the seasons are more about wet/dry periods than hot/cold temperatures. There have been subtle signs of the end of summer, but as with most changes, we don't recognize them until they are well underway. Some evenings are cool and the bare skies have occasional cloud visitors.



Most of these preliminary signs are plants throwing in the towel after a 4-month stretch of dry weather. In rocky and sunny places, the poison oak leaves are turning bright red and dropping. In shadier spots, they take on soft pinks and yellows. Soon, the canyons will sport deep red gashes where poison oak grows in its bush form. Be ever careful around poison oak. Even without the leaves-of-three, the urushiol oil is still present on the stems and can give you a rash if you brush up against them, particularly if you break a stem and the milky sap touches your skin. Identify leafless poison oak plants by the short stubby side branches that are arranged opposite of each other. Also, by the evil glow that always surrounds it.



The oaks are starting to drop their acorns, and the deer gather under the productive trees even in the daytime to snack. This first drop is of the punky acorns - infested with bugs or otherwise undersized. The trees throw them off while they pour their summer juice into the good acorns still fattening on the branches.

--- Dot 1 and Dot 2 - their coats are fading in step with the annual grasses. ---

The deer have a restlessness and are shifting their daily patterns, whether from the start of hunting season or the upcoming rut. This year's fawns are losing their spots and the shyness that previously sent them springing away at any new sound.

--- This yearling buck creeps out of the willow thicket for a quick drink at dusk and dawn and is probably Button. He no longer associates with his doe, Bump. She may be the single doe who has now taken up residence in the shade of the oak trees above the house. ---

The young fawns will stay with the does, but year-old bucks are now by themselves and in deep hiding. Their small antlers set them apart from their original doe-led family, but are too puny to stand up to the mature bucks.



Even the redwood trees have a special color this time of year. Small clusters of yellow and brown leaves stand out among the green boughs. Evergreen trees have to replace their leaves now and then. This happens gradually throughout the year, but most evergreen species also have a period when many of the older leaves are shed to make room for fresh leaves.



It is also the season of bugs. Crickets take over the night sounds. Huge dragonflies patrol the ponds and nearby grasslands. During the day, small flies annoyingly hover around your eyes and I often first spot a fawn by its constantly flicking tail.



I get wistful at the end of summer. Did I do everything I wanted to do this summer? During the long days of outside work, did I pause often enough to allow the colors, sounds and smells of the breeding season to enter my consciousness? I regret not finding the time to write about wildflowers, raptor flight, and lizards, but I can store those observations away for comparison next year. Will I see another summer? As I turn to face the fall, I look over my shoulder and cast a wish to be a student of summer again.

Part IV - Cracking the Nuts

I spend winter evenings cracking walnuts while I watch movies. Then I seal the kernels in vacuum-packed pouches and store them in the freezer or give them away for holiday presents.

This is my cracking technique. Line up the nutcracker perpendicular to the slit in the shell. Grasp the free ends of the walnut firmly in your other fist (even tighter than shown in the photo) and gently apply pressure with the nutcracker just until you feel the slit widen and hear the first crack. Roll the walnut 180 degrees and reposition the nutcracker diagonally across the top and bottom of the shell. Slowly apply pressure again until you hear another crack. Usually by this point there are enough cracks in the shell that you can pull one hemisphere off and then firmly pluck the nutmeat out of the remaining cup of the shell. Either pull out the papery packing tissue between the kernel halves or use your fingers to split the nutmeat in half and flick off the packing tissue which should be brown and stiff if the walnut is ripe.

I challenge myself to crack the walnut shell so the kernel comes out whole. Then the nutmeat looks like a brain with its wrinkled double hemispheres. Indeed, in the 16th and 17th centuries, herbalists encouraged the eating of walnuts to boost one's intelligence and heal other ailments of the head and heart. Modern-day research has found that walnuts are loaded with omega-3 fatty acids and have multiple health benefits (www.walnuts.org).

Other animals frequently harvesting both acorns and walnuts on the Dipper Ranch are deer, Stellar jays, scrub jays and ravens. If I sleep late on these brilliant autumn days, the Stellar jays get me up by rapping shells on the roof to peck a hole through to the nutmeat. On the other end of the day, the deer gather in the willow thicket below the barn at dusk, waiting for their chance at the walnut-strewn yard. Since the deer rutting season and acorn drop occur at the same season, careful driving is required this time of year as the deer recklessly cross roads at night to socialize under their favorite oak trees. The deer look ridiculous eating acorns. To eat these big nuts, they must open their mouths so wide, they lose all their daintiness.

Everywhere I go these days, I carry bagfuls of walnuts and give them away. The birds are carting off acorns overhead to family and hiding places. It's amazing these trees can produce so much food in their own little packages.

One final amazing fact about acorns - you can make a loud whistle with an acorn cap.

Part III - Harvesting & Hoarding

Every few days between Halloween and Thanksgiving, I scoop up any brown shells from the ground under the walnut trees and toss any fallen nuts still encased in hulls against the red barn to let the outer coating weather itself off. That way, I avoid staining my hands black from the phenol chemicals in the hulls. Some people use walnut hulls for making black or brown dye.

I wonder if the chemical in the walnut hulls also reduces the number of predators willing to chew through to the nut. Squirrels seem to be immune. Although English walnuts are not native to the North American continent (they originate from southwest Asia and are sometimes more correctly called Persian walnuts), our local wildlife collect them from yards and orchards. Squirrels are famous for stripping my friends' urban walnut trees. I am fortunate that the farmyard is surrounded by a broad band of grassland which the native western grey squirrels are not willing to cross from the hillside forests. There are, however, rodents that apparently collect walnuts at night because throughout the winter I find emptied shells in the barn with small holes chewed through the end.

Most nuts for human consumption need to dry for days to weeks before they are eaten. Last winter, I dried my walnut crop in the garage in open cardboard boxes covered with metal wire refrigerator shelves. Eventually, however, rodents raided the stash and the garage floor was strewn with broken shells. At first I couldn't figure out how the mice got the fat shells out of the boxes which were still sturdily covered with the wire shelves. Then I decided extra skinny mice had been assigned the mission to slip through the wires, crack the nuts inside the box and toss the pieces through the bars to their hungry families waiting outside.

This year, I am pouring the collected walnuts onto an old screen door suspended between picnic tables under the maple trees. I clamp a set of window screens on top to discourage raiders. So far it is working, although at first, I expected to hear crashing noises from the clever raccoons unscrewing the clamps some night. The raccoons (who ate my entire pear and persimmon crops this year) haven't shown up, so maybe their smirky mouths and sneaky hands aren't strong enough to crack open walnut shells. I hear the great-horned owl every night now, and sometimes a pair of screech owls, so they must be keeping the skinny mice away.

Every few days, I turn the walnuts to ensure thorough drying. It's a meditative process rolling the walnuts and lining them all on their long sides so the top screen will clamp down firmly. The other day while I was rolling walnuts, the local flock of acorn woodpeckers landed in the maple trees above me, chattering about their day of acorn harvesting. It reminded me about their special techniques for storing and drying acorns in a pecker-made granary.

Acorn woodpeckers work in extended family groups to harvest acorns and store them in their own granaries - tree trunks, power poles and fence posts that they have riddled with long rows of holes. They check the granary every day and since the acorns slightly shrink as they dry, the woodpeckers will move any loose acorns into tighter holes to prevent other animals from robbing their stash. I haven't found the acorn woodpeckers' cache on the Dipper Ranch, however, every morning they visit the maple trees by the house and conduct a short shouting match with the earlier arriving Stellar jays, so the yard must be somewhere between their nighttime roosts and granary trees. (Painting of acorn woodpecker above by Bob Hines, United States Fish and Wildlife Service)

Ninety-nine percent of the US supply and two-thirds of the world supply of English walnuts are produced from extensive orchards in the Central Valley of California (www.walnuts.org). Commercial harvest of walnuts is largely mechanized. First the orchard floor is rolled or dragged clean, then the walnuts are knocked loose from the trees by large shaking machines, and finally the fallen walnuts are blown into a row and swept up my mechanical harvesters.

I'm glad I get the chance to pick up the walnuts by hand. They make a lovely sound when they plunk into the bucket and many of my friends and family while talking to me on the cell phone in the fall, exclaim, "I hear walnuts. Will you save me some?"

For a hilarious description of the hippy lifestyle of California's acorn woodpeckers, see the Bird Watcher's General Store.

Part II - The Nut Leaves Home

By late summer, plump green hulls hang heavily in the walnut canopy. As the hulls slowly split, they reveal promising peeks of brown shells. By early fall, the hulls release their cargo and brown shells plop to the ground. On windy days, some nuts may drop still encased in their hulls.

In our area, the general order that acorns ripen in the fall is valley oak, black oak, tanoak, coast live oak, and then canyon oak. The acorns of species in the white oak group take 6 months to ripen (pollinated in spring, full acorn formed in subsequent fall), whereas acorns of the black oak group take 18 months to grow and ripen. On branches of the black oaks, you will find first-year acorns looking like shingled buttons, and second-year acorns fully formed. The first crop of acorns dropped is usually the damaged acorns, ones with weevils or mold or otherwise underdeveloped. They are still good eating for wildlife, but if you are collecting acorns to grow oaks, wait a few weeks for the second drop when the healthy, heavy acorns are finally released from their caps and fall and roll to their future destination.

Part I - A Sum of Nut Parts

English walnuts have 3 layers: the outer fleshy hull, the hard woody shell, and the inner eatable kernel. If you have just seen walnuts in holiday baskets, you wouldn't know about the thick, green hull that has to peel open to release the brown-shelled nut. As an extra layer, the hull discourages early consumption of the nut from some bugs and other potential consumers.

The acorn seed is enclosed in a leathery, bullet-shaped casing that emerges from a shingled cap. Each oak species has an acorn cap with a slightly different design, their own signature beanie or architectural roofline. The cap depth can vary from shallow to deep and the shape of the shingles covering the cap can be distinctly flat or warty depending on the species of oak.

Both the walnut hull and the acorn cap derive from bracts originally enclosing the flower buds. These plant parts modify their function through the reproductive stages, first protecting the developing flower (and perhaps controlling the timing of wind pollination in a way that may increase the genetic diversity or food quality of the seed crop) and then protecting the fertilized seed as it swells with food transported from the mother tree and stored in the developing nut - future nourishment once the nut breaks away and starts its separate life or becomes a menu item.

THE WALNUT AND THE ACORN

- A Serialized Story about Big Nuts -

My friends and I are collecting English walnuts in our farmyards while the local wildlife is harvesting acorns on the surrounding hillsides. In this autumn series, I'll compare these two large-sized nuts and their consumers.