Let me make a grand introduction to a stately treasure with a story:

, The Sower's Seeds

In the 1930s a young traveler was exploring the French Alps. He came upon a vast stretch of barren land. It was desolate. It was forbidding. It was ugly. It was the kind of place you hurry away from.

Then, suddenly, the young traveler stopped dead in his tracks. In the middle of this vast wasteland was a bent-over old man. On his back was a sack of acorns. In his hand was a four-foot length of iron pipe.

The man was using the iron pipe to punch holes in the ground. Then from the sack he would take an acorn and put it in the hole. Later the old man told the traveler, "I've planted over 100,000 acorns. Perhaps only a tenth of them will grow." The old man's wive and son had died, and this was how he chose to spend his final years. "I want to do something useful," he said.

Twenty-five years later the now-not-as-young traveler returned to the same desolate area. What he saw amazed him. He could not believe his own eyes. The land was covered with a beautiful forest two miles wide and five miles long. Birds were singing, animals were playing, and wild flowers perfumed the air.

The traveler stood there recalling the desolation that once was; a beautiful oak forest stood there now - all because someone cared.(Brian Cavanaugh, T.O.R.)

My personality today is the Columnar English Oak (Quercus robur 'Fastigiata')

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The great news is,you can have these gorgeous trees growing on your estate by next spring. I have hundreds of them and some have already begun to sprout out their pinkish roots through the tops of the acorns. You may have a few of them for a trade, or an SASBE.

They are the easiest trees to grow, mine are growing right in the ziplock I left them in to keep wet. A half gallon paper milk carton is a suitable container for starting the English oak acorns in a sunny window in early spring. Transplanting into a hole 18 to 24 inches deep with similar width can be accomplished by removing the bottom of the carton, placing it in the hole, filling with the planting soil then carefully sliding the roots with its planting soil out of the carton by pulling the carton up while holding the soil inside the carton with the roots downward. The carton can be left partially in the soil and suitably braced to protect the seedling thus serving as a tree shelter.

Before white settlers ventured onto this continent, acorns were one of the staple foods of many of its indigenous peoples. The oak crop provided a reliable and nutritious source of food for these Native Americans, and many families would harvest and eat as much as half a ton of acorns in a year's time. The nuts were also boiled or crushed to produce an oil, which was prized for cooking and as a salve for burns and wounds. In addition, acorns were the main diet of the deer, bear, and the many other animals and birds that were consumed by the Indians.

As a perennial tree crop, acorns can be grown year after year without cultivation, fertilization, irrigation, or-in most cases-spraying for pests. The oak also has the ability to yield well on marginal land, including steep, erosion-prone hillsides. Acorn production has other benefits, as well. The trees contribute to soil deposition, provide increased rainfall retention for replenishing the groundwater supply, act as windbreaks, supply summer shade, and furnish harvests of hardwood lumber and firewood and-in the case of one oak (Quercus suber)cork. What's more, the tannin present in many acorn varieties is a sought-after commercial product.

Furthermore, acorns are nutritionally quite similar to corn. You'll note that the nuts are exceptionally high in fat and carbohydrates ...and the kernels are reported to be easy to digest, as well, once the tannin is removed.

There are at least 50 species of deciduous or evergreen oak trees native to this country. And because the oaks hybridize readily in nature, new species are continually being discovered. Conventionally, oaks have been divided into two subgroups: the white oaks and the black, or red, oaks. White oak acorns mature in one year, have a smooth inner cup surface, and are generally sweeter than the acorns of the black oaks ...while the black oak acorns take two years to mature, have hairy inner cap surfaces, and taste bitter. Some supposedly bitter acorns were found to have a flavor similar to that of cashews.

If the acorns are bitter-tasting, you'll need to leach out the tannins present in the kernels. Fortunately, these substances are water-soluble, so the leaching process is simply a matter of repeated rinsings. First grind the acorns, either by hand using the mortar-and-pestle method or by adding a bit of water to the nuts and whizzing them in a blender (a coffee grinder also works well for pulverizing small harvests). Next, place the meal in a nylon stocking, a cloth bag, or a dish-towel-lined colander and rinse the mass under a slow stream of water while gently working the pulp with your hand. When the liquid runs clear and the bitterness is gone from the meal, you're done. Dry the resulting chocolate brown flour in a solar dryer or a low oven (you may need to regrind the meal after it dries if it becomes clumped. Some boil the whole shelled nuts through several water change to loose the tannin.

The possibilities for using acorn meal are limited only by your own ingenuity. You can add it to soups, stews, and stuffings or use it to replace part of the flour or cornmeal in your favorite bread, cake, or cookie recipes.

TRADITIONALINDIAN ACORN MUSH

1 cup of acorn meal

3 cups of water

a pinch of clean ash (optional)

To make this Native American staple food, mix the ingredients and simmer the mush for about half an hour in a double boiler. Or, to be truly authentic, cook it by dropping hot stones from the fire into the batter, then peel the "acorn chips" from the rocks.

TONY MONTOYA'S ACORN TORTILLAS

3 cups of acorn meal

3 cups of whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon (or more) of shortening

1/2 cup of warm water

Combine the dry ingredients and work in the shorteningadding water as necessaryuntil the mixture is the consistency of pie dough. Then roll the dough into tortillas and fry them in oil or toast them in the oven. These tortillas are great for tacos or tostadas, or just as snack chips.

PEGGY CARKEET'S ACORN BREAD

1 cup of oil

5 beaten eggs

1-1/4 cups of honey

1-1/2 teaspoons of vanilla

3-3/4 cups of acorn meal

1-1/8 cups of whole wheat flour

1-1/2 teaspoons of salt

1/2 teaspoon of baking powder

1-1/2 teaspoons of baking soda

1-1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon currants, pine nuts, or elderberries (to taste)

This recipe makes a one-of-a-kind bread that fairly begs to be eaten. Thoroughly mix the first 10 ingredients, then add (to taste) currants, pine nuts, or dried elderberries ...pour the batter into three greased loaf pans ...and bake the bread at 350°F for an hour or more.

PREPARATION OF GROUND ACORN MEAL THE ANCIENT WAY

1. Pick up several cupfuls of acorns. All kinds of oaks have edible acorns. Some have more tannin than others, but leaching will remove the tannin from all of them.

2. Shell the acorns with a nutcracker, a hammer, or a rock.

3. Grind them. If you are in the woods, smash them, a few at a time on a hard boulder with a smaller stone, Indian style. Do this until all the acorns are ground into a crumbly paste. If you are at home, it's faster and easier to use your mom's blender. Put the shelled acorns in the blender, fill it up with water, and grind at high speed for a minute or two. You will get a thick, cream-colored goo. It looks yummy, but tastes terrible.

4. Leach (wash) them. Line a big sieve with a dish towel and pour in the ground acorns. Hold the sieve under a faucet and slowly pour water through, stirring with one hand, for about five minutes. A lot of creamy stuff will come out. This is the tannin. When the water runs clear, stop and taste a little. When the meal is not bitter, you have washed it enough.

Or, in camp, tie the meal up in a towel and swish it in several bucketfuls of clean drinking water, until it passes the taste test.

5. Squeeze out as much water as you can, with your hands.

6. Use the ground acorn mash right away, because it turns dark when it is left around. Or store in plastic for freezing if you want to make the pancakes later.

Now, go to, dress your garden, and if you find that some creatures have stollen them all, well...

LET SOMETHING EAT THE ACORNS THEN EAT THE EATER!

Squirrel is one of the most tender of all wild game meats. The rosy pink to red flesh of young squirrel is tender and has a pleasing flavor.

SQUIRREL FRICASSEE

1 young squirrel, cut in pieces

3 slices bacon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sliced onion

1/8 teaspoon pepper

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/2 cup flour

1/3 cup beef or chicken broth

Rub pieces of squirrel with salt and pepper and roll in flour. Pan fry with chopped bacon for 30 minutes. Add onion, lemon juice and broth and cover tightly. Cook slowly for 2 hours. Just before serving, remove squirrel and make gravy by adding water or milk and flour to the pan drippings.

Variations: Add l tablespoon paprika, 1/8 teaspoon cayenne, l sliced tart apple and 2 cups broth instead of bacon and lemon juice called for in this recipe.

I think that just the thought of "Squirrel Fricassee" might just do the trick to deter your thieves.

Happy age to which the ancients gave the name of golden. . .

None found it needful, in order to obtain sustenance, to resort

to other labor than to stretch out his hand and take it from

the sturdy live-oak, which liberally invited him.

l Don Quixote.