Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting Part 12

Perhaps, as the result of this training early in life, a new interest among the farmers will emerge and some of our sins of omission will be remedied. As a planter of trees for the future, the American farmer, both of yesterday and today, has notoriously, thoughtlessly, and disastrously failed both his children and himself. By all standards, he should be the first-ranking tree planter of the land. As a matter of fact, it is practically impossible to interest the average farmer at all. State experiment stations and forestry departments make some effort to stimulate interest in the planting of trees by furnis.h.i.+ng seedling stocks of forest trees at nominal prices and by issuing occasional bulletins. However well intentioned and, within their limits, well done these bulletins may be, the fact remains that in proportion to their numbers, farmers are still not notable planters of trees. Perhaps one reason for this failure is that most of the literature upon the subject seems aimed at lumbermen, and not at farmers. As to the bulletins which are aimed primarily at the farmer, examples of advice on forestry which is given in these rather too specialized and somewhat near-sighted publications are typically of the following kind: "Fence off the woodlot and never pasture it," "Use your best land for field crops; your waste land for trees." "You are interested in nuts? You can not have nuts and timber, too."

It is evident that these rules are prepared by foresters--not farmers.

Is it any wonder that the inquiring farmer finds them rather frustrating?

It should be remembered that practices which are valid and helpful in the care of an already existing forest or woodlot where mature growth is periodically harvested and where young sprouts are encouraged for replenishment may be of little use in the management of an entirely new planting of certain kinds of trees where cultivation, at least for a time, is necessary. Deep-rooted trees, for example. Such rules have been of little use to me in my own planting of American black walnuts upon an Ohio farm. Indeed, to have followed them would have been disastrous.

My planting is not large. It is modest enough to be within the power of nearly any farmer. It has been treated as a farmer would treat it, without too much pampering. We now have a few more than three thousand trees planted upon forty acres. Most of them are now fifteen years old.

Here are some of the things we have learned in fifteen years from our trees:

1. Trees s.p.a.ced 80 feet apart in good deep soil have not made as much growth as seedling black walnut trees s.p.a.ced 8 feet apart in rows 20 feet apart, also in good soil. However, these wider s.p.a.ced trees are grafted pecans and Persian walnuts.

2. The seedling trees which stand in good soil have made surprisingly good growth. Some better than 8 inches diameter, breast height. One measured tree has grown 7 feet 1/2 inch this year to date--Aug. 20. (No fertilizer used, but cultivated.) Those which stand in shallow, thin soil are dwarfs, worthless. Walnuts have deep taproots. They need deep, rich earth.

3. Trees grown from planted seed make the best timber trees. Upon the other hand, if production of known quality is the primary objective, grafted trees of known varieties must be planted. The seedling _of good parentage_ is an exciting gamble. It may be, and usually is a commonplace producer of nuts. Upon the other hand, it is more likely than the tree of poor parentage to win a place among the named varieties, set aside for propagation by budding or grafting upon other stocks.

4. Walnut seedlings like human beings tend to show marked inherited trends, erratic and undependable though they may be. Thus, seedlings grown from vigorous and upright trees _tend_ to be vigorous and upright.

Conversely, trees of poor parentage, either as timber or nut producers, will tend to reproduce the poor characteristics of their parent. This is more markedly true where the parent tree stands isolated from the pollen of other walnut trees of the same species.

5. I have found no real evidence that walnuts of our planting are toxic to other trees standing immediately beside them. To test this, we planted a few apple, peach, and plum trees in the walnut rows. They still stand literally arm in arm. This is, of course, all wrong. No tree should be so crowded. The apple trees monopolize s.p.a.ce by excessive lateral growth. The plums send up unwanted shoots from their roots. The peach trees are pa.s.sing out. Two or three of the apple trees are half dead. Others still live, but I am not very hopeful that, after the walnut trees are more mature, any of the apples will survive. The usual diseases and insects, plus shading by the walnuts seems to account for most if not all of the dead trees to date.

6. Gra.s.s growth is excellent right up to the trunks of all of the trees.

It has never been necessary for us to lose the use of the land upon which the trees are planted. While the trees were young, of course, no pasturing was permitted. The land between the rows was cultivated. In these strips we raised berries and other crops. Now that the trees are tall enough to be beyond the danger of damage from livestock, we graze the pasture under and between the trees. No damage is evident from trampled earth (the walnuts are deep-rooted) and the hazard of fire is eliminated because there is now no need to mow excessive gra.s.s, weeds, or brush.

7. The most precocious seedling walnuts began to bear nuts at about 7 years of age. New bearers are coming in each year. All are still counted as adolescent trees, yet, last fall, picking up the nuts from none but trees marked for their better quality of nuts, we gathered some 40 bushels of nuts in the sh.e.l.l.

8. Today, we can count about 2,000 walnut trees which promise to be of good timber quality 35 years hence. At a reasonable estimate, 1,000 trees will then survive, be 50 years old, be worth $50.00 each, at present prices. Total, $50,000.00. This represents an annual increment in value of $1,000.00 per year for the 20 acres which are closely planted to black walnuts. Can the average farmer _save_ that much in his lifetime? Can even the exceptional farmer do it on 20 acres? With as little investment of money and work? If so, how?

Any farmer can do as well, or better, without losing a single immediately productive acre. Why doesn't he?

The answer is in the very nature of the farmer's business. As has already been said, he is primarily a producer of food. If trees stand in the way, he chops them down. He has always chopped them down. It has become a habit. If the farmer is to be persuaded to change his ways and turn to planting trees, instead of destroying them, I repeat, the entering wedge into his interest will be, I believe, through dual-purpose trees--trees for food crops, as well as for timber crops.

Of these species, the black walnut of eastern America is probably the most outstanding one of all, at least in the mid-section of America. The b.u.t.ternut--"white walnut"--flourishes better in the north. The chestnut is another--a tree almost literally raised from the dead by the efforts of a few miracle workers like Dr. Arthur H. Graves of the Connecticut Experiment Station, who, with others of his kind, has been in the throes of producing a blight-resistant, tall-growing hybrid timber tree out of the bushy Chinese chestnut, a producer of the sweetest of nuts. The pecan, too, is being pushed northward. Great groves of wild pecans have firmly established themselves along the Ohio River. Their timber is fair; not wonderful. The mulberry tree is still another. The American species produces a timber which is remarkably durable under ground. Its fruit is not sufficiently appreciated. It makes an unsurpa.s.sed jam or jelly or pie when combined with a tart fruit like the cherry, grape, or currant. And who does not know the precious wood of the wild cherry? Its rosy warmth of color is the pride of the "antique" connoisseur; its fruit beloved by birds and squirrels; its juice, the secret of the cherry cordial. Even that foreigner, the Persian "English" walnut, of Carpathian strains, is pus.h.i.+ng north into Canada and the East Coast region. Its wood, too, under the name of "Circa.s.sian," is famous for its figured beauty[3].

[3] Some of the "Circa.s.sian walnut" is another genus, the wingnut (Pterocarya).--Ed.

One might go on and on with a list of trees and tree crops easily available, mostly native, all of which should be both figuratively and actually right down the farmer's alley.

Perhaps the education which can come through the agency of many school forests will in good time turn the attention of young and impressionable minds to the potential wealth to be found in the trees. Normally, the young, who, of all people, should be forward-looking, are least concerned with the long-term future. They are not given to making plans or building estates for their grandchildren. As a consequence, the planting of trees is traditionally taken over by the aged, or at least by the mature. This is all wrong. The young farmer who plants interesting trees is preparing for some of the most exciting and prideful moments in the years which follow. And he is also building, at low cost, and with little labor, a priceless estate.

How to Lose Money in Manufacturing Filbert Nut b.u.t.ter

CARL WESCHCKE, St. Paul, Minnesota

Inasmuch as there are so many words of wisdom and advice showing the reader how to make money in different ways, I have started a new line of caption with the hope that it might serve as a warning for those who would stick their necks out, as the term applies to those people who venture beyond safe margins of restraint. Since this is a recital of facts, and since Professor George L. Slate has requested me to report on my experiences, I submit the following for what interest it may hold for the readers.

Most ventures are backed by optimism of some sort or other, coupled with some experience, capital, hopes, and ambition. The project which sparked the entrance into the manufacture of filbert b.u.t.ter was the success that I was having with hybridizing our best native hazels with the best known filberts, such as crossing of the wild American hazel with Barcelona, DuChilly, Italian Red, Purple Aveline, Red Aveline, White Aveline, also filbert strains from J. U. Gellatly of Westbank, B. C., Canada, and strains from J. F. Jones, hybrids, European strains of filberts from the Carpathian mountains, and any right pollen which could be obtained from known filbert parents. Today we have over 2,000 seedling hybrids of which between 500 and 600 have come into bearing. Some of these are really surprising varieties of the combination hazels and filberts, but a complete history of the hybridization work and the results really deserve a separate account to be published some time in the future. I merely mention this because the success of these plants in producing nuts leads me to contemplate the future production of these hybrid nuts, called Hazilberts,[4] on a large scale.

[4] Another coined name, by Mr. Gellatly, is "Filazel."

My problem was to engineer a scheme whereby I could interest farmers in setting out small acreages of these plants and guarantee that there would be a market when the plants produced nuts, which would be in about three years from the time they were planted. Seeing that the filbert producers in the west were struggling for a better market, since conditions were not too favorable for the filbert in its compet.i.tion with the foreign nuts and the California produced Persian walnut, I decided that nuts in the sh.e.l.l were a little bit old-fas.h.i.+oned. Many of our prominent members of the NNGA have from time to time advised the marketing of nut kernels rather than nuts in their natural containers, and I thought a step in the right direction would be to manufacture a ready-to-eat product from the kernels. And what could be nicer than a b.u.t.ter similar to peanut b.u.t.ter?

So I began scouring the market for a grinding machine that would grind filberts to the consistency of a smooth peanut b.u.t.ter. My first machine was a Hobart peanut grinder. When buying this machine the mistake I made was to let the agent of the manufacturer demonstrate how good it was to grind Spanish peanuts; I should have had it tested on filberts as they are much tougher, even though they do carry more oil. This machine was installed, but it was a complete failure and I decided to buy more expensive machinery, and also put in a cracking plant and buy the nuts by the ton or carload, if necessary, directly from the growers on the Pacific Coast or through their organization, the Northwest Nut Growers.

I located a satisfactory machine for the purpose, which required about 7 horse power to run. Since this was during the war and no motors of the right speed and power were available at the time, I set up my own generating plant, using a 25 kilowatt generator driven by a Diesel engine which generated direct current so that I could use direct current motors which I already had among my machinery supplies. Then a separating machine, which required a 10 horse power motor just to operate the fan, which is part of that equipment, was purchased. Also, a nut cracking machine was secured from a West Coast manufacturer. Along with tanks and containers and other necessary equipment, all set up in a little factory building I had available for that purpose, I commenced the manufacture of filbert b.u.t.ter on a commercial scale.

The product was declared by every one to be excellent. We were quite sure of this since we had taken pains to buy up any product that purported to be a nut b.u.t.ter, and had tested those products in many ways to a.s.sure ourselves that we had a product superior to anything that we could find on the market at that time. The Owens Illinois Gla.s.s Company designed our label and gave us the benefit of their experience with containers. Then we placed our initial order for gla.s.s containers and re-s.h.i.+pping cases. Every detail in handling this material was properly taken care of, to insure that if the orders came rolling in we would be able to supply the demand and have our s.h.i.+pments reach the consumer in first cla.s.s shape.

Then we initiated an advertising campaign, coupled with sampling, and received many fine letters which encouraged us to hire a salesman who sold the product to the stores in the Twin City area so as to have proper distribution. Advertising was done also in two national magazines, so we sat back, hopefully antic.i.p.ating the big orders that we were soon to receive. The reorders from the local stores came in slowly, too slowly for our set-up. We received suggestions from the store keepers and from other persons that perhaps the product was too high priced, so we made experiments in other towns where we set the price so low that there was no profit. In fact, there would be a loss of money were we to do business on that basis. Yet there was no stimulation of sales due to this reduction in price.

Many good suggestions came in; among these was the suggestion that the product lent itself nicely to an ice cream topping; by mixing it with honey or with syrup we interested our largest manufacturer of ice cream in this locality and he did a lot of experimental selling. He was very cooperative. He also sold it in his branch stores as milk shakes; everybody liked it. No complaints whatsoever except that the manager said it was too expensive to compete with a chocolate flavor on which he made much more money. Finally this whole thing fizzled out and was discontinued.

The next experiment was with candy; as a candy center it was one of the finest tasting confections that had ever been made, but the oil which would ooze through the chocolate coatings prevented the practical use of it. You see, the filbert has about 65% oil, and when it is ground into a fine, creamy b.u.t.ter, this oil will come out and sometimes be an inch or more in depth over the top of the b.u.t.ter in the gla.s.s container in which it was marketed. So we investigated several methods by which we could eliminate the oil. We could pour it off and sell the oil separately; we could emulsify the product with the addition of certain emulsifiers, so as to keep the oil mixed with the starch and protein of the filbert nut. We tried many ways; there is only one method that we haven't used and that is to combine solidified or hydrogenized peanut oil with the filbert b.u.t.ter in order to prevent this liquid oil from rising to to the top of the product. The reason we did not do this is quite apparent--we did not want to mix peanuts and filberts, as we considered peanut b.u.t.ter a cheaper and inferior product. We could not hope to compete with peanut b.u.t.ter with the prices already set for peanut b.u.t.ter recognized by the trade.

Among the products that came to our attention, however, was one which had both filbert b.u.t.ter and solidified peanut oil in it. When we tested this product among many of our friends, they declared it tasted too much like peanut b.u.t.ter. It spoiled the delicate, fine flavor of the natural filbert b.u.t.ter (which we were marketing without adding any sort of seasoning, and without roasting the product the way peanuts are roasted before they are ground into b.u.t.ter.)

Now, if any of you readers think that we have left out something important which would have insured the success had we done it that way, we would certainly like to hear from you, or we have some nice machinery that we will sell cheap in case you want to experiment with it yourself.

I would be the last one to condemn the future possibility of producing a commercial nut b.u.t.ter, and yet it is strange that the only successful nut b.u.t.ter is not a nut b.u.t.ter at all. Peanut b.u.t.ter is not a nut b.u.t.ter because peanuts are a legume like a pea or bean. To my knowledge, we do not have any nut b.u.t.ters on the market today with the exception of the cashew nut b.u.t.ter, which recently had a distribution in our locality, but which seems now to have run its course much as our products did. We bought the cashew b.u.t.ter and tried to interest everybody to use it, just to see whether it was any different than our product in its popularity.

In our meager tests we found that the filbert b.u.t.ter was slightly more popular than the cashew, since the cashew reminded people too much of peanuts again. It was also very expensive. However, there must be a way to make a satisfactory b.u.t.ter out of filberts or hybrid nuts, as they carry the hope of the cheapest nut product, which is fundamentally necessary to manufacture a popular food item.

The method of propagation of the Hazilbert is by layers instead of grafting--layering is a cheaper and more satisfactory method. Also, the nuts are the most satisfactory to crack as they have no inner part.i.tions which would require intricate machinery to extract the kernel. Their keeping quality is excellent; we have tested this out over a number of years, and filbert b.u.t.ter properly processed will easily keep a year without turning rancid or having an unfavorable flavor. The tonnage of nuts that can be produced on an acre of land is unbelievably high. I have measured individual plants and their production, and the area that they covered, and it is safe to say that we can expect to produce a ton of nuts in the sh.e.l.l per acre in favorable locations on good deep soil.

Even at 10c per pound for the nuts this is a good return. New methods of gathering the nuts after they fall from the involucre or husk are being discovered and improved by the western growers from time to time, so that the old expensive method of hand-picking is being eliminated.

This should make the filbert even cheaper to harvest.

It is not my intention here to discourage the manufacture of filbert b.u.t.ter, but to point out the difficulty that I have had personally to promote the idea in a commercial way. Neither is it my intention to stimulate too much interest in the planting of the new filbert varieties which are still under test. I feel that it is necessary to test a plant for at least a five-year period before it can be singled out as a plant to propagate. We have not yet reached the point where we care to sell these plants, as much better ones might crop up among the untested plants, which number over 1000, and which have never yet had a chance to bear so as to show what they can do. At some future time I expect to write an article on filbert hybrid culture (Hazilberts) for the whole central, north, and northeastern part of the United States, and at that time I believe that tests will have progressed to such a point that recommendations can be made.

DR. MacDANIELS: There was one more paper that the Secretary has that was not scheduled, from Mr. Elton E. Papple, of Ontario. t.i.tle, "Filberts, Walnuts, and Chestnuts on the Niagara Peninsula."

Filberts, Walnuts and Chestnuts on the Niagara Peninsula

ELTON E. PAPPLE, Cainsville, Ontario

My brother and I have been interested in growing nut trees for some time, and have had some interesting experiences and some success. A few years ago, Mr. Slate sent us from Geneva some varieties of filberts which he considered quite hardy. We purchased some from Mr. Gellatly in Westbank, British Columbia, some from Mr. Troup, Jordan Station, Ontario (near Vineland); also from J. F. Jones Nursery, then in Lancaster, Pa.

Mr. Slate sent us scionwood and we grafted these scions in the spring and layered them shortly afterwards. By the following spring they were rooted well enough to be planted out in the nursery row. This gave us our material to work with, and about the third year we started making crosses between different varieties. The first year we obtained quite a few crosses, and had a good number of these seeds to germinate in the spring after taking from stratified storage and planting them in the nursery row. These trees have now started to come into bearing, and they promise to be better than their parents in some instances.

We made a number of crosses since, but we have been very busy and the young trees of these crosses have just about perished through neglect.

In this last lot we had a cross of the filbert on the beak or horn hazel[5], and of a cl.u.s.ter of three, had one to grow, which in turn was promptly eaten off by a rabbit or rodent of some description. The reason for this cross originally, was that, so far as we could see in the last fifteen years the male catkins never winter-kill; whereas filbert trees are subject to this hazard. Some of the filbert varieties have the ability to withstand changeable weather and not lose all of their catkins. Others will winter-kill in the wood as well. We have removed all our Barcelona and Du Chilly trees because they winter-killed almost one hundred percent.

[5] Corylus rostrata.--Ed.

With the experience we have had with filberts, we believe that before they could be commercialized, it would be necessary to have hardy catkins that will withstand changeable weather: not altogether resistance to extreme cold, but to temperatures that vary from warm to freezing in a few hours. A mulch does help where the warm period is for a short duration; but last winter we had a week or more of warm weather in January, with rain and then a cold snap. Even then, some of the catkins on the German varieties and others came through fairly well.

Selection of varieties for machine cracking or eating from the sh.e.l.l should determine varieties one should grow, but hardiness should be the key factor in selecting varieties. The following table shows some of the crosses we made. Most of these seedlings have borne a few nuts to date, but we cannot give anything definite as to whether the catkins are hardier than those of the parents.