Over the weekend John suggested that we check the hazelnut trees growing near the Cottage here at Struan Farm to see if there were any nuts this autumn. It's been seven long years since we first planted them; I almost said no, why waste the time? But guess again, we've had our first crop of nuts!
Not much, but certainly enough for a batch of Struan Farm muesli. I use our walnuts along with sliced almonds, pecans, cashews and hazelnuts for that. Hazelnuts are quite expensive, so it would be good for us to be able to grow as much as we can.
The nuts are easy to harvest, they drop down out of husks on the trees. We have "Whiteheart" and "Merveille de Bonwiller" along with a third numbered variety I bought from a commercial grower two-three years ago in an attempt to improve the pollination. This seems to have worked.
The nuts are dried, shelled and then can be frozen or used. I'm trying to find out if there's a special nutcracker that might make the job a bit easier, but will start using what we use for walnuts and go from there.
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