There’s a food most of us walk past every day without ever thinking to eat it. It falls on footpaths, gets crushed under tyres each autumn, and once fed whole civilisations.
It’s the humble and mighty acorn.
Eric Cairns is a career scientist in his mid-seventies who has spent the better part of a decade working with oaks; improving them for timber, and, wearing his New Zealand Tree Crops Association hat, looking hard at the acorn as a staple food we’ve quietly forgotten.
He’s now lending that lifetime of knowledge to our Fruit & Forage Loop, providing huge value to the evolving farm trail idea.
Hannah, our friend, neighbour and nursery collaborator, is a budding acorn enthusiast too. Eric once made her a Korean-style acorn jelly and she hasn’t forgotten it: “It’s one of the best foods I’ve ever tasted. I still dream of that acorn jelly.” Within the next year, our intention is to run free public workshops on the farm — how to gather, leach and cook with acorns, using the oaks already growing here.
First up, we’ve got our Winter Propagation workshop coming up this Saturday 18th July, which will be the first of many free workshops feeding into the Fruit & Forage loop.
For the trail, Eric has drawn up a shortlist of the best-cropping oaks with the biggest nuts; holm oak, Turkey oak, a burr oak hybrid, the Mexican royal oak and others. For six or seven years he’s been quietly watching individual trees around the region for exceptionally large acorns; those standouts will be grafted onto compatible rootstocks, with seedlings planted among the grafts so the trees pollinate one another well.
In line with our agroforestry and permaculture principles, Eric intends to inoculate every oak on the trail with porcini mushrooms, one of the world’s great edible mushrooms. So the same tree gives acorns from its branches and mushrooms at its feet. That’s the whole philosophy of the loop: every species we plant will provide free, accessible food value to the community in all seasons.
The funds we’re raising in the 3rd Ma Earth funding round are to plant these oaks and many more fruit trees, alongside medicinal herbs. This trail is open for everybody to enjoy, 24/7, 365 days a year.
We’re humbled and grateful by the contributions thus far, and are excited to see what else comes to life along the loop from these awesome collaborations.