A Chestnut Tree in Every Yard

“A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage“. So said a popular campaign slogan during Herbert Hoover’s run for the presidency in 1928. It may have initially crashed and burned, but after some decades it is essentially a reality. A more immediately achievable goal, and one with potentially even more powerful consequences, is a chestnut tree in every yard.

Lest you think I exaggerate, consider this. Once established, a chestnut tree can live up to 1,000 years and furnish large quantities of carbohydrate rich nuts for about 990 of those years. The trees thrive equally well on steep, rocky ground as they do on level, fertile soil. Flowering comes late in the year, ensuring that a crop will be produced every year. They grow quickly and bear fairly early for a nut tree, so offer a quick return on investment. Chestnuts require no toxic pesticides, no elaborate and expensive irrigation and don’t need to be replanted year after year after year. They actually build the soil every year through leaf fall and soil shading. The nuts can be roasted fresh, or dried and made into flour. It can remain shelf stable like this for years. A diverse array of wildlife thrives around the consistent yields of chestnuts. Deer, turkeys, squirrels, bears and many more will flock to a mature chestnut. Conservationists and hunters alike find equal ground under the shade of a chestnut.

Compare this to a typical corn or wheat field, which is essentially the nutritional equivalent of chestnuts. The ground must be repeatedly tilled every year, which dramatically exhausts soil organic matter and creates erosion. Seed must be purchased every single year, often from massive corporations whose practices can only be described as evil incarnate. To ensure a good crop, these grains can only be grown on level, fertile ground while the hills go neglected. Since tillage has wiped out natural fertility, chemical fertilizers are used to make up the difference. This further burns out organic matter and beneficial organism that make soil alive. Pesticides are used to wipe out bugs and disease. Many of these are systemic which stays in the plant, including the grain portion that we eat! Much of the spray washes into the soil, even FURTHER degrading it. The farmer also comes into contact with spray drift and while mixing the chemicals, endangering his health as well as that of his family and neighbors. Massive tractors must be used for every phase of the operation, costing millions of dollars between the tractors themselves and the multitude of implements needed to plant, weed, spray, harvest and transport, to say nothing of the fuel costs. After doing all of this for a year, it has to be repeated the next year….and the next….and the next….ad nauseam until the health of every component suffers. The soil, the farmer, the consumer, the air, the water, the animals and our country itself suffers. The only winners of this system are the mega-corporations that sell the patented seed, sprays and machinery.

The simple act of everybody planting chestnut trees would wipe out a MASSIVE portion of that poorly designed system. All it takes is a collective desire to return to a more normal food system, one that was the historical norm for our recent and distant ancestors. Villages and towns congregating under nut trees harvesting. Bringing them to the local mill to turn into flour. Roasting them over an open fire in the cold months of winter. I can hear the over-comforted voice of the modern couch-potato say “oh, but that sounds like so much work!“ to which I would counter that the other system is ALL work! Not only in the production side discussed earlier, but also on the consumers side. You must go to a job which you don’t believe in in order to make enough money to buy the product that is ruining your health and the health of the world surrounding it. Chestnuts only require you to harvest when the nuts are ready, then process them however you want. That is much less work, wouldn’t you say?

And where did this aversion to working with our hands in our own free time come from anyway? People mindlessly go to a job to make money for someone else, but complain when they have to get their hands dirty for themselves. Historically, humans have always been stewards of the land. It is honest work that hones the body, mind and soul. It is work you can believe in. It is work that the kids can help with. It is work that can furnish the healthiest food possible for you, your family and community. If entire neighborhoods decided to plant chestnuts, then generations of humans and animals in that neighborhood would eat healthy carbohydrates for free. Extrapolate that out to include entire towns, then states, and so on. This could result in a carbohydrate food system that is free from the chains of mega corporations and their grains. Land that is miles and miles of corn or wheat could be converted back to diverse grasslands where bison and cattle could graze, pollinators could browse without being poisoned, water would filter through rich soil and become cleaner, our air would be fresher, farmers wouldn’t be buried under the debt of contracts and machinery, and numerous other benefits would arise. All through the seemingly simple act of enough people planting a tree. Many nurseries, including ours, offer high quality trees at a good price for folks to get started. We’re doing our part in our landscape….will YOU?!?