ACORNS: Collecting, Most Common Questions, and Other Stuff
Вставка
- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- Collecting acorns while talking about Acorns. Common questions people ask, about using them as a staple food, tanning hides for leather with, leaching and other acorn stuff.
PART 2 • ACORNS: Preparation, ...
Support on / skillcult has been critical in keeping me experimenting and making content. If you want to help me help others, this is probably the best way to do it. Thank you Patrons for supporting the mission!
Buy less, but buy it through my links! Shopping through my affiliate links generates revenue for me, at no extra cost to you, click links here, or go to my Amazon Store page: skillcult.com/a... But seriously, buy less, do more.
Standard gear I recommend. I either use or have used all of it.
Council Tool Boys Axe: amzn.to/3z0muqI
Bahco Farmer's File: amzn.to/3Hbdhij
King two sided sharpening stone: amzn.to/32EX1XC
Silky f180 saw: amzn.to/3yZzM71
ARS 10 foot long reach pruner: amzn.to/3esETmM
Victorinox grafting/floral knife: amzn.to/3Jki1E9
Wiebe 12” fleshing tool: amzn.to/3sB0qSl
Atlas Elbow Gloves: amzn.to/3FwB5g6
BOOKS:
The Axe Book, by Dudley Cook: amzn.to/32kx7sN
Bushcraft, by Mors Kochanski: amzn.to/32q2rpT
Subscribe to my channel for more insightful Self Reliance related content: www.youtube.com... Click the bell icon to be notified of new content. Subscribing doesn’t mean that much on it’s own.
Blog and website: www.skillcult.com/blog
Instagram and Facebook @SkillCult
Great video, thank you! Tip: if you have chickens, turkeys or pigs, keep suspected worm acorns in a separate container. As the grubs leave, feed them to chickens, turkeys and pigs. If you have pigs the bad nut meat can be given to pigs up to 30 days before butchering. You can also put tarps under the oak to catch the acorns.
By removing the nuts with bugs, there are less bugs to ruin your acorns in future. Why? The grubs leave the acorns and burrow into the ground where they stay and develop for 2-3 years. They come out of the soil as a moth or beetle and then lay eggs on the acorns of the same acorn tree they came from. So collecting nuts and stopping grub burrowing will take 2-3 years to see a big difference, but you should see it.
Keep in mind that most oak tree have varying amounts of acorns each year based on the tree’s schedule and the weather. Low rain years mean smaller and fewer acorns.
Did part 2 ever happen, good Sir?
Yes!, just search for skillcult acorns.
@@SkillCult - Huzzah!!! 😃💕
Thanks Steven, great video!
I'm holding my breath to see what you can produce from it, foodwise. I eat acorns quite a lot when out in pasture, roasted, but it's pretty far from tasty. I've met old arab peasants who were very keen on munching the lower part of the acorn raw - I rarely get THAT hungry. I trust if anyone can cook something that actually tastes good rather than just keeps you alive it is probably you. I hope so anyway, cause they are all around and free.
Hi buddy. Well prepared acorn is pretty much a relatively bland staple, like many staple starch foods. And like many savory-ish foods, flavor is potentiated by salt and oil. Most modern people will add it to other stuff like baked goods, or add sweetener, butter and salt, like hot cereal, all of which can be quite good. Most acorns are not prepared well though and they are often added to other stuff to dilute the residual bitterness.
I just checked out the nutritional info on acorn flour, no species listed, and it's pretty good! Missing vitamins a, c, e, and k, but quite good for everything else. Good amino acid profile, too. I can see why people went to the trouble of processing them. It looks like pairing with a good leafy green and some meat would get you everything you need.
You answered a dozen questions I had in the first 9 minutes.
My inquiry is more tanning related but wow this channel... your info...flippin brilliant.
Thank you sir!😁
(I just completed my first brain tanned halibut skin using salmon brains.)
Great video, can't wait for part 2! I have a huge oak tree in my yard and I'll have to do some research on it. I've always wanted to try doing something with acorns, but I never have.
@skillcult What kind of oak is that
Are acorns that look healthy but turning brown just converting from starch to sugar naturally or is it fungus or rancid and how to tell the difference?
It is normal for them to turn some shade of light brown or tan or yellowish when dried, but some will trun much darker, like they are fermenting while drying. I think of that as negative. If you dry them pretty fast and have a uniform color that they all have, you are probably fine. Very uneven color or very dark areas etc not so much. Pick sooner and dry them quicker.
thank ya fer the infermativ video
Yeer wailcomb
I could listen to your teaching all day. Great work. It must be difficult to be alone in the woods pretending to talk to an audience that isn’t there. You must be able to separate yourself from the tangible world and go abstract fairly easily. Keep it up.
It is awkward sometimes. I find that once I get lost in the content, I'm good. It's easier alone than with people hanging around tho lol.
The Bur oaks where I live are quite good. I pick them up and crack the shell with my teach and eat them. Very little tannins.
I live in off the map northwest of where Bur oaks are supposed to grow.
Funny because theres 250-300 year old Bur oaks in the valleys here. Yet its not on the distribution maps.
I crack 6 or 8 acorns in a 12 oz pickle jar and soak cow bone slabs for a few weeks to color the bone for pocket knife handles. Easiest way I have found to color bone dark brown or black. This is from a red oak next to my driveway which stains the concrete every year-ha! Excellent dyeing qualities. The trick is the 2+ week soak.
It's probably bonding with the proteins in the bone. i think there may be some type of collagen, if not, something similar that glue can be made from.
looking forward to part 2. My yard is LOADED with acorns and pine cones this year... more than the last several years combined. I kept meaning to harvest them to try my hand at acorn pancakes but I got busy and I think the squirrels got most of them.
Thank you. I’m part Washoe and I live on a farm by the river on Yokut lands. I started studying ethnobotany and collecting medicinals and acorns in the nearby riparian zone.
Cool. It's a great acorn year here this year and looks like there will be a lot of baynuts too. I've studied a lot of the old ethnobotany stuff when I can find it. it's hard to find the old source material. I have some old xeroxed notes of John Hudson's, from traveling to different native groups all over california in the 1800's making notes. but most of that kind of raw stuff like that is buried and inaccessible in museum and university archives. I've always wanted to correct and digitize those notes and put them out in the world. It takes someone familiar with California Native ethnobotany and plants to even read it, the spelling is so bad (he was a doctor lol). This is a pretty good time of year to collect iris leaves for cordage there. Big deal in that part of the country. I think it's mostly Tenax up there. Down here we have more macrosiphon. Tenax is shorter, but the people up there actually used iris more than down here. Someday I'm going to do a video on processing iris.
Every time I open one up, it's got a fat nasty worm in it.
Very common. Some years and some trees are especially bad.
The acorns in my area aren't very good. ☹️
Thanks Steven. Nice baskets!
Sweet video man
great topic, something Ive spent lots of thought on, acorns vs grain crops...things change alot when we consider if modern tools are used, or only stone and such. Even if the growing and threshing is fine, the actual grinding of good baking flour from wheat is not easy without a modern steel type cutter wheel, and is most likely why historically there were communal large stone gristmills which needed their own trade craftspeople to maintain. Ive talked to several people who actually grew, hand harvested and threshed their own wheat, all of them took to to a mill, Ive never spoken to anyone who hand ground their wheat or corn...
True, milling is an issue. In asia there are stone hand mills for grains. they are similar to a horizontal grain mill, with the hole in the top, but hand turned. Part of the reason for those community mills may also have been just the time and convenience factor. I've use the hand crank steel mills, like corona, and they are a nightmare. You can get electric mills now though.
i guess Im kinda off topic but do anyone know a good place to stream newly released tv shows online?
@Ryan Willie try Flixzone. You can find it by googling =)
@Tony Benedict Definitely, have been watching on FlixZone for years myself :D
@Tony Benedict thank you, signed up and it seems like a nice service :) Appreciate it !
Most folks I know who harvest acorns and also tan hides set aside and use the cracked hulls for their tannin baths for their hides, not the water from leeching the inner meat.
That makes more sense. You could do both, and use the leach water to cook the hull. but there is a lot of water required to leach and not all that much tannin. I don't think people realize that at some point it's just a lot easier to go get some bark or more hulls instead of messing around with low tannin sources.
The camera footage makes me dizzy like watching the Blair witch project :)
Brain tanning is actually one method. And if you've harvest a hide, then you've got the brains needed. Just boil in water and make a paste and brush on.
I'm a long time braintanner. I actually wrote a book on it in the 90's. It is probably true the animals have enough brains to tan their own hides, but there are a lot of other factors invovled in that as well. I wish it were as simple as just brushing the brains on. tannic acid and brains can also be combined.
@@SkillCult yea, I'm knew to the whole tanning scene, so I've still got a whole world of info yet to learn. Whats the book called? I'll check it out. Great channel btw 🤘
It is out of print right now. we are trying to work on it, but it will be a while. It's called Buckskin, the ancient art of braintanning. I don't have much content on braintanning yet, but will when the book is reprinted. I have a lot on tanning with tannic acid though.
Very interesting content. Looking forward to part two despite the fact that we don't have oaks near our house; just a bunch of cottonwoods that make a mess in the summer.
What species of oak is this?
EDIT: Tan oak, I saw it later in the video
i cant seem to find part 2
ua-cam.com/video/zMoJFuxh6TU/v-deo.html
Notice my avatar? Gmta. Anyway, I've made acorn flour before, it had a buttery, nutty taste. I've already gathered from this year's crop, and after watching the video, I'm ready to try again. Good to know about the drying too.
Julia Parker's book is very worth getting. did you watch the follow up vid? lots of info there too.
One of the best channels on youtube
Quercus douglasii
Quercus velutina
Notholithocarpus densiflorus, Tanbark-oak was recently moved into a new genus, Notholithocarpus (from Lithocarpus),
Quercus garryana
Quercus lobata
Quercus wislizeni
Quercus chrysolepis
Thanks :)
Fantastic video Steven! Thank you for sharing your skills with us, I may be speaking only for myself but you have finally inspired me to go out and try all of these interests that I have held for so long. If I may ask how are you feeling my friend? Without trying to pry to much into your personal life you seem to have healed well from your surgery and have been producing some great content lately. Keep on keeping on my friend!
I'm fully recovered and don't think about it anymore. I seem to have more energy, so that's good, maybe from getting that infected appendix out?
Thanks Steven!
Any idea which trees in Australia have tannic acid.
Eucalyptus and acacia trees are plentiful and gumnuts fall all over the floor. Birds pull them off and drop the husks.
watch this and go to the link in the description to my webpage on tanning materials. there's stuff listed from australia with percentages. ua-cam.com/video/gbD2h3g0_Nc/v-deo.html
Hey I hope you read this message. But if you look up "Pale Horse Survival and Tactical" He has a great video on doing this from start to finish. He does more than a few of these things, plus you guys are from the same area. He only has like 2k followers but its a wealth of information.
-Daniel
Thanks I'll check him out.
uh huh ... wah wah wah ....
Very cool. So when you shake the limbs I assume you have sheets or something to catch the nuts. What are some of the things that can be made from acorns? Do they taste similar to any other nut?
I have not, but you certainly could if you had large tarps. Once the first drop is over, you get more percentage of good acorns, so that certainly makes sense. No, I would not say the even really taste like nuts. they are closer to something like chestnut, starchy, rather than what most think of as nuts, the more proteinaceous, high oil nuts.
i thought your chicken was my cat!
It is....
I have planted loads lately l,just got to keep the squirrels off them!
Yeah, they like those things and can smell them in the ground I think.
Are there golden Chinkapins in your area?
I don'/t have them, but they are close. Not sure what species, but there is a native chinquapin here.
@@SkillCult I only ask because I am trying to find a seed source to start a stand of them up here in Washington. Unfortunately they aren't commercially available .
@@EmporerBlock Can't help with that.
Question, do you have any knowledge pertaining to the extraction and use of Acorn oil. I had once experimented with extracting oil from some Acorns thinking I might be able to use said oil in some way, however I don’t believe I was in any way successful, what I had molded, but I’m sure my method of extraction wasn’t good. I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing at the time, but I was curious.
I don't. I feel like I tried it once by boiling, or with ashes, but didn't work? Or maybe that was baynuts. There is a device for extracting oil from seeds that is hand cranked. it spits out dry pulp and oil. You might look into that. As far as a primitive or home process, I'd like to learn how to do that, but have not put in any real effort.
Seems to have been a huge acorn crop all over the country this year. I collected a ton. I’ve only processed a little so far and am saving the grubs but haven’t worked up the courage to try them
I don't think I've eaten those. I ate maggots once. True story. I wouldn't recommend it.