Nuts

A friend told me about a cartoon of me in our local weekly, the Willamette Week, a few days ago. I knew nothing about it and was like What? Me? Seriously? It turns out they were announcing a bike botany ride I was supposed to lead through Trackers NW, a local wilderness education organization. There were no sign ups earlier in the week so we canceled. Then this comes out in the paper. Someone at the Willy Week must like what I do. Thanks to whoever you are. Here is a photo of the cartoon. The caption says "He's not a nut, he just collects them." My friend put it best when he said the drawing makes me look like a villanous Mario Brother!

I didn't do the workshop and instead spent the day in search of figs and nuts. I found lots of figs and brought them home to load up my dehydrator. I love dried figs. Then I went riding about North Portland in search of some hazelnuts. We have lots of hazelnut trees around the NW. One is a native hazelnut called a "beaked" hazelnut. Its rather small and of all the trees I have found hardly any have nuts. When I do find nuts they are hollow inside. I'm guessing either the squirrels get all the good ones early in the season or the trees just have off years of production. Maybe a combo of both. The other hazelnut I think is a european variety that looks very similar but has a bigger nut and different husk. After much searching I finally came upon a bountiful hazelnut tree. So bountiful that I spent from about 10:00am till 3:00 pm crawling about like a squirrel gathering nuts. In the end I had 2 bushel baskets full! Can't wait to make some hazelnut butter!
I am trying to keep on top of hat orders while also trying to store up for winter all the dried fruit, nuts and canned goods I can. The photo below (back to front) is a pack basket I wove this weekend from New Zealand Flax, my hazelnuts, dried pears, acorns for making acorn flour, and dried figs.