In article , Daniel
writes
Read the two replies when I came in for a brew after yesterday's
chilly afternoon pruning.
If you have a recipe for pickled squirrel?
About 200+ walnuts 'disappeared' in the autumn...

Just for a New Year's Eve treat I'll recount this tale once again.

We have two huge old walnut trees standing at the entrance to our drive.
They would have been planted in about 1920 when the place was built.
Though we rarely see any walnuts on them, older residents in the village
tell us that they used pick bucketfuls of them every autumn backalong.

They also regale us with an old witchy story that the way to get a
reluctant walnut tree to bear fruit is to whip it! (There's an even
unlikelier version which requires the co-operation of a virgin, but no
virgin ever seems to be that desperate to get walnutted). Now, though
I'm not a tree hugger, I am very fond of trees and I could not bring
myself to treat any tree in that violent way. I prune, coppice and
pollard trees as part of their management, but I couldn't be
unnecessarily cruel to them.

Some years ago I decided to make a batch of walnut sap wine. I took an
augur and drilled a hole in each trunk (after having had a quiet word
with the trees). Out came the sap into the demi-johns giving me
sufficient to make 3 gallons of wine. The wine turned out to be
excellent for drinking by the following Xmas, but before that, in the
autumn, there were hundreds of well formed walnuts on the trees and on
the ground.

In all subsequent years we have had almost no nut production, sometimes
a few begin to grow, but none reach maturity. I've not tried to do the
same thing again, somehow I don't think it would work a second time.
Any theories on this rather odd happening would be welcome.
--
Alan & Joan Gould - North Lincs.