Billy wrote in

ct.net.au:

What if I get lucky and have a hickory nut to myself? Can I
eat it?

i did, it was delicious! i want to plant more hickory. it
*might* improve my chances of getting another one to eat
myself...

We had a black walnut that never showed a harvest
but it up and died. How do squirrels do with chestnuts?

i have 2 black walnuts, one in my yard (as it were) & one in
the former peach orchard, now pasture. the first is around 35
years old & bears heavily every other year. the one in the
pasture is about 15 years & just started bearing about 3 years
ago (it had 3 walnuts). it also seems to bear alternate years.
oddly, it's heavy years are the bigger trees lean years... so i
end up with about the same amount of walnuts.
i think it depends on the type of chestnut, if the squirrels
will eat them. they will eat my American chestnuts (if they can
get them. i'm pretty zealous about grabbing any good ones). i
don't know if they can, or will, eat buckeyes (those are horse
chestnuts, right?). i'm trying to get seedlings from my
chestnut, as they are only slightly self-fertile. you get much
bigger yields if they can cross pollanate. i'm almost thinking
of getting some of the American/Chinese hybrids, just to help my
poor tree out. it had blight, but was drasticly pruned &
survived. i'm hoping it's offsping will be resistant.

I'm out her in northern California on the edge of the
redwood forest. I'm twixt Santa Rosa and Guerneville.
Guerneville was so heavily logged that its' unofficial name
is "Stumptown". Redwood and bay make up most of the
non-deciduous trees. I don't know if bay is considered
hardwood but it is harder than the redwood. We had one
redwood, up the hill from our house about 70 - 80 feet (we
are on the south bank of the Russian River, with a northern
exposure), that hung like the sword of Damocles over our
house, so we took it down. I didn't like doing it but it
was necessary for my family. We still have twenty or so
trees on our three lots, mostly oak, some bays, and a
couple of buckeyes.

the buckeyes aren't native, i don't think. they're nice lumber
trees though. bays are hardwoods. even birch is a hardwood,
although it's softer than pine (softwoods are generally
conifers, & hardwoods are deciduous).
if you have some relatively open areas on your lots, look for
antique apples to put in. most of the antique varieties don't
need as much fussing as the modern ones... or small fruits, like
highbush cranberry, maybe. i'm all for edible landscaping.
that looks like a pretty nice area from the yahoo arial map
(which tend to be clearer than google, but not always). lots of
treed, hilly country to escape into if needed
I think, at least for the for seeable future, people in the
western world will look back on the Twentieth Century as
the "Golden Age" when the old prophecies of milk and honey
almost came true. I doubt the developing world will see it
like that though. Until we reach some sort of equivalency
in life style with the developing world, I think we can
expect our life style to diminish. I was born in the middle
of WWII. After the war, America was responsible for 50% of
the worlds commerce because the rest of the industrialized
world had blow themselves to pieces. Suddenly, families
could survive on a single income and mom could stay home
with the kids. Never was like that before and probably
never will be again, with our current style of gub'mint
(keptocracy).

well, unless you look at farming lifestyles pre-WW, when
families were extended (grandparents, parents, children &
frequently unmarried siblings of the parents) all living &
working together.
i'm a bit younger than you (1954), but i was a child of
depression era parents. kids born mid-60s or later tend not to
understand the make, save, repair or do without mindset. i do
know that my child is the only one who attends school in patched
clothes...

I got the book you recommended "Teach Yourself Visually
Handspinning" and I'm slowly picking up the vocabulary.
Presently, I'm reading the library's copy but in a few days
mine will show up from Amazon.

did you get a drop spindle? i really need to try that again.
way more portable than my wheel.
lee
--
Last night while sitting in my chair
I pinged a host that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
The host resolved to NSA.