Wormy chestnuts
I
dragged Daddy to the fruit stand on Friday, where we peered in the
cooler at two big baskets of chestnuts. "Nice looking chesnuts,"
I said to the clerk, making conversation. "They're buggy ---
we're going to throw them out this evening," he replied.
My biomass detectors
perked right up. Five minutes later, I had a bushel of wormy
chestnuts in my possession, hoping that I'll be able to find a way to
feed them to the chickens. I know my flock won't be able to peck
their way through the tough skins, and I don't want to crack each one
open individually. Does anyone have any ideas for busting a bunch
of wormy chestnuts far enough out of their shells so that a chicken
beak can get to them?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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stop first thing, you would have a mess. take and put an amount of nuts in a thick plastic bag or even an old pillow slip. then take a hammer and pound, or if you have a large cinder block you could lay on it and that would break the skin. if you mash all of the nuts at once you would have to use them at that time, I would use these as a supplement to their diets.
Oh by the way, thanks for putting the girls in the pasture. I knew they would be happier there.
mom roseanell
You two are really on top of it. I liked Jayne's idea, but was trying to figure out how to keep the the chestnuts from flying everywhere when I rolled the golf cart over them. I think what I'm going to do is put some in my sack from India and put them on a board, then roll over them with the golf cart, combining both of your ideas.
And I like your idea of using them as a feed supplement, a bit at a time. I was thinking of maybe doing a cup or so a day until they're all gone.
You're totally right --- they do seem considerably happier in pasture!
Wouldn't your food processor or a blender make short work of them?
(Since a blender can chew up marbles, I don't think chestnuts stand much of a chance)
Well, I wouldn't eat the oil. Just use it as a way to process the nuts.
That said, I did a test run this morning, and our spoiled chickens don't seem all that interested. Looks like the nuts will go on the compost pile after all! The golf cart wasn't heavy enough to really crack them, but they were easy to crack in a cloth sack with a hammer.