I’m just a Lowly Acorn Farmer
It’s been several years now, and I have to say that I am so glad I took this up. What we are doing is trying our hand at acorn farming. See, we have acres and acres of white oak with tons and tons of acorns just lying on the ground. The problem is how to get them all vacuumed up and processed into something worth selling. About 5 years ago I hit on an idea: run all those acorns through the intestinal tract of whitetail deer and wild turkey, then harvest the critters. Those deer and turkeys just naturally go around hooverin’ up those acorns, and I’ll tell ya’ it’s downright fun chasing them down and converting them into all sorts of yummy stuff.
Self-sufficient? Not yet, but we’re getting there. If my experiments keep working out, we’ll be able to move out there permanent one of these days soon.
Acorn farming is not like other farming. In other forms of farming, you pay folks to come and help with the harvest, or you invite your friends in. In this case, after you and your friends have harvested all you want, you can advertise and have complete strangers come and help harvest.
The country is a strange place I found out. Folks will come and mow your grass– acres and acres of it, just for the clippings. This is just as strange.
The whole thing works off what’s known as a “day lease. ” You can advertise and say, in essense: “Come pay me $200 a day, and pick what you like.” The catch here is “No guarantees you’ll find a single acorn.” Imagine that sort of deal flying with a U-Pick-’em orchard or berry patch!
The key here is that I’m running the acorns through deer and turkey in what’s known as a “value-added process”. That’s city talk for turning sow’s ears into silk purses. Folks love those acorns once they’ve been run through a nice big deer. They’ll pay good money just for a chance to do it.
That’s what I’m banking on. One of these days, when I’m too old to go harvest the acorns myself, I’ll just advertise in the paper. “Come Pick my Acorns–$200/day!” The acorn harvest starts with squirrel season in August and runs clear through until the end of deer season in January, and then it starts up again in the Spring with the turkeys. That’s close to half a year that folks can come and gather acorns on my place.
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I harvested red oak accorns last fall to see if they would work in my gravity feeders on my hunting property as corn was getting a bit steep. I answered an ad like you mentioned(free/ take what you want) and cleaned up the mess made by others, and the tree’s owner was mighty pleased. He granted me sole right to harvest from that day on. (free deer food!) Over the winter, I decided to see what was needed to grow my own trees. I read several books on the subject, and did my best to follow the instructions I found online, only 1 of 24 sprouted. I went back to my barrel of accorns being stored till I could transport them to the feeders, and found @50 of them had already sprouted without even soil! I now have @50 in pots to be planted on my land for future deer, turkeys, squirrels, and rabbits. Any idea how large they need to be before the deer and squirrels will let them live? How long do they need to stay protected with chickenwire? Any advice appriciated, thanks.
That’s incredibly good luck getting those acorns to sprout. It’s normally a lot tougher than that.
Here’s a link that has good instructions for how to sprout acorns and get them planted:
http://www.wildbirds.org/oaks/oaks.htm
As you can see, normally you need to give them about 1000 hours of cold dormancy.
As to your question regarding when to plant, I would get them in the ground as soon as possible, and not worry too much about the rabbits and such. As long as its a mild winter, rabbits and deer won’t touch oak because it is so filled with bitter tannin. I have probably hundreds of sprouts in my front yard right now and the neighborhood is filled with deer and rabbits. Dandelions? Yes, oak sprouts? Forget it.
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