Winter came back

This winter was very, very mild until the middle of February, when we got a week of -5C to -10C. The ground froze solid for the first time this year. The misty weather cleared up and we got a whole week fo blue skies and beautiful winter weather. Cold weather helps to keep down populations of rodents and some problematic insects.

Not much solar PV electricity, even on sunny days.

Our farm/garden is full of useful trees. Fruit trees and of course lots of different nut trees. Also some vegetable trees with edible leaves. Most trees are just gray-brown stems during the winter time and not very interesting to watch. We do have one exception - the 'Winter orange' cultivar of the linden tree (Tilia cordata).

Tilia cordata 'Winter orange' - you may guess the origin of the name.

Going nuts

Most of the work during this winter is to prepare course material and instruction material for farmers who want to start growin nuts commercially. We run a project for the Board of Agriculture to establish a knowledge hub for the budding Swedish nut industry, and it will continue until 2029. Most of the material we produce is in Swedish, so probably of limited use to the readership of this blog, but I will surely post some links and info here as well during the coming years.

Seedy chestnuts?

I check on the nuts in the storage every now and then. I had some containers with chestnuts out in a cooler in a garage, and earlier this month I checked them and saw that they had started to sprout. I seeded the first 150 or so chestnuts, just the week before the colder weather, and I hope they will not get freeze damage.

The chestnuts started to sprout - time to sow.

First, the root comes out and grows downwards.

Winter layering propagation - chestnuts

We graft most of the chestnut trees. That is the most common procedure in Europe to propagate specific varieties/cultivars.

When I was in France a few years back, visiting the amazing tree nursery of Sebastien Linard, I learned how to do mound layering.

The 'Marigoule' chestnut branch has started to grow roots.

The method is called 'marcotte' in France and the method is quite similar to the old ways of propagating currant bushes and apple rootstock. A mound of sand and sawdust is built around young twigs of a re-sprouting tree trunk. Six months later, some of the twigs have rooted and are clonal copies of the original tree.

The roots look good.

The same tree planted out in a garden bed, to grow out for another year.

Cracking fun

We got a nut cracking machine from the German company Feucht. It is a nut-cracker for hazelnuts and walnuts, and a connected wind-sifter that blows all shell fragments to the side. Nuts fall down in the stainless steel bin and the shells in the black bucket. A video is available here.

The Feucht-cracker/separator is great

Fun on the farm

Winter is also a time to spend long dark evenings in the kitchen cooking and talking with friends.

Party pumpkin.

We got one of the light color pumpkins last summer and now was a good time to cook it up. We made all kinds of pumpkin pie, soup and fries. We saved some seeds and already look forward to next winter...

Last week-end we took a walk in some fields to the south of our place. We saw that the potato farmer had not harvested the last 500 kg or so in one field. The boars were helping out.

Boars seemingly like potatoes.

Talks, talks and talks

Winter time is also the only time to get really busy farmers to leave their place and give a talk. We are lucky to know a legendary horse-farmer who lives some 20 km from our place. He gave the second talk in ten years or so, and we were quite a full room there to listen. I think we were 260 people in the audience, enthralled by the beautiful images and the deep ecological knowledge that John-Erik shared.

John-Erik to the right talks about their farm and the yearly tasks that come back again and again.

I also got the opportunity to give a talk about common popular delusions of our time.

Outside the Ide A Library in Helsingborg.