Harvesting Stories

When I was visiting my mother recently, we made time to gather hickory nuts. A short drive from her house brought us to a lone shagbark hickory tree nestled between a quiet country road and a small farm field. Though my mom has moved a couple times in her life, it has never been far from where she was born. The house where she grew up overlooks this tree, and she has told me many times that her grandfather planted it. I have often remembered this story and probably told it to my own son a hundred times. Your great-great-grandfather planted that tree!

For us, there is a generational connection to the land and to this individual hickory tree. Knowing a bit of its origin story is something that feels important to remember and to pass on. Generation to generation, decade to decade, a story is told, and the connection is woven deeper. In a world in which the average news cycle is less than seven days and the lifespan of a social media post can be measured in hours if not minutes, this bond feels rare and special.

Utilizing the nuts, we made something akin to almond milk. We did not need to climb into its branches because the ground beneath was blanketed with already dropped nuts. The two of us filled a large bucket and yet didn’t put a dent in this plentiful cache. This fall has been a mast year for the hickories, in general, which is to say there is a very abundant crop. Nature in its highly creative fashion has come up with an ingenious solution for trees to successfully regenerate—quite a feat given that so many animals have developed a taste for eating their tasty fruits. Every so often in what seems to be a secret council meeting of the forest, a given species of tree will produce WAY more fruits than is typical. There is so much that even the hungry animals can’t pack it all away. If this level of fruiting happened consistently, the populations of squirrels and deer that rely on the nuts as a food source would grow, eating all of the nuts until once again there was not enough for both food and reproduction. By “randomly” having these boom years, the trees help ensure their survivability. The squirrels will even help by stashing away more nuts than they need, some of which will grow up to be future generations of trees.

For my mother and me, harvesting from the hickory wasn’t just a way to add to our pantry; we were also adding to the family story of this tree and to the relationship of generation-to-generation humans to the land. Just before we left, a car slowed, and a woman driving by leaned out the window curious to know what we were up to. She too had lived here for a long time and said in twenty years she had never seen anyone else harvesting from the hickory. She explained that on several occasions she had collected nuts but had always felt challenged to separate the hard inedible shells from the nut meat. I shared with her something I had learned when reading about archeological digs where the remains of processed hickory nuts had been found. In these digs the discarded shells had been smashed into small pieces. Rather than attempting to “shell” the nuts as you would with a walnut or acorn, it turns out the most effective method for working with hickory nuts is to smash and boil everything together. If you can imagine living in a time and place without a grocery store or farmers market yet needing to procure enough food for your entire extended family, all tricks of the trade were crucial. Having done this many times, I can say it is very effective, and the resulting “milk” or broth tastes amazing.

Later that day, after making the milk at my mother’s house, I dropped some off to this stranger whom we had met under the hickory tree. She was grateful and in return gave me a jar of elderberry syrup, which she had made by processing the berries from that plant in her own way. Her pantry was full of food she had grown and plant medicines she had harvested. She sipped the still-warm hickory milk, and I let the fuchsia of the elderberry color my tongue.

Try: Whether you live in the city or the country, bring awareness to your family’s relationship with the land, past or present. Perhaps you have heard stories about the shade tree on the street corner or that patch of woods over there. What are your family’s stories? Do they still get shared? What stories are there to be remembered or rediscovered? What stories are ready to be made? Looking back generations for you may be looking to other continents and other cultures. As you look back, also stay present for what is coming up for you at this moment. Is there excitement, sadness, joy, or grief? Be curious and gentle with whatever you are or aren’t experiencing. You are harvesting stories. What they mean is up to you to decide.