acorns

I'm still occasionally finding a pile of deer droppings in the back yard. The hanging soap seems to be working? at least, my chard and beets quit getting eaten, and the forsythia doesn't seem to have any new damage. I'm pretty sure the deer are attracted to the acorns- we have quite a few oak trees and they are producing a bumper crop of mast this year. I gathered up the acorns- raking hard and then sifting through the grass with my fingers in patches. Sorted them- wormy and obviously rotten ones and loose caps went into the compost. I also tossed ones that were sprouting. Toyed with the idea of leeching out tannins and using the good acorns- but I don't know what kind I have. If they are good for eating as nuts, grinding into flour, or pressing for oil- apparently there's a significant difference. Plus it's a bit of work and I remember how un-rewarding the harvest of hickory nuts seemed after a while...

So I ended up just carrying the acorns on a walk into the woods behind our neighborhood and leaving them there for the deer and squirrels. I figure if they're not on the ground in my yard, maybe the deer will quit coming. I'll have to gather more- they're still falling down.

I found out later, that the sprouted ones are actually edible, sometimes even sweeter. So although squirrels and deer might avoid the sprouted acorns and only go for new ones, I could have saved those for myself, if I wanted to clean and process them for use. Maybe another year...