Plant The Trees
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Plant The Trees
Multi-Generational Chestnut Ecosystems – with Dr. Amy Miller
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It’s one thing to plant trees. And stewarding a chestnut ecosystem is a multigenerational endeavor. Today we’ll dive into chestnut yields, harvest and post-harvest processing, predatory wasps and soil nematodes, chestnut buyers & markets, and a lot more. This might be the most information-dense episode yet. Dr. Amy Miller is a wealth of knowledge, and we’re thrilled to bring this conversation to you.
For the last several years, we've been processing at least 100,000 pounds of chestnuts a year. This past year, we processed 140,000 pounds of chestnuts, which was a record for us. There's really high consumer demand for fresh chestnuts in the U.S. And so as long as we have good quality nuts, we can sell everything that we grow. The post-harvest handling of chestnuts, it's a really important part of what we do. And I think that tends to be an underappreciated conversation in the chestnut growing world.
SPEAKER_01Today we'll dive into chestnut yields, harvest and post-harvest processing, predatory wasps and soil nematodes, chestnut buyers and markets, and a lot more. This might be the most information-dense episode yet. Dr. Amy Miller is a wealth of knowledge, and we're thrilled to bring this conversation to you. Amy, welcome to the Plant the Trees podcast. I feel like we need to call this the Manage the Trees and Steward the Ecosystem podcast because you're working with trees that are over 50 years old at this point. What's that like?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Um, it's really magical being able to manage an orchard, trees that are over 50 years old. You know, honestly, it it's a little sad because, you know, we are also planting new trees and we're managing younger trees in other places. And because the older trees don't really need that much hands-on attention, I don't really get as much time to spend with the older trees as I would like, just because they kind of do their own thing and you know, give us nuts in the fall, and there's not really a lot required in the actual management of the older trees.
SPEAKER_01And you're kind of just harvesting in October, is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that's the main, you know, the main time of year that uh that we're busy in the orchard is during the harvest season. We have a pretty, I would say, um, you know, ecosystem-minded management system for our orchards for most of the year. So uh early in the growing season, you know, spring into to mid-summer, basically we let the orchard grow. Uh we let the vegetation and the understory grow, especially around the older trees throughout the growing season, kind of spring into midsummer, I would say. Let the ground nesting birds do their thing, you know, let the various insects and, you know, whatever's living out there do their thing. And then um we sort of start mowing and start preparing for the harvest season in late summer, typically in August. And uh we mow, we do spray for chestnut weevils, and then by mid-September, we make sure the orchard floor is mowed really short for the harvest season. And then throughout September and October, we're in there frequently harvesting chestnuts. And by the end of October, the harvest is is pretty much wrapped up.
SPEAKER_01And I know some of the orchards are deer fenced. Do you ever get any unique wildlife out there, like bears, etc.?
SPEAKER_00We don't have bears. I have heard rumors of of the occasional, you know, wandering male black bear in the neighborhood. Uh, we haven't seen any in the chestnut orchard. You know, deer are kind of the major large wildlife that we see. And um, you know, as beautiful and graceful as they are, they are a huge pest to chestnut growers and well, farmers of all kinds, really. But it's pretty amazing how many chestnuts a deer can eat in a harvest season. And so even though we have big mature trees and we're not concerned about damage to the trees themselves, the deer can eat probably at least 30% of the crop, if not more, if we were to leave the orchard unfenced and um and just let them have it whatever they wanted. So deer are definitely a big economic issue to chestnut growers.
SPEAKER_01Wild. And so if you wanted to plant chestnuts for a food plot just for hunting, that that would seem reasonable. But you're growing chestnuts, harvesting them, and selling them to people to eat. What what is what does that look like at Rue9?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we have three approaches to marketing our chestnuts, selling and marketing our chestnuts. We have uh pick your own operations. So during the harvest season, we'll announce certain weekends that we're open for picking. And uh we have kind of an open model for pick your own. Um, we will state which days we're open. It's it's typically every weekend from maybe the last weekend of September through the third or fourth weekend of October, just depending on the weather and the season. And so people can come and uh we will direct them each day, sort of we'll say, hey, we're picking in this orchard or that orchard. We've got four different orchard options locally. And then they pick what they want, they pay for them by weight. We've got some other little market items as well. So it's kind of a fun day out in the countryside. So that's that's one thing we do that's a relatively small but growing part of our business. Another uh way we sell chestnuts is wholesale. So we do sell, you know, pallets or truckloads of chestnuts to some markets, many on the East Coast, some in the Chicago area. You know, that's uh yeah, a certain part of our crop goes to wholesale markets. But then the vast majority of our sales are through our online retail store. So uh customers can order online starting October 1st every year, and we keep selling until the chestnuts are gone. And people can place their order from any anywhere from five pounds to hundreds of pounds, whatever they want, multiples of 25 pounds. And then we will ship those chestnuts directly to their house or or their shipping location. The majority of our orders, most of our chestnuts go to our online retail market.
SPEAKER_01And what's the range like in a typical year? How many, say tens of thousands or how many, how many thousands of pounds of chestnuts does Route 9 process in a year?
SPEAKER_00For the last several years, we've been processing at least 100,000 pounds of chestnuts a year. This past year, the uh fall of 2025, we processed 140,000 pounds of chestnuts, which was a record for us. So we've been in the 100 to 140 range for several years now. That's kind of our goal. I mean, that that's a that's uh an amount that we can handle. Um, we can probably go up to 200,000 pounds, but with our current facilities, uh that would be a struggle. So we're so we're you know, we're set up for the maybe 150,000 pound a year range. And that's you know, we're we're we're getting about to that level.
SPEAKER_01That's a lot of food. That's a lot of a lot of meals for people. And you harvest all of these nuts and you take them back to the co-op building. And I've I've been there a few times, seen the processing infrastructure, all the different steps that it takes for chestnuts to go from a tree into a bag that's refrigerated and finally out the door. What what does the post-harvest processing look like?
SPEAKER_00The post-harvest handling of chestnuts, it's a really important part of what we do. And I think that tends to be an underappreciated conversation in the chestnut growing world. You know, people get excited about planting trees, they get excited about selling chestnuts. But what you do in between from when you pick up the nuts from the fields to when they go out the door is really important. And so, you know, we try to optimize our process at the our processing facility. So we bring in chestnuts from the field. We um have a step to air clean them, essentially separate the nuts from any other field debris that might be in the buckets with them or in the bins. We give them a hot water bath, which has two functions. One is it kills any chestnut weevils that may be alive inside the nuts. And we hope there's not too many because we try to prevent uh weevil infestation in the field, but we still give the hot water baths just in case. And then the hot water bath also helps make sure the nuts are fully hydrated and it kind of cleans the shells as well. After the hot water bath, the nuts go through our sizing machine and we separate the nuts into four different sizes: small, medium, large, and extra large. And the nuts are retailed by size. So people can order however many pounds of small, medium, large, extra large. We typically don't have a huge volume of those. And there are certain customers who um kind of get those as a priority. So mostly through our online retail store, we're selling small, medium, and large. And then once they're the nuts are sized, we grade them. So they go, they pass over a roller table and they're visually inspected by a team of at least four people. And this team that that we use, they're they're very well trained. They've been doing it for a while, they're fantastic at it. Uh so they separate, they pick out all of the nuts that have any any visual damage, splits in the shells, or rotten spots, or weevil damage, uh, that sort of a thing. And then once the nuts are graded, then the good ones are bagged uh in whatever size bags we uh need for our online retail store. Our most common size that we sell is a 25-pound bag. And so uh our crew bags them up, and then we have ways to print shipping labels and fill boxes with the orders, and then the orders go out the door, either on a UPS truck or in the post office or via a LTL freight truck.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So chestnut agroforestry meets e-commerce. That's that's a it's a full stack vertical. And some farms go direct to consumer, others are selling to distributors. You mentioned different sizes of nuts. So a 25-pound bag of large nuts would be fewer nuts in total relative to small nuts, but different buyer groups, I've heard, prefer different size nuts. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right. Our most common sizes that we sell are the medium and large size nuts. There are definitely some consumers out there who really prefer the larger sizes and they don't want the smaller ones. And then there is a small but mighty group who actually prefer the small chestnuts. Uh, there's a perception that the small ones are sweeter. And I would agree, I I tend to prefer to eat the smaller nuts. But of course, the biggest downside is it's a lot more work per nut. You know, you're yeah, if you're uh processing them at home, you're peeling them and roasting them. And, you know, it's a lot more work for small nuts than it is for bigger ones. So I think people tend to prefer the bigger ones just because of ease of handling. But the flavors of the small and medium ones are can be really, really nice. And so medium and large, we typically sell those for the same price because we often have similar amounts of those types of nuts. And we find that the customers who like medium and large, they typically don't mind if you run out of one size and end up sending them the other one. So we price them the same so that as we're going through the season, if we notice that we have a lot of orders for large that we can't fill, we can substitute medium. And uh, we ask the customers if they're okay with that. And then we can just easily make that switch without having a big, you know, handling money handling issue in the middle of our busy season.
SPEAKER_01That's so intriguing how some folks prefer small and some folks prefer large chestnuts, maybe like fingerling potatoes versus Yukon Gold larger potatoes or something like that. And you you mentioned the sorting line and how you take out some B grades or C grades. Do those go to say chestnut flour or something like that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So everything that comes off the grading table that we can't sell as sort of grade A fresh market chestnuts, we dry them and we have uh an impact peeling machine. So we're able to peel them and then we grade those again. So anything that we peel that is of good enough quality, we can use for chestnut flour. So we do try to make use of as many of the chestnuts as we can, even if we can't sell them all in the fresh market.
SPEAKER_01And flour could go to chestnut pancakes, chestnut pear bread, or um any kind of cook. I feel like I've been making chestnut chocolate chip cookies lately. Do you have any favorite chestnut baked goods?
SPEAKER_00Ooh, that's a good question. I mean, chestnut pancake mix has that's been a family favorite. Um it's you know something I grew up with and really enjoy. But I I love the flavor of chestnut flour just to add that kind of nutty sweet component to any type of baked good. We have some Amish neighbors who are fantastic bakers who uh will make all kinds of interesting things with the chestnut flour. And so I really enjoy sharing flour with them and getting delicious desserts in return.
SPEAKER_01And eating chestnut flour feels like you're eating food versus eating like a sugary supermarket cookie or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, there's definitely more depth of flavor. The other thing I like about the chestnut flour is that it's naturally sweet. So uh if you're using chestnut flour in a lot of baked goods, you don't necessarily have to add as much sugar as the recipe calls for because you get that sweetness from the chestnut flour. So I definitely appreciate that aspect of it. And um yeah, whenever I cook with chestnut flour, I feel like I don't need to use as much sugar.
SPEAKER_01It's almost a slow burn, high GI, really nice starch similar to, or I guess it might feel like a protein. You mentioned also the hot water bath for sanitization for getting rid of chestnut weevil. And chestnuts they have a number of pests, as far as I've heard, out in the orchard. There's the weevil, the gall wasp, maybe oak wilt. Could you tell us a little bit about the chestnut weevil, maybe its life cycle and maybe how you make it really difficult for the weevil to to proliferate?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah. Chestnut weevils, I would say, are by far the biggest pest for a chestnut grower. Um, they tend to have the biggest economic impact on the crop, or have the potential to have the biggest economic impact on the crop. They are chestnut specialists. So there are lots of weevils out there in the world. And it's really interesting because most species of nuts have a species of weevil that is very specific to that nut. And so, yeah, there are chestnut weevils that prefer chestnuts, that they don't tend to attack other types of nut crops, and vice versa. Even you know, acorn weevils don't attack chestnuts, and vice versa. You might find the occasional confused weevil, but for the most part, these weevils are highly specialized on their preferred nut. And so chestnut weevils, the females, lay eggs in the nut that's developing inside the burr while it's still on the tree. And in our region, that is typically in mid to late August and early September, is the main period of activity for the weevils. That coincides with when the shells are filling with the nut. So it's like the fruit-fill period of the development of the nut. And the weevils can sense that. I don't know, it must be some sort of smell or something. I don't know exactly how it works. But the female weevils, when they smell that the chestnut is at that right stage, they actually are able to wiggle down in between the spines of the burrs and lay their eggs. They drill through the burr, through the shell of the nut into the kernel itself and lay their eggs in that developing kernel. So the weevils are attacking the nuts while they're still on the tree and developing. And then once that nut has ripened and the nuts fall from the tree, the weevil eggs hatch and the larvae begin feeding on the kernel of the chestnut. And they kind of tunnel through, making galleries in the nut and eating their fill. And then once they grow large enough and have eaten all they need to eat, they tunnel out of the nut. So they'll they'll make an exit hole through the shell, and then they crawl into the ground, directly from the nut into the ground. And they make um they they burrow into the ground and they can be as deep as a foot from the surface uh of the orchard floor. And uh there they spend two years. So actually they have a two-year life cycle. They'll be underground for a year, and then um, as the second year passes, they'll they'll metamorphose into an adult while they're underground. And then in May, sort of, you know, a couple seasons later, they will emerge from the ground. They spend about 24 hours or so on the ground as freshly emerged adults, and then they fly up into the trees. And we're not really sure where they go from emergence in the in the late spring, early summer, and so when they start laying eggs in uh the fall. But we we have seen them feeding on the chestnut pollen when the when the chestnut flowers are out. And so um, I think you know that that's one of the energy sources for the weevil is the chestnut flower. And then uh, you know, the cycle continues. So they have a really interesting life cycle. And I should say there are other weevils that emerge later in the summer, like late, like in August, for example. So there's there's typically two emergence periods in our area, one in in late May and one in mid-August. Yeah, and so the way we try to mitigate chestnut weevil damage is we spray for them during that period when they're laying eggs in the trees. So we found that if we can spray insecticide directly onto the burrs when the weevils are actively laying eggs, uh that can kill the females before they're able to lay the eggs. And then that's how we achieve the best weevil control. So we hopefully eliminate as many weevils as we can before they lay eggs in the nuts.
SPEAKER_01And that's a good amount of time before the nuts even develop, much less are harvested. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So again, with our in our climate in our area, we're typically spraying in maybe the third week of August, and then again the first week of September. When we're actually spraying, we're we're spraying the chestnut burrs, which are still closed. So the nuts themselves are concealed within the burr. Uh, and then of course you have like the actual kernel inside the shell. So the surfaces that we're spraying are are pretty far removed from the literal part of the nut that you eat. But yeah, that's during developmentally, that's during the period when when the nuts are really filling inside the shell, inside the burr.
SPEAKER_01That makes a lot of sense. And I'm I'm thinking about things that might eat a weevil. And perhaps that's birds. If you had a massive flock of chickens or turkeys run through the orchard, maybe when the weevils were emerging from the soil, do you think that would make any difference if that were theoretically possible?
SPEAKER_00It could certainly help. And and there's been, you know, reports and anecdotal evidence of people using poultry to control chestnut weevils in their backyard flock. And yeah, the ideal time for birds to really pick on those weevils would be during that emergence period in the late spring or in the summer. I and I think you could, in theory, sort of like, you know, flash graze uh a flock of birds under the chestnut trees and control the weevils. And I think that's got some validity at a small scale or backyard type scale. It would be really logistically difficult to use birds as a weevil control mechanism for a large commercial orchard. So I that's not something that we do, even though it would theoretically work. It's just as logistically very complicated when you have, you know, 100 acres of chestnut trees.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, to comb through 100 acres with chickens, you'd need 80,000 birds or something like that. And then you're a then you're a chicken farmer as opposed to a chestnut farmer. Not that you couldn't have, I guess, both overlapping to a certain degree. But uh I guess in terms of other insects that would predate or interfere with a weevil, is there a wasp that might predate on the weevil?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I I have heard of. There's been uh reports of a parasitic wasp, you know, a braconid wasp, those that typically are parasitic wasps. There is one that has been reported to predate on chestnut weevil. I'm not familiar with them so much myself. I've never seen them. I I would love to learn more and potentially, you know, try to use them as a biocontrol or figure out what it would take to encourage them to live in our ecosystem. But yeah, I don't know of that being a large-scale control for chestnut weevil in any modern setting.
SPEAKER_01There's so much going on in the ecology. And maybe for folks that are familiar with apples, if you were to compare chestnut weevil to an apple pest, would would that maybe be plum curculeo?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh you might think that. So plum curculeo is a type of weevil. So as far as the biology of the organisms, the plum curculeo is very similar to a chestnut weevil. But from uh from a management perspective, from like the way you, as a grower, you interact with the pest, they're actually quite different. And I would say that a chestnut weevil might be more comparable to like an apple coddling moth. An apple coddling moth, that's the classic like worm in the apple. You know, you have this big beautiful apple and you bite into it, and oh, there's a worm inside, you know, that kind of feeling of like, ugh, um, that is very similar to what happens with the chestnut weevil. I guess typically those weevils are are inside the nuts after they're ripe. And if the weevil larvae haven't emerged and they're still inside the kernel, it can be really difficult to see them from the outside. And so you might get a surprise when you bite into uh a chestnut in there or some you know worms wriggling around in there.
SPEAKER_01And not to, I guess, beat a dead weevil, but weevils seem to be such a challenge for a lot of chestnut growers. And I guess the the last thing could be nematodes in the soil. You mentioned that the weevil goes a foot down. I was also thinking about a really hard frame. Interfering with them, but just soil, soil biota. Is that is that something y'all have thought about?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we have done some small experiments, nothing too big or replicated, but we have a little bit of experience with trying to use nematodes. Uh nematodes are used successfully to control pecan weevil in the south. And there are a few products that are available. Arbicroorganics makes two products, one called nematac, one called nemaseq. And these are two different species of nematodes that will attack beetle larvae in the soil. And they've those have been used very successfully for pecan weevils in the south. So we try to use them in our chestnut orchard. The main problem with the nematodes that attack the weevils is that they are from very warm climates. And so those nematodes aren't really active until the soil temperature is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And in our climate, and for folks north of us, it takes a long time for the soil temperature to get that high. And so applying nematodes in the spring to try to kill the weevils before they emerge, it doesn't really work because of that soil temperature issue. So I'm not really aware of a nematode product that really is uh adapted to our climate or you know, climates north of maybe, you know, Tennessee, Kentucky. So there's definitely work I think that could be done in that field to develop better biological controls for chestnut weevil. But at the moment, we don't have uh just that right biological product to use for weevils.
SPEAKER_01So, John Kemp, if you're listening, we could use your help if we think John is the guy. So weevils, they damage the nut itself. And there are other pests that damage the leaves, like gallwasp. Is gallwasp as much of an issue as weevil, or is it kind of like a B-grade pest, do you think?
SPEAKER_00For us, gallwasp is it's definitely a pest that we have to be aware of, but um, it is not really a pest of big economic concern in our area. There are other folks around the world who uh who really have issues with that. You know, the just the industries in Europe and Turkey, those types of places, um, have had issues with gallwasp. So in our environment, so there are several things I think at play. One is we're growing mostly Chinese chestnut genetics, uh, you know, some Japanese hybrids, you know, we've got sort of a genetic grab bag, but predominantly Chinese. And um, we seem to have trees that are fairly resistant, um, meaning that they can still grow and thrive even if they do get infested with gall wasp. And also there are natural enemies of the gall wasp. And so, like I mentioned earlier, we try to take a more holistic ecological approach to orchard management. And so we have a lot of biodiversity within our orchard. And then we also have a lot of natural spaces in the surrounding area. You know, we're fortunate to be in an area that is very forested and has diverse habitats. And so uh we benefit from, you know, there are um parasitic wasps that attack oak galls that also attack chestnut galls. So we have a lot of natural enemies in our area. We also have the introduced parasitoid wasp that specifically attacks chestnut gall wasp. So we rely on biological controls for a gall wasp, don't, or we really we we can't actively manage the wasp. There's not really like a spray that works, or there's not really a good way to manage it other than um relying on biological controls.
SPEAKER_01It's war of the wasps. It's almost like is that H.G. Wells War of the Worlds?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, War of the Wasps indeed. It's uh yeah, wasp on wasp on wasp out there.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell That's a wild part of chestnut ecosystem management that you might not think that you'd be getting into.
SPEAKER_00Managing chestnuts is very different than other crops and even other tree crops. You know, I mean I have a background in both growing chestnuts and growing apples. And, you know, you might, on some surface level, think, well, okay, they're both tree crops. There might be similarities, but you know, managing chestnuts is incredibly different than managing other tree crops. And one of the nice things about chestnuts is that we can be a little more hands-off. We have we have the option of a more holistic kind of ecosystem-based management because the genetics of the trees, you know, they come with a lot of of resistances and uh they seem to really thrive in our environment. And so, you know, being able, being able to manage in more of a hands-off way and managing for biodiversity and then succeeding in a good chestnut crop is really satisfying compared to tree crops like apples, where the management is really intensive. And if you mess up, you know, one little part of your spray program, you're gonna have fruit that's not really able to be sold in the fresh market. So I really appreciate that chestnuts lend themselves well to more um ecosystem-based management.
SPEAKER_01That makes so much sense. And I feel like we should move away from talking about pests because if if all we focus on are pests, which is the chaotic part of farming, then no one would want to grow chestnuts. But I guess compared to apples, as you said, it's not like you're spraying kale and clay and have a really intensive spray schedule of going out there every week uh with a different cocktail uh in the air blast sprayer. I read uh I think it was a blueberry pest management handbook a few years ago because I was trying to understand blueberry IPM. And if you read about all of the pests and a bunch of diseases that exist that you could get instead of like focusing on all of the other fulfilling parts of growing chestnuts or making chestnut pancakes or just the great parts of agro ecosystems. I feel like it it if you're just thinking about pests all the time, it leaves a lot to be desired. So uh yeah. Let's let's segue to like selling nuts. Maybe, maybe that could be a little bit better. And you mentioned maybe a few minutes ago that Route 9 sells direct to consumers five to 25 pound bags of chestnuts. And you all sell out every year, is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's correct. There's really high consumer demand for fresh chestnuts in the U.S. And so as long as we have good quality nuts, we can sell everything that we grow.
SPEAKER_01I was there in October. There was a group of Chinese ladies that drove out from Pittsburgh to come pick chestnuts. And as far as I understand, East Asian immigrants are a big buying group of chestnuts. Did you have to like learn Mandarin or Korean to market chestnuts, or how how did all of this connection happen?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a good question. Um, fortunately for us, the word of mouth has been our best advertising. So we were able, and this is I say we, uh wasn't really actively involved in the business at the time, but in the in the mid-1990s, my father, Greg Miller, was fortunate enough to connect with a uh Korean customer from New York City. And she was basically a buyer, a procurer of produce for Korean grocery stores on the East Coast. And so she came and started buying chestnuts. She would, she would show up with a U-Haul truck, load up as much as she possibly could in that truck, and drive it back to New York City. And she did that for years. And it was kind of through that word of mouth and you know, being uh plugged into the Korean community that we were able to um connect with more and more Asian buyers. And so basically they started coming to us once once word got out that we had fresh chestnuts and people they liked the quality, they liked the flavor, they started coming to us. And so even when we switched to predominantly online retail in you know, the like 2010 to 2014 was when we kind of made the transition from mostly wholesale to these Korean ladies to online retail. Once a few Asian customers found us and they told their friends and they had good experiences, the chestnuts basically sold themselves. So we've been in a really fortunate situation where we haven't had to actively market our chestnuts. Most of the customers come to us. And, you know, the the hard part about the job is when we actually run out of fresh chestnuts and we have to tell people that we can't fill their order. And um, I know that's that sounds like not a real problem, but it is it is pretty devastating when you have these customers who are like coming and they want chestnuts and you have to say, sorry, we're out. So yeah, we we've been really fortunate to have good relationships with different immigrant communities from East Asia. And um, we do what we can to maintain those relationships and keep those customers happy so they keep coming back every year.
SPEAKER_01And as the US grows more and more chestnuts and chestnuts expand beyond, say, uh Koreans, Bosnians, Chinese, do you think we could collaborate with maybe a K-pop group to just further disseminate the chestnut gospel to the U.S.?
SPEAKER_00What a great idea. Yeah. Um yeah, I think if if there was some way to make chestnuts more familiar to other populations in the US, right? So the nice thing about either the East Asian customers or as you mentioned, Bosnians, there's a whole you know, immigrant communities from Southern Europe, kind of the Balkans uh region, who are familiar with chestnuts. Any of those groups, because they have such a strong cultural tie and history to eating chestnuts, once they know the chestnuts are there, they get very excited. But there's basically the other populations of folks living in the US who, most of whom have never even heard of chestnuts. And so, yeah, if there was some way, you know, through pop culture, especially to make chestnuts familiar to groups of people who don't have a history of eating them, I think that could be really powerful because we definitely are gonna need more chestnut consumers as more chestnuts are produced throughout the eastern U.S.
SPEAKER_01Chestnut market development, definitely. Yeah, we're we're doing some work with the Great Lakes Protection Fund on chestnut markets. And I guess on that end, beyond finding these unique immigrant groups, would you say that there are common marketing bottlenecks that chestnut growers find, say when they're eight years in, their crop is starting to bear, and then there's this unknown unknown that kind of jumps out at them?
SPEAKER_00Well, there's maybe, there's maybe two barriers that could be faced by by newer growers or growers who are marketing their first, you know, two to five thousand pounds. The first one is definitely chestnut quality. So at this point in time, anyone who can grow good quality chestnuts in that are those are chestnuts that are, you know, free, or mostly free of weevils, mostly free of other diseases, and chestnuts that are handled correctly, you know, the moisture is maintained, they're in good shape. If you have good quality chestnuts, those can be sold. But it's it's pretty common for newer growers to not understand exactly what needs to happen to get to keep those chestnuts in good quality. And so um, you might have a new grower and it's their first 2,000 pounds and they've got more than 10% weevils. Well, that grower is really going to struggle to sell their crop because the quality just isn't there. So basically, for a new grower, uh paying attention to nut quality is very, very important. And then the second thing, of course, is plugging into those market spaces, right? Our customers, they come back every year. It's like once you get into a certain customer population, they they tend to be loyal if they like what they're getting. But if you're a new grower, it might be hard to first connect with with one of those consumer populations. Um, so you know, aggregating is is a big way that new growers can work together and work with existing growers to market their crop. That's you know, one of the reasons that we formed a cooperative was so that you know the barrier to marketing for new growers was lowered. Uh so if a grower has good quality nuts and they want to sell through our co-op, that's an option. And we have mechanisms by which growers can sell through our co-op, and then they've got their crop plugged into our existing market. And uh, we're not the only co-op in the US, and I think over the next, you know, certainly within the next five to ten years, more co-ops will form in different parts of the country as more of these new growers figure out how to band together and and market their crops together.
SPEAKER_01That makes so much sense in in terms of just banding together as growers that might be slightly dispersed geographically or concentrated in a certain area. And I think it was Michael Gold who was doing a survey. Forgive me if it was uh other folks or different folks involved in this, but a survey of all of the chestnut acres that have been recently that have been recently planted in the U.S. And it seemed like the vast majority of growers had a relatively small number of acres. It wasn't like you have 140-acre chestnut farms uh going in. It was more like less than 10 or less than five acres or so. And I would guess you probably have a good number of visitors and inquiries from folks that have planted that small number of chestnut acres. I met, I think his name was Gator Mike at the harvest party in October, and he's in southern Georgia. And as far as I know, he's called Gator Mike because outside of chestnuts, he does alligator wrestling. And not all people that are getting into chestnuts have uh the disposition to go catch alligators. But is there another alligator in the room that a new chestnut grower might not know about, but that they're probably going to have to deal with? We looked at quality of product and banding together and having all your ducks in a row with processing. If you had to kind of reach for it, is there is there something else that someone who is in year three of their chestnut journey just might not know about?
SPEAKER_00Um, well, let's actually back up. Let's say year zero or year negative one. Uh, so one of the other very important considerations to being a successful chestnut grower is growing good genetic material and good site selection. So basically, like I mentioned several times before, you know, good quality chestnuts are easy to sell, but what it takes to make good quality chestnuts are, you know, the right site, the right trees, and then the right person to tend those trees. And so, you know, anyone who is getting into the chestnut business uh should really do their homework and uh understand the site where they want to plant chestnuts or understand the sites where chestnuts grow best and make sure that they're getting themselves off on the right foot, you know, started in the right environment. And then also genetics. Um, not every chestnut tree is the same. The trees that we grow and that a lot of the growers we work with, you know, they've been growing and selecting trees for years and you know, finding out what grows the best in their environment and growing seeds from those, you know, getting the right genetics can can make all the difference. And and unfortunately, I've you know, I've worked with some newer growers who, you know, have a lot of pest and disease issues in their nuts. And it's not necessarily that they're doing something wrong. It's just that unfortunately they didn't plant very good genetic stock, or their site is really stressing out their trees, so their trees are not able to perform as well as they maybe could if they were on a better site. So that that's a huge, a huge issue. And so, yeah, I would say any new rower considering genetics are critically important things.
SPEAKER_01So well-drained acidic soil, good genetics, a warm April, enough precipitation, all of these things plus everything you've already outlined really makes for a good chestnut orchard and not just a uh wildlife planting or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's correct. You know, as as we've discovered, we've kind of learned the hard way. And uh we work with Bob Saley at Wintergreen Tree Farm. He's a member of our co-op. We have a good relationship with him. You know, he's discovered the same thing. And if you if you can grow the right genetics in the right site, then chestnut growing is is fairly easy. You know, you you have so many fewer barriers or you know, hurdles to producing a good crop. But if you're trying to grow off-site or you have genetics that aren't well suited to your environment, then you're fighting an uphill battle the whole way and you can work really hard and get a mediocre crop. So just getting that that site selection right and doing your homework to procure and lucking out with good genetics. I mean, both there's there's always a luck component to this too. That really sets you up for success. And then uh, you know, the rest is easy if if you've got those things in place.
SPEAKER_01And most chestnuts planted now are seedlings as opposed to grafted trees, at least in terms of all of the acres of chestnuts that are or say have gone in in the past five years or so. And and we've touched on grafting versus seedlings in the past and uh and on past episodes, but I guess for those that are just tuning in, chestnuts and apples are totally different. You're not just taking a gold rush or Ashmead's kernel scion and putting it on Bud 118 or whatever rootstock makes sense for you. You're you're planting seedlings, which are all inherently much more diverse than grafted trees. Why would you plant something that is less certain in terms of exact standardization? Well, because that's I feel like an apple grower might ask that question. What's what's the scoop there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that that's a good question and a good point because that's another thing that makes chestnut cultivation really different than other crops. Almost every crop, you know, tree crop is clonally produced that's grown in the U.S. And so chestnuts are really unique in that a lot of the chestnuts that are sold commercially, I would say the majority of chestnuts that are sold commercially in the eastern U.S. are from seedlings, not from grafted trees. And as you mentioned, every seedling is a unique individual. So uh, you know, if you have an orchard of 100 trees, you have a hundred different individual seedling trees, you have risk, but you also have reward because of that. Now you don't have the uniformity like you might in a grafted orchard, but on the other hand, you have the ability to select and adapt to uh different environmental circumstances. So um if you have if you find the the best grafted clone of a chestnut, and let's say you plant, you know, 100 acres of your favorite clone, you know, with some pollinizer trees in between, you know, if it turns out that that clone is particularly susceptible to a new emerging pester disease, well, you've set yourself back because now you're you're losing all that clone to this new disease pressure. Or likewise, let's say, you know, you go through this period of drought. Uh, well, maybe, maybe your drought conditions are way worse for several years than they have been in the past. Um, we we're experiencing this a little bit right now. You know, if you have a particularly drought susceptible cultivar, then it might wipe you out. Whereas if you have a seedling population, you know, it it spreads out your risk and you might find individuals in that seedling population that are better adapted to the drought conditions or are resistant to the new pest and disease. And that can help you carry your orchard forward. And if you're always planting a seedling orchard and then selecting nuts from your best trees and using them for your next generation orchard, you can improve kind of the whole gene pool of your orchard over time, as opposed to relying all on, you know, a limited amount of genetics to grow your crop. And that's actually how chestnuts were cultivated for thousands of years, kind of prior to modern agriculture. You know, China is the center of origin of chestnut. And uh historically, that's how Chinese growers grew their nuts, was they would, you know, grow seedling orchards, they would select nuts from their very best trees to grow their next orchard. So there's historic precedent to doing that. Um, it's just different than the shortcut we take with a lot of modern agriculture where we grow cloma varieties so that we can have uniformity. So there's costs and benefits to both ways. But at the moment, because of the strong genetic pools that we have for chestnuts, Chinese chestnuts in the eastern U.S., we can get away with growing seedling orchards because they tend to be pretty high quality, or at least a quality that our that our consumers enjoy.
SPEAKER_01And with these multiple successional plantings of chestnuts based on what is working really well in a certain geography in a certain soil type, it's almost like we need a few dozen more iterations or fewer in the US of say three or four by 20 years to further dial in chestnut genetics. Does that sound right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think there's there's a lot that can be done, you know, kind of by location, right? I mean, have and still are optimizing our population of trees for our specific area. Um, but what works the best for us might not work the best in Michigan or upstate New York or, you know, Maine, or there's people even in, you know, Georgia, there's like people trying to push the boundaries of where chestnuts are cultivated. And so, you know, kind of optimizing the gene pool for each location is a process that that every region kind of has to undergo for themselves. Obviously, you know, if you're gonna optimize chestnuts. In upstate New York, you know, you start with the best from somewhere else and then grow them in your site and make crosses and you know grow out seedlings, whatever you you you got to start with the best from somewhere else. But there's still there's always a the need to really find the things that do best for your particular environment.
SPEAKER_01100%. You all sent me, I think, 30 different seedling varieties for my farm. Call it 30 by 30. And that's great for biodiversity in terms of just different varieties maybe flowering at slightly different times or at least being more resilient to not Georgia, not Maine. I'm in upstate New York, but what worked well or what has worked well, what works well in northern Ohio or central Ohio, it's it's probably a good guess for maybe one or two clicks north in a different state.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, there's certainly some, you know, there's certainly some overlap, right? I mean, some of our best stuff might be some of your best stuff. Some of our best stuff might also thrive in Georgia. So that's not saying that you have to have a special population for each microregion, but there's there's a a process to, you know, really this planting a bunch of things and finding out what does best for your site.
SPEAKER_01So many options. Uh, but it sounds like there is a good core of chestnut genetics that folks can order, buy trees, plant. And if the site is good for chestnuts, well-drained acidic soil, warm April, then it sounds like it it'll probably work out really well. If we stray from chestnuts a little bit, you also have a few persimmon trees in orchard three that I was snacking on while harvesting chestnuts. Would you recommend that everyone plant a few persimmons to just uh to eat while you're harvesting chestnuts?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. I I love persimmons. Um, we're pretty lucky to have some some good quality persimmon trees. They were some seedlings, actually, that my dad got from somewhere in Iowa when he was a grad student in the 70s. So I don't know, or maybe early 80s. I don't know exactly the origins of these persimmons that we have, but they are absolutely delicious. And persimmons ripen about the same time as chestnuts. So it is pretty amazing to go out to harvest in the orchard and have these little sugar bomb snacks, you know, these little bowls of jelly that fall off of the tree that you can eat at the same time as you're harvesting chestnuts. Um, and yeah, I think persimmons are they're amazing fruit, they're beautiful trees. Um, the flowers are great for bees. You know, the wood is beautiful for crafts. So yeah, I mean, I would encourage everyone to grow some persimmons. Of course, the word of caution is not every persimmon fruit is delicious. And so actually finding the right persimmon genetics is another another key to success with those. Persimmons that taste astringent can can just be really bad and turn people off to the whole experience. So a good persimmon is amazing. A bad persimmon may ruin your persimmon experience forever. Um, so yeah, grow persimmons with the asterisk that find good genetics.
SPEAKER_01I don't know why I keep thinking about bears in this context, in terms of just eating persimmons and chestnuts in the fall and uh and getting ready for winter. The Amish made some persimmon bread that was for sale at the harvest this past October, and that was unreal. And you you do a good amount of work with the Amish. For those that have never uh met or worked with the Amish, what's that like?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we are very fortunate to have a large Amish population around us. And um, of course, you know, a big part of the Amish culture is work and uh farm work and working outside. And we've had very good relationships with our Amish neighbors forever, really. I mean, as long as as we've had chestnuts in production. Interestingly, so uh, you know, my dad, Greg, tells a story of when he was first starting to harvest chestnuts, and he had borrowed a chestnut harvesting machine from another grower, and he thought he was going to mechanically harvest his whole crop. And he took the machine out there and he started to use it, and it immediately got plugged up with burrs and it had all kinds of different mechanical issues. And he tells the story of sitting there with this broken machine and just hearing nuts in the orchard fall all around him and having this moment of panic of like, oh no, how am I going to pick up these chestnuts? And he actually jumped off his tractor and started, you know, grabbed a bucket and started picking them up by hand. And he said, Well, wait a minute, I can't myself pick up, you know, chestnuts from 500 trees on my own in a reasonable amount of time. And um, it just so happened that word got out to some of the local Amish neighbors that Greg needed some help picking chestnuts. And so the community turned up. A lot of people came over, they harvested these chestnuts by hand. Greg got his whole crop picked up, they got paid. You know, October is a really nice time to be outside in our area. So it's it's a great time to do, to do outdoor farm work. It was a win-win for everybody. It was a community-building exercise. You know, they the workers got paid and Greg got his chestnuts harvested. And so we actually haven't looked back from the hand harvesting situation since then. There are a lot of challenges to using mechanical harvest technology on our site. But because we have such a great community of folks who enjoy picking up chestnuts, they enjoy having the extra income that time of year. Uh, we really haven't had incentive to move away from hand harvest. So we we hand harvest our entire crop.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. And then all of that money is staying in the community as opposed to yeah, going into the engineering sphere.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Yeah, I really appreciate that element of it. And we mentioned the Amish neighbors. A lot of the Amish neighbors harvest chestnuts, but it's not just the Amish. Um, anybody who wants to can come harvest chestnuts. So we advertise widely in the community that, you know, anyone can come pick chestnuts to make some money. And so some people will come just pick a few buckets and that's it. Some people will come pick, you know, a hundred buckets or more and get a bunch of money that way. Uh, we've had local groups pick chestnuts as a fundraiser, so like local sports teams or church youth groups or that sort of thing. And so um, there are all these different options for people to make money and then, like you mentioned, keep that money in the community. And so it, yeah, it's it's been really positive experience for us being able to work with the local community and um, you know, like keep that money local and also maintain good relationships with our neighbors that way.
SPEAKER_01It's not just a chestnut ecosystem, it's a social ecosystem. And the Amish have they have big families. And you also have two brothers that I've met at the chestnut harvest party. Colin also plays a big role with the co-op, is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my brother Colin, who's um the youngest, I've got two younger brothers. Colin is the youngest. He is a welder by training and custom fabricator, uh, but he sort of got tired of the corporate world a few years ago and decided that he wanted to come work on the farm. And it's been a real joy being able to work alongside him. And because of his mechanical aptitude, he's able to maintain a lot of our equipment and um fix and or fabricate things that we need as we need them. So there's definitely a role for a custom fabricator on the farm. And uh yeah, it's just been really great having him around, you know, uh, someone who also grew up doing this and but also brings a different perspective to it than I do.
SPEAKER_01Was he an underwater welder? Or am I or am I adding the underwater part?
SPEAKER_00No, not underwater. He worked for a company called BWXT that does a lot of uh naval contracts. And so they they make the power systems for submarines and aircraft carriers. So he worked on boats, but not literally underwater. So things that go underwater.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, he wasn't scuba diving and welding.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he himself was on the land, but he worked on things that go underwater.
SPEAKER_01Very good. Maybe in a dry dock. Yeah. And I guess another question, we had Julie Richards on the podcast as well, whose whose father is Bob Staley. And I'm curious if there are certain things that chestnut dads have in common. Like, are they really interested in backgammon or John LeCarey novels, or what's what's the commonality there?
SPEAKER_00That's a funny question. I think chestnut growers in general, you know, I I grew up going to the meetings of the Northern Narcars Association. I've been very involved in that organization now recently. So, you know, you get to meet the whole like a lot of chestnut dads uh at the NNJ meetings. And I don't know that there's a particular commonality, but they all are like very quirky, unique individuals. And so it's really fun because every, you know, every chestnut grower you meet is just like a really interesting person for some reason or another. And it's not necessarily the same thing about them that's interesting, but everyone has a story, everyone is a character. So yeah, maybe the thing that chestnut dads have in common is they're they're just unique and interesting characters.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's not like they're part of a dry cleaning convention or something like that. That's just way too normal. And now you get to leave your own legacy in Ohio and beyond. And what what do you think that looks like?
SPEAKER_00For me, uh, you know, I'm a I'm a third-generation chestnut grower. Uh, this the farm that I now own uh was originally purchased by my grandfather. You know, he and my father planted those 50-plus year old chestnut trees that are there now. You know, we've planted younger trees more recently. I grow apple trees there as well. I guess, you know, when I think about legacy, I'm always thinking about in the context of, you know, I am just one of uh of a gen, you know, many generations of land stewards. So this farm that I have and that I tend, my grandfather, he had his mantra was he wanted to leave the world a better place than he found it. And he thought trees were really important to making the world a better place. And that has been passed down down from generation to generation. And I believe that too. And so, you know, the the best thing I can do is to leave this farm better than I found it, to continue to plant trees, to continue to, you know, be able to make a living from the land, but also give back to the community and be a steward of the natural world that's around us as well. So I don't know that my legacy is unique to me, but you know, I have the honor of being able to carry on a legacy that was handed down to me.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. I think that's a good place to conclude or almost conclude, but is there anything that we haven't touched on that we should definitely add to the chestnut conversation of today?
SPEAKER_00Maybe one of the things that we just touched on briefly, but not really, was you know, the role of technology in chestnut growing and chestnut production. And we I mentioned that we harvest by hand, other people harvest by machine. There's always folks looking for, you know, that kind of like how how do they best harvest their crop or deal with their crop. And so this is not, you know, this is not really anything profound, but it is something for all chestnut growers to keep in mind and consciously think about what level of technology can you or do you want to operate at. You know, I mentioned that we hand harvest because we have, because that community piece is important and it works for us. And so, you know, we we sort of consciously do that because that's what works, even though there are voices out there that say you need to mechanically harvest, that's the only way to make money. So I guess just you know, for any grower to think about the context and not just about what someone's saying you should do, but also what works for your particular situation and more than just how do you get this particular job done, but how do you get this job done in a way that situates you in your environment and in your community where you want to be.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Amy, thank you so much for joining us on the Plant the Trees podcast. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much, Harry. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01What an episode. If you'd like to buy chestnuts in October of 2026 or learn more about the Route 9 Cooperative, their website is a wealth of information. It's Route9cooperative.com. And if you'd like to plant chestnuts and other trees on non forested land that you own or manage, please don't hesitate to reach out to us here at Propagate. Until next time, plant the trees and make it count.