Chestnut

yeah some people in the world of beer have played with umberana it's amazing a brazilian wood yes yeah that kind of gives the spiciness

oh my god but like it's kind of gives things that like taste like swedish cardamom bun and desiccated coconut and really cool stuff like that but yeah but this is just like i mean nothing of this is ever going to be mass produced but at least we can do stuff like this but like Chestnuts becoming a really big one with Irish whiskey now, actually.

Cool.

You're so on the pulse of everything that's

Cold night, hard vigil, hot chestnuts.

over time the vigil faded but the feast has stayed which is really a pattern all over Spain especially for this holiday I said chestnuts are a whole thing in the north of Spain and so yeah let's turn this episode towards the north because that's where Tolos Santos is its spookiest Galicia has a chestnut feast and it's called the Magosto and it comes with a really cool strange set of traditions It's the Galician Chestnut Roast, and it's held outdoors around a fire in late October through November.

The biggest dates are San Martín's Day on November 11th, especially in Orense.

People roast chestnuts on the embers, drink the year's new wine.

They sing, they tell stories, and they smear ash from the fire on each other's faces.

Neighboring regions have their own versions, the Amagüestu in Asturias with cider, Magosta in Cantabria, and chestnut roads across León and Zamora.

Chestnut, by the way, deserves a little bit of respect, okay guys, because before corn and potatoes arrived from the Americas, chestnuts were an absolute staple across northern Spain, the thing that got people through the winter.

The feast of chestnuts at the start of November is really a harvest festival in the most literal sense.

Well, chestnuts are going to be like Buckeyes.

Oh, so they were larger? Kind of.

Chestnuts are big.

I know, but

I didn't know if they were trying to.

So a big thing I like to do is I really like to plant different desirable fruit trees.

You know, like your Chinese chestnut hybrid, something I took from West Virginia with all the big American chestnuts and things like that.

I love running chestnut trees here because they're so uncommon, but deer absolutely shred them and they love them.

So if you can get just a small crop, I'm not talking planting... 15 to 30 trees but I'll put one or two just kind of in the epicenter of the property or like maybe not the dead center but a little bit closer to where I'm trying to kill that deer generally I don't hunt right over it but I'll you know, I'll want that that food source on the property that's different to at least funnel them to it.

And then when I can learn how they're coming to it, well, then that can help me set up where I want my stand and play my wins.

Welcome to Branching Out, Growing Together.

I'm Melanie Jones with United Chestnuts.

My guest today has been growing chestnuts commercially since 1992.

Steve Jones and his wife Patty own Colossal Orchards in the state of Washington.

Then, gophers ate every one of his chestnut trees, leaving Steve and Patty on their own in the chestnut business.

They chose to march on.

On the United Chestnuts blog, we've shared photos of some of their trees, and they are magnificent.

They started with about nine acres, and today they're at 25, alongside sweet cherries and canning Bartlett pears with mechanical harvest, a 3,800 square foot cold storage building, and close to half their crop sold retail right out the back door.

Joining me now to discuss all this are cookbook author and writer at Edible Ohio Valley, Annette Genuzzi-Wick.

Southern Ohio Chestnut Company co-founder Chris Smith, and retired journalist Mark Nykirk, who's working on a book about Kentucky's Long Trail.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you, Lucy.

Thank you.

The Lloyd Library and Museum will host Chestnuts! The Comeback Kids on Wednesday, October 21st.

You can find details and a link to register on our website, wvxu.org.

So, Mark, tell us briefly about the history of the American chestnut.

Now, super quickly, just a minute left, a long unseen Van Gogh hits Hong Kong.

Yes, so this is a painting that's not been seen publicly for 60 years And it's on display in Hong Kong It's attracted large crowds, a lot of excitement there And it's called Chestnut Trees and Blossom It's one of Van Gogh's later works So it has his very distinct colourful style It was painted around the period he painted Starry Night And it's on display in Hong Kong just before it's about to go for auction And it's expected to reach record high levels at auction.

Part of why it being in Hong Kong is also that Hong Kong is a very active art market and gets a lot of buyers from China.

It's a place where people spend a lot of money on art and particularly iconic works of art.

[upbeat music] In 1904, somebody noticed a sick tree at the Bronx Zoo.

Within fifty years, the fungus killing it had wiped out about four billion American chestnut trees from Maine all the way down to Georgia.

In 2018, Richard Powers wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Overstory, which I loved.

He set it in the early 20th century and made the American chestnut tree the main character.

This fabled tree, which most of us had probably never even heard of at that point, was a tree that fed families and wildlife for generations.

And yet, most of us had never seen one fully grown, and we still might not, unless a small team in Syracuse pulls off a caper.

But last month, for the first time ever, the USDA cleared a forest tree engineered to bring a wild species back, an American chestnut carrying one gene from wheat.

Over the last thirty-seven years of work, there had been progress made and mistakes made, new generations of researchers and partnerships that have ended.