Acorn Season

For those of you living near oak trees, you will know it is acorn season. We are fortunate enough to live under some incredibly beautiful oaks. In general the trees will produce large crops of acorns every other year (they are alternate bearing). This is a big crop year. The acorns fall onto our metal roof with a large 'bang'! For the first time since living here we have actually been hit by falling acorns, my daughter in the shoulder, and yours truly was hit in the head. It hurts!

Of course there are many good things about acorns - they are food for many of our animal friends, they grow into trees, and if they are prepared correctly, they can be used for food by humans. We are collecting some to make acorn bread with. We did this many years ago when my son was about 2 years old and he absolutely loved the bread, so I am looking forward to trying it again. Right now we are collecting as many acorns as we can and storing them in the barn until winter break when we will start processing them.

We have a tree that usually produces some large acorns, and this year is no exception. Below is a photo of what could be the largest valley oak acorn we have ever seen around here. I didn't put anything for scale, but it measures 2 3/8" long and 1 1/8" wide! The cap is 1 1/2" wide.

Valley oak acorns

We included some of our regular 'large' acorns in the photo for scale. Thank you oaks :)