All week it's been raining hazelnuts !
This is just a quick post, a kind of "mini-update".
Our back garden has a very old hazel tree, as well as a self-seeded one in the front garden. This year it's given us a massive crop of nuts, far more than we've ever had before.
The photo below shows you just the three bowls I'm working through shelling right now...
This is the second batch I've collected, and there is probably twice as much again still sitting on the ground or waiting in the tree. I haven't even looked at the front yet !
Once shelled, each large red bowl makes a medium-sized bowl full like this;
I think the reason we've got such a huge quantity of hazelnuts is a combination of two main factors.
First, the weather has been just right for making lots of nuts; mostly hot and dry, but just enough rain that the tree didn't start feeling any kind of drought stress.
Second is that we haven't seen squirrels this year. Most years, the squirrels take at least half of the crop or more. But there has been an increase in the number of urban foxes around, and I have a feeling they've caught and eaten all the squirrels.
It's hard to take a photo of the tree itself, it kind of dominates the patio area of the garden, but here's an attempt at it....
As you can see from the shot below, there are quite a lot of empty hazelnut pods, but just as many with them in still waiting to drop. Technically they are Kentish Cob nuts, which is a particular variety of hazelnut known for it's sweetness.
My wife roasted the first batch in the oven, which smelled absolutely heavenly and turned them a deep rich brown colour - sadly I forgot to take a photo before we used them. When they are raw, they have a kind of green vegetable taste to them, but once they're roasted they have an incredibly rich nutty flavour, far stronger than the nuts you set in the shop.
The first lot have been added to cashews, macadamias and peanuts to make a spiced masala nut snack mix. Hopefully the second batch will be ground into flour to make into hazelnut cookies. Not sure what we'll do with the third lot yet.
All photos by me