01/10/2025
Can we talk about acorns?
I love my oak trees. No, really i do. We have 7 mature oaks on our land and 6 young ones. The biggest one is enormous; around 450 years old, 23 foot in diameter: standing under is spiritual.
We've never had any problem with them, till this year.
Yes, i know, acorns and the trees themselves contain tannins. Tannins are not good for anything much, including Alpacas. Mostly the Alpacas leave them alone though, and the little scurrying things, like squirrels, soon clear them up.
This year though; this year is different.
It's called a mast year.
Due to the drought, the trees thought they were going to die, so they put a huge amount of energy into producing seed; acorns for the oaks. And trust me, they are huge! Double thier usual size.
This is an issue. We don't want the Alpacas eating them, at least, not many. So, what to do? Fencing them off isn't possible. Well, we have a poo hoover. What if we just hoover them up? Nice plan, but 40 minutes later, it's full! 500 liters. So, we resort to rakes and shovels. Actually much more productive.
Three hours later, we have cleared up under one tree: a small ish one.
We've collected a ton of acorns.
This is going to take a while.......
I need a pig, pigs can eat acorns.
