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I'm wishing you the best of luck with it, George.

Sis brought down some Mountain Ash whips in a pot last weekend and told me to find a spot for planting them. A problem is that one of the dogs (probably the female pup) was gnawing on them a bit. Two (of six) tips have been broken off. Two whips have tooth marks that may or may not be fatal. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope.

Thanks Lolly. It'll probably come back out. If not, Chestnut Hills Nursery will surely be happy to sell me a replacement. And good luck with yours as well.

On a different thought, I've long heard about acorn fattened hogs but only recently did I do any research into the matter.

Tis very impressive: [url]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamón_ibérico[/url]

The real stuff sells for $100/pound. Now I'm going to have to buy some just to see how good it is and if it really is all that, can it be reproduced in Mississippi?

I am champing at the bit to have living space at the farm so I can start raising hogs and chickens. I will never use all the acorns and hickory nuts that wind up on my forest floor. Do pigs eat walnuts too? I'm planning bacon that is hickory smoked, not sugar cured!

Lolly, THAT is a fine question and one I don't know the answer to. With all the walnuts laying around the place, I never did have the good sense to throw a few in the pen with em to see. However, my daddy says that folks round here used to feed hickory nuts to hogs. A walnut is a tough nut to crack true enough, but then so is a hickory nut. I figger if a hog can handle hickory, he ought to be able to handle a walnut. Certainly would work out well for us both if that turns out to be the case.

Some of the little shagbarks that we transplanted aint looking to good. A couple are. Thankfully, the same fellow that gifted the garlic for the forest garden, also happened to have a bunch of sawtooth oak acorns that he had no specific intentions for. As he learned of my plans regarding the hog food forest, he offered them. I gladly accepted and now they too are in a pot awaiting germination.

The garlic I planted in the fall seems to be doing very well. I had purchased several bulbs and used half the cloves for planting. I hope it harvests well because what I used in cooking had excellent flavor. I still have one bulb left and think those cloves will be planted near the apple trees when I get to the farm this weekend.

All four little swamp chestnut oaks were planted, mulched and caged today. To help ease their transition from the deep shade they were growing in to their sunny new home, pine limbs were woven into their concrete reinforcement wire cage. There is only room for one more row in this portion of the pasture which white oaks will likely occupy - hopefully in the near future.

We replaced one shagbark hickory and one swamp chestnut oak today. The little shagbark likely died because it was transplanted from deep shade to full sun. The little oak didn't survive likely because during he transplanting process, ~3/4ths of its tap root was snapped off.

I decided to try your meothod of germinating walnuts today George. I had a red respberry patch that I didn't tend much years ago and it grew up into a stand of sassiffras trees. I cut them out maybe 2 years ago hoping to redo the red raspberrys in that space. I was pushing out the stumps with my tractor when I damaged the front bucket and quit. One tree was left standing and several stumps. Turns out the one tree I left standing was a Black Walnut. I really had not known it was a walnut, It just happened to be the last tree standing. It produced nuts this year and the squirrels have been gathering them up. Today I walked up there and picked up about 25 nuts to plant. I took them to the garden and put some garden soil in the bottom of a 5 gal plastic bucket, then a layer of nuts, when dirt, then nuts until the bucket was full. I left the green husks on the nuts figuring that is the way nature plants them. I plan on letting the bucket sit outside for a few months this winter to give them a good freeze, then maybe bring the bucket into the garage where it maybe cold but not freezing. I thought that might give them a better start for the spring. A friend had told me that he would love a start for a walnut tree, so I am sure I will give him what ever he wants. The rest will go down in the woods some place. I wondered if you had watered the buckets during the winter, and if you had punched holes in the bottom of the buckets for drainage. I did not put any drainage holes in my bucket, and I did wet the dirt down a bit, but not too much. I didn't want the bottom nuts sitting in water, I thought they might rot. Any insights you can share would be appiciated .