Chestnut Hill Blog

It's Harvest Time For Chestnuts

It's harvest time in Alachua!  Despite it still feeling like summer, 88 degrees today, the chestnuts are falling!  The tree in our yard (we call it 'Behind the Barn' because many years ago there was a barn in front of it...) is dropping nuts.  We've been on the finish mower, cutting the grass one time before the we mow with the flail mower.  We went through in August and bush-hogged the orchard for the first time this year (we planted wildflowers years ago and the Coreopsis and Phlox bloom from April-July!).  One pass with the finish mower gets it down to 2-3" high, and the flail mower cuts it to an inch.  Because our trees are 40-50' tall, they shade out the grass in much of the orchard.

We'll start on Monday (Labor Day!) picking up the nuts.  Because of the heat, we harvest every other day, so they nuts don't dry out.  When they are shucked from the burrs, they get soaked overnight in a garbage can of water in the walk-in cooler, then taken out and bagged.

It's a wonderful time of year!  September in Florida is like spring up north, when the heat seems to finally break after 4 long, hot, hard months. It is like a re-birth, that life can begin again.  The first Gator football game is this weekend and the chestnuts are starting to fall.  Bird migration is ramping up and the first persimmons are ripe on the trees.  It's my favorite time of year!