Biomastery

2011-03-08T06:13:00.000-08:00

It has long been my belief - 1

The start of a new topic – a way of introducing new things, and building a knowledge base for those to come. But let me be quite clear here – I am talking about evidence-based observations, not subjective faith in the rightness of my hypotheses. As much as possible this builds on material in my book, though does not necessarily follow any particular section.

I shall start this off with a short discourse on shell energy value and how to make use of it. At more than 19MJ/kg the shell energy value (the SEV to follow the conventions of my book) of black walnut is higher than wood pellets, and the odd handful tossed into the fire-pot of a lit pellet stove has always burned with a good blaze. To avoid the pitfall of having to use energy to pelletize the shell, I asked my student collaborators to a) see what they could do to make cracked shell flow well when in a hopper, and b) how one would have to modify the auger of a pellet stove to adapt it to feeding this modified cracked product. I'm glad to say they've made progress on both fronts, so I'll get them to report on their work.

Shell is approximately 75% or more of the dry weight of the nut, so will always be the largest by-product, by weight or volume. In fact, any production strategy for kernel should build in an energy-based destination for shell. Long gone are the days when it was seen only as an abrasive end-product, or dumped as waste.

Biomass Nut Production in Black Walnut

2010-05-04T17:07:00.001-07:00

Well, the book is finally out:
Biomass Nut Production in Black Walnut: Exploring Management
and can be reviewed on and obtained from Lulu

Pruning and felling

2010-04-24T00:47:00.000-07:00

Finally getting around to collecting this year’s prunings before the grass gets too high. By my standards I did some severe pruning, and probably raised the lower height of the canopy by an average of at least 30cm!

I also had to cut out two trees which were encroaching on the hydro wires, which allowed me to do something I have wanted to do for a while – relate total subtended branch basal area (their footprint where they join the trunk, if you like) to the tree’s DBH. This is best expressed in the graph, where each point represents a branch plotted against its positional number away from the tree’s tip. There were about 25 branches on each tree.

Why did I want to do this? I have been intrigued for years about the switch from height increase to canopy expansion in open-grown black walnut, as mine are. In their early years the trees ‘concentrate’ on increasing the height of the leading tip. After this period, in an open-grown plantation each branch continues to grow outward and upward, taking some resources from the leader in so doing. With time what I have previously termed the ‘conical growth rule (CGR)’ must break down for the central stem, - DBH continues to jncrease, but as an expression of total canopy subtended rather than vertical height of the leader.

Each tree was just under the 15cm DBH, and I measured both this and the diameter of every subtended branch, working my way up the trunk (though they are plotted numerically in reverse). Height at which they were subtended (where they joined the trunk) was not taken, as there was no apparent relationship here – small branches could be found between larger ones. Hence the dispersion in the graph. Twigs on the trunk only a year old were ignored.

The numbers can be summed up in two ways: either by relating the relative cross-sectional areas (CSA), or by relating the relative perimeters (P; both cumulative in the case of the subtended branches). In both cases both the CSA and P of the subtended portion exceeded that calculated at DBH by between a factor of roughly 2 (CSA) or 6 (P), implying that a switch has indeed occurred. Which measure we use is not important as long as we be consistent. Remember, however, that DBH is measured at a point below the subtended canopy (or almost – the bottom pairs of branches on both trees were still below DBH), so it expresses an integration of accumulation of all biomass above it.

In physiological terms, the tree is growing mostly outwards, somewhere between twice and six times as much as it is growing upwards (a principal leader was still visually detectable on both trees and was not counted). This is in terms of deposition of carbon, the main structural element of the tree. At this DBH or earlier, the CGR is no longer applicable to the central trunk (closed canopy plantations may be the exception) and a ‘subroutine’ needs to be added for the canopy as a whole.

The relationship appears to be quite consistent, though two examples do not make a large sample (for the statisticians among you, the R² value of each line shown was about 0.50). It does seem that this will be the best way of noting when the competitive effect between trees occurs – if the pooled line (pooled because they are so close) does represent more than just these two trees then a change in slope (downwards, or less slope) should infer this, i.e. the branches will not grow so big (their footprints will be less). Variability in footprint under these conditions may be less.

This variability is curious. In open grown conditions the tree may continually be testing the immediate environment, and some of the variability may be due to competition between branches within the tree. This suggests that the leaves must be sensitive to slight differences in light intensity, because the black walnut does not have what might be termed a dense canopy.

Whatever it is, another relationship emerges, and I am again left marveling at the flexibility in expressed life around us (if the trees were closer the expression would be different).

As I walk the walnuts - 10

2010-03-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

As I walk the walnuts I reflect on the progress we have made in the last five years and my hopes for this one. All of the technological components are beginning to come together, albeit at different rates, and in spite of glimpses of future bottlenecks that seem to parallel what our climate throws at us, adding to the challenges of nut production so far north, we have the market waiting for what we can supply, so no fears there.

Useful US studies show that we import about $110 m annually of tree nut products from the US alone (the study was commissioned to find this out). I raise gales of laughter when I tell my collaborators that I’d be happy with 1% of that market, but the truth is that if we could achieve a gross return of $25,000 annually to 40 landowners, we’d be well on the road to a sustainable partial livelihood across the region, which is far preferable to one or two producers making greater gains.

But this still requires effort, and perhaps more than we have brought to the task so far. I shall be egging my collaborators on even more, trying to increase the range of skills we bring to the questions that remain, showing why the biological issues of productivity parallel the technological challenges of bringing a product to market. I am more convinced than ever that BNP was, happily, a viable strategy, and that it is easily replicable on a wider scale. But there is a lot of black walnut currently out there on the landscape, and we need to harness this resource, as well, to add to the B of BNP and to our bottom line.

I see as a challenge now, how to add a focus on shell usage as a biofuel. With one of the highest energy densities in natural by-products, and at about 75% of our physical output, shell can be (should be) part of our market strategy, and while I am aware of its usage as an abrasive, amongst other things, in our climate this energy density cries out for a different end-use. We are in the age of renewable energy. Not exploring this would be like throwing the baby out with the bath-water.

As I walk the walnuts – 9

2010-03-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

As I walk the walnuts I think about the graying of the population and the fact that the mean age of the attendees at past nut society meetings has been greater than my own, and I am on the cusp of retiring! The fundamental challenge is how to interest young people. The answer, I believe, is only through income potential. Remember that question? Can I make more money from that than from what I’m currently doing?

But perhaps there is another way. And that is to build associations in the mind between nuts and play. To that end, behold the Walnut Express, a model railroad layout that snakes around a peripheral shelf in the cracking shed, ferrying nuts from the Walnut Mountain (or Forest!) to the cracking machine. It’s still under construction so I am not sure whether it’s a Mountain or a Forest, and only time will tell. But one thing of which I am certain – the cracking shed will be a boring place for young people without it. Just ask my grandchildren.

As I walk the walnuts - 8

2010-03-01T16:45:00.000-08:00

As I walk the walnuts and look at each tree, it is like a snapshot. Snapshots, by definition, are images captured at an instant in time, and tend to reflect something that we were doing at that given moment. Yet an image of a tree is misleading. It is certainly a snapshot of the tree at that given moment, but the tree is the ultimate interpolator, the summer-up of expression over its lifetime, the presenter of the all-gone-before. A tree, then, while in the present, is all of the past, as interpreted by its individual genome in that unique environment.

I say this because a tree is a prisoner of its roadmap for fixing and depositing carbon, and, once started, it cannot deviate from this roadmap. Oh, the roadmap may be altered for it – spring frost effects on bud growth, branch removal by pruning - but a black walnut always looks like a black walnut, no matter its shape, and will always yield nuts, not acorns.

With time I am less involved with the form my trees take. I matched their early growth with my own energy, interfering according to my criteria at the time, but now am content to let the trees fill their space however they will, their response to that interference an acknowledgement of my then-presence on the landscape, an element of biodiversity as ephemeral perhaps as the guarantee that the snow buntings will return every year. Nothing is guaranteed, not even that the energy to interfere goes undiminished, but I prefer to think that I just understand myself better now, and that however the trees fill that space is the way it should be.

Nuts aweigh

2010-01-17T18:37:00.000-08:00

Six months without a word. I should apologize. 2009 went down in the yearbooks as nutless, so I hibernated. Things have not been static, however. The continuous-flow walnut washer joined the suite of black walnut technologies on the farm, and through the efforts of my good friend Rod enough walnuts found their way to the farm back in November for the washer to be given a trial run. Rod also asked me some penetrating questions, so rather than repeating everything here, follow this link to Rod’s blog and photos of the washer in action.

http://rodcroskery.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/a-visit-to-lostwithiel-farm/

Find the wiki

2009-06-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know there'll be a new string to the bow from now on. Somewhere to post files without extensive editing so that they fit on the page. Products, activities, all that stuff.

http://BlackWalnutsdotCa.wikispaces.com

Not planning a full migration just yet, but we'll see. This is not yet a private wiki, so you should be able to access it, but just in case I convert it to a private site send me an email for your invitation to join. Tell me who you are, and why you're interested in black walnuts.

Line Index Explained

2009-06-12T05:11:00.000-07:00

The following values have been calculated for five lines (trees) as an example. Please note that data collection on this portion of the farm only began in 2006, so not all variables were quantified every year. For the table to fit this window, 2006 data had to be excluded.

Line (Tree)			2007					2008
			A S	NY	SI	DBH	K%	NY	SI	DBH	ABNY
1	1	14	1	3.51	0.69	13.5	21.9	3.27	0.70	15.4	0.50
1	2	12	1	0.65	0.61	16.7	25.7	7.88	0.51	18.5	0.75
1	1	17	1	1.81	0.69	12.5	19.5	0.00	0.70	14.7	0.90
1	7	12	2	5.49	0.67	8.6	21.8	2.93	0.70	10.1	0.61
1	4	27	3	1.49	0.57	10.0	24.2	3.44	0.55	11.3	0.24

Codes

AS: Anthracnose Score - Incidence of Leaf Spotting Disease 1 (low) to 5

NY: Nut Yield - Number of nuts per sq cm trunk diameter at DBH

SI: Shell Index - Shell weight per cc nut volume

K%: Kernel Percentage - Kernel proportion of nut by weight

DBH: Diameter at Breast Height - Measure of tree size (at 135cm from ground)

ABNY: Alternate Bearing Index (from NY) - Annual variability in NY 0 (low) to 1

On the far right-hand side are the calculated (multi-year) Alternate Bearing Indices, where it can be seen that 1-4-27 and 1-1-17 are the two extremes, the latter so far expressing high alternate bearing (closest to 1). If you find this hard to understand, or want to know how to calculate it from the above data, several references to this characteristic can be unearthed by searching on the term on the internet. High ABI or ABNY is not desirable, unless the biennial compensation in NY makes up for non-production in the off years. I am not ready to thin out 1-1-17 just yet.

In a future post I will discuss using the combination of these variables as a selection tool.

Line Index Variables

2009-06-11T05:29:00.000-07:00

What is the Line Index? It is my quantitative description of the best nut producers (the ‘3’ trees, if you are familiar with the term from previous blogs), using the variables I currently think the most important. These are:

· Anthracnose Score (AS)

· Nut Yield (NY)

· Shell Index (SI)

· Kernel Percentage (K%)

· And, derived from NY, the Alternate Bearing Index (ABI or ABNY)

Below is an explanation of each variable, but not the reason why I consider them the most important. Just be content for the moment that a range of quantitative descriptors has been attached to each line (line = a single tree, which may or may not have an identifiable maternal parent on or off-farm). DBH (Diameter at Breast Height) is included for interpretation.

Anthracnose Score (1-5). The expressed incidence of leaf-spotting disease (which may have non-anthracnose components), which is commonly considered to depress a tree’s productive ability. 1=low, 5=high, thus a 1 indicates nill expression, which can be considered a strong tolerance (if not outright resistance) to leaf-spotting disease.

Nut Yield (no.nuts per cm² of trunk diameter at DBH). A measure of productivity based on nut count per tree, adjusted for the tree’s size. All trees in a plantation will vary in growth rate.

Shell Index (shell wt proportional to nut volume: g per cm³). A measure of the energy partition occurring at the individual nut level.

Kernel Percentage (kernel weight as a proportion of dry nut weight). A measure of the edible yield of the nut. Can be used in combination with NY to determine Kernel Yield (KY).

Alternate Bearing Index (0-1). A measure of the consistency in nut production. Black walnut shows variable biennial productivity. Here adjusted for DBH, thus accounting for tree size, and calculated from NY, thus more truly ABNY, not ABI which, used by others, does not account for change in potential productivity across time based on tree growth.

Diameter at Breast Height (cm). A standard, convenient measure used to determine annual change in tree size at 135cm from the ground. DBH, for all its convenience, is a moving target. While it remains constant in relation to the ground, it does not remain constant in relation to the top of the tree. Thus, successive annual measures of DBH are taken at different points within a tree’s geometry.

Core Business - Line Index

2009-06-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

Things have been a little slow among the walnuts for the past six months, or rather I have been. Catching my breath, and trying to refocus on the core business. Not so much a reconfiguration, as a reconfirmation. The result is the development of the Line Index, which will tell you about the top trees here at the farm, and the order in which I rank them. Look for the Line Index section. Removed from the blog will be that cursed entry of Nov 2007, which attracts every human soul who wants to know what happens when we take a chainsaw to a standing tree. I can’t actually use the description of the process, otherwise every search engine from here to Australasia might pick out those few words, thus defeating my purpose. Sorry about this, but my core business has to do with black walnut, not educating every Tom, Jane or Harry about the carbon cycle. There, I can already hear the hits….

As I walk the walnuts - 7

2009-01-01T16:19:00.000-08:00

As I walk the walnuts, !st January 2009, -18ºC, I think about the year to come and how much farther we will get. First, though, Happy New Year to all my collaborators, from the tree end to the machinery end. None of this would work without you. To warm you up on a cold winter’s day, I have chosen a summer photo.

Then a swing past the barn, where, a short six weeks ago, I was finishing up the wet processing of the 2008 harvest. My rapid departure to warmer climes for a couple of work weeks is evident: the final pile of hulls is still there, along with the mess made by three squirrels I have recently managed to move out. The final nuts are still on the dryer, though the remainder are bagged up and labeled ready for weighing.

In the fields, the range scoring tape is evident, splashes of colour on the naked trees. How much that system has helped me to understand what is going on at the tree end. The tape will come off at pruning time to avoid confusing next summer’s work, when the trees will be re-scored.

Still to do is the nut report, which entails cracking and measuring the kernel and shell fractions of the ‘3’ trees. That will happen sometime in February. Observation of the samples suggested some surprising things to come, but I will wait for the hard data before saying anything more.

So, 2009 will be the year of ‘nutmastery’ and a separate blog to deal solely with that end of things – machinery, markets, etc., while this one may slowly wind down. We’ll see.

Those good seed trees

2008-12-21T08:08:00.000-08:00

Rod Croskery (he of the only site currently on my blogroll) wrote to me recently posing a question that I suspect many would like to ask:

[About the tree in Westport] planted in 1937 by Dr. Ford Goodfellow, the parent tree has very little trunk but an enormous canopy. [The owner] assures me that it has borne heavily every year for the last twenty. If the nuts are well-filled, the parent might meet your criteria for a good orchard tree.

This is a bit of a challenge, because it is growing in a site distinct from the farm. I responded to Rod that currently I was only interested in selecting from the population that I had on the farm. Many rural Ontario communities have populations of black walnut trees, many of which (I am separately informed) would be descendents of the original parent stock brought up by United Empire Loyalists a couple of hundred years ago. This ignores the other common knowledge that First Nations’ peoples also spread the black walnut eastwards from southern Ontario.

These populations I have observed to be regularly productive, so here is my suspicion: that the environment in many of these communities reduces the risk of early spring frost damage to the trees’ flowering, mainly, I believe, through low-level mixing of exhaust gases from heating systems. Most of these trees are within or just moderately above the mean roof line of the community, where such effects could be expected.

How could we test this? If you have a potential seed tree in such a community that you are interested in, I suggest you hang a max-min thermometer on the trunk at breast height (1.35m) on the north side, inside some sort of shield to protect it from the elements, and compare the readings with Environment Canada’s values at the nearest observation site on those nights when spring frosts occur. Do the readings match or not? Remember to reset the thermometer daily.

Because my fields are frost prone, I believe my good seed trees must be relatively later flowering than the rest of the on-farm population. Alternatively, my non-seed bearers are too early for my site, something I must quantify this coming spring. More on this later.

2008 harvest report

2008-12-16T15:08:00.000-08:00

Well, over 2 tonnes of fruit were harvested over about five weeks from about 10th October. This includes on- (75%) and off-farm (25%) sources. On-farm, harvesting of ‘3’ trees was independent of ‘1’ and ‘2’ trees (see earlier post on range scores). All nuts from fruiting trees were counted, though 1 and 2 trees were counted at time of pick up (three different sweeps of the fields), and the fruit pooled by field during each sweep. Fruit from each 3 tree was kept separate in plastic lugs in the field, and totals counted when there were no further nuts to fall.

All pooled fruit was processed first – weighed, hulled, then washed and dried. Fruit from 3 trees was weighed, hulled, washed, then sampled and dried. Three-nut samples of 3 fruit were retained for drying, then subsequent cracking and separating. This analysis will be reported under the 2008 Nut Report.

Within the global number reported above, there was much hidden. The two main experimental populations (Fields 1 & 3) are reported below (you can click on the image to open it in a larger format).

Firstly, the nut range scoring system was successful in separating trees by eventual yield (at harvest). In each of the two fields, there are in excess of 500 trees. In each field, more than half of the population did not fruit. The number of trees fruiting (total n) was 187 (F1) and 254 (F3). The average number of nuts per tree was 20 (R1), 94 (R2) and 299 (R3). The biggest contrast between fields was for R3, where F1 gave 448 nuts per tree and F3 gave 151 nuts per tree. Correction of these totals by cross-sectional area (CSA) at DBH (diameter at breast height; multiplied by 100 in the above graph to be able to use the same vertical axis) almost completely reduced this variability to 5.09 nuts per sq cm of CSA (F1) compared to 5.53 (F3). I have termed this value Nut Yield (NY), which you can see was, on average, >1 for R1 and between 2-3 for R2 (remember the 100 factor in the graph above). Groups of bars for same range score number are from fields 1 and 3, reading from the left.

So what? (you might say). Well, it confirmed that it is not just tree size (measured here as DBH) which accounts for NY. There are other factors which make some trees more productive than others. It also suggests that you could forget about harvesting R1 trees and still collect just about the same total weight of fruit, or, put another way, R1 trees contribute very little, individually, to the total harvest, though they make some of this up by sheer numbers. As we are embarked on an inter-generational venture, as long as NY is the main contributor to total kernel yield (KY) per tree, it is only from R3 trees from which we should wish to select. We would want to analyze this characteristic only within the population of R3 trees. It also offers the means (i.e. a sufficient number of very uniform nuts) to set a cracking machine to crack optimally for a given set of nut characteristics, which is some of the rationale underlying US selection of black walnut ‘cultivars’ based on kernel percentage (K%; sometimes measured in efficiency terms as ‘crack out’), though high K% is the other aspect.

In my top-yielding F1 tree, nut number was >1700, with a NY of 7.88. However the top NY (16.15) was from the top F3 tree which gave only 343 nuts. Correction for size is thus immensely important to understanding productivity within a relatively uniform environment, and were both trees to show the same K%, the first would be of greater economic importance to me at this point in time. The former had a 2007 K% of 26% in a nut weight of 15g, which suggests a total KY of 6.4kg from this tree this year. Not insignificant.

Why do I think so many trees are not producing? Probably because they are too early for my site. I shall test this next spring, comparing a random sample with the ‘3’ trees.

Finally, you probably think I’m crazy to do so much counting. Learn to do it, for it will tell you a lot. Use range scoring first, though, so you only count nuts from the ‘3’ trees.

Those NAFTA nuts

2008-12-03T01:28:00.001-08:00

I was quite surprised by some data I came across recently. I had been carrying a figure of $20 million in my head as the value of Canada’s nut import bill from the US. I had been quoting it as justification for the definition of a nut market niche, in which, I was sure, there was space for my black walnuts. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I came across some US data justifying the benefits of NAFTA to Americans when I learnt that the real figure is far higher. In 2002

(http://www.fas.usda.gov/htp/Hort_Circular/2002/02-08/U.S.Canada Hort.FEA.htm) the value was almost $110 million, or 10% of the global value of US nut tree exports.

So, I conclude that there really must be a niche here, and suggest that Barack Obama go easy on the idea of renegotiating NAFTA unless his purpose is to allow even more US nuts across the border.

Speaking of which, the last time I went south, the Homeland Security officer (associate? customer service agent?) in my traffic lane said, when I responded “nut producer” to his question ”profession?”, “We’ve got enough of those in our Universities…”

Scientific American Earth 3.0 Special Issue: Solutions for Sustainable Progress

2008-12-03T01:01:00.000-08:00

Letter to the Editors (Published here in case they do not publish it there)

I do not expect a Scientific American Special Issue on Sustainability to contain an article of such doubtful value as that in Earth 3.0 by Mark Fischetti on Dickson Despommier’s vision of Verticality in the food system. As an agronomist, let me tell you what is wrong and inaccurate about this article. We’ll begin with the text box on Pros and Cons. 1. Fossil fuel for plowing fields and trucking food to market is not needed. Wrong. Are you really suggesting that people may eat only the food produced in their own building? And that a building can produce enough for 365 days of the year? Who will till that soil and with what? 2. Fertilizer and pesticides are eliminated. Wrong. Even hydroponic production requires nutrient inputs, and how many people have had aphids on their houseplants, and had to give them a shot of insecticide? Nature abhors a sterile environment, and pests will come in the revolving door with the residents. Who would want to breathe those pesticides on a daily basis? 3. Crops grow 24 hours a day, year-round, for greater yields. Two fallacies: crops generally ‘dislike’ a 24-hour day (many require a dark period, for physiological reasons) and yields generally follow the dictum energy in, energy out, i.e. requiring high intensity illumination to achieve the necessary photosynthesis. Are you sure you want this on your personal utility bill? 4. Consumers receive fresher food. Do you want to trade a sufficient diet for an apparent gain in some subjective measure of freshness? Other fallacies: ‘Pigs and poultry could be reared there, too’. Heard about the urban types who move out of town and try to rid the rural environment of all those nasty smells? And this sounds like a public health disaster waiting to happen.

I could go on in like vein, but it seems to me that Mr Despommier is a bit of an ostrich, with his head in the sand of ignorance when it comes to judging what doesn’t work in agriculture and what would work in an urban environment. Urban people have become used to a very rich, diverse and sizeable diet. Rural people work hard to supply it. He would like to see urbanites revert to a potato or two, a spinach leaf and a skyscraper factory chicken, now and again. He should be the first to go on this diet.

Sustainability is about the wise and renewable use of resources. It can be done within the current agricultural landscape without all the costs that Mr Despommier would like to see added. There are many possible strategies, in some of which trees must play a part. If you doubt what I say, please see my own blog, where you will also find this letter.

Whoa there with the chainsaw, Fred

2008-12-03T00:54:00.000-08:00

It comes as no small surprise to me that 50% of the visitors to this site are, like wasps to a ripe apple, drawn by a single (November) 2007 post: What happens when a tree is cut down? Now, I don’t suggest that they are all asking this question in the same way. The answers could vary. ‘It landed on Fred’s head’. ‘Not much, it’s still there’ But I can guess that they are more interested in carbon cycle issues, and as loggers don’t generally dig up the roots, it is the decay of these that some are interested in. Others may be interested in how the surrounding tree canopy takes over the environmental services of the missing tree.

I didn’t start the blog with these people in mind. And it tells me that I don’t get many walnut-interested readers. I shan’t be doing much in the way of enlightening these readers with more explicit information (Fred’s not expected to recover), but I will add that I estimate on our farm that about 25% of the total sequestered carbon in our trees is underground. This ignores the carbon accruing in the other vegetation, and that added to the soil annually by herbaceous plants which die back over winter.

Interim 2008 harvest report

2008-10-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

More than a ton of fruit harvested to date, with the scoring system providing essential insight to the trees upon which to concentrate. All category 3 tree fruit is still in the field, awaiting the final nuts to fall before the nut count is done. Fruit from all scored trees has been counted, with category 1 trees averaging about 20 nuts per tree and category 2 about 70 nuts per tree. Category 3 trees are well up into the hundreds of nuts.

Some modifications to the wet processing area were undertaken, with significant improvement in effectiveness and efficiency.

The full report will follow once harvest is complete.

Join our regional germplasm screening study

2008-09-11T05:44:00.000-07:00

The trees I shall discuss here are those considered in the post 2007 Nut Report.

How will this work? We will have seed available this fall from these ~25 source trees showing superiority in several variables (e.g. kernel yield per tree, leaf spotting disease resistance).

Firstly, you should be sure that you have a good site – reasonably deep clay loams are best; heavy undrained clays, or very sandy soils will not work.

When you know your site, measure it, and see how many rows of trees you think you can plant. We use rows 6m (20’) apart and plant our trees 6m apart within the rows, but you could use a different between-row spacing if you choose (best not less than this within the row). One field of ours has 12m between rows. You could go higher, especially if you want to continue farming between the rows.

To ensure comparability between all sites, we propose to provide a planting plan according to the number of trees you are interested in. We will request that you plant according to the plan we provide, otherwise we cannot guarantee that we will be able to compare your data to others’.

When you know the size and shape of your site, and have determined the numbers of trees and spacing, divide your site into two components:

a. a rectangular centre section which will be the section we will provide you nuts for, your experimental block; and

b. the outside rows (sides and ends), which you will find your own local seed for ( these are the ones the squirrels will find first, if you have a squirrel problem).

We will divide all available screened seed into packages. The numbers of nuts in a package will correspond to the numbers of rows you have identified in your centre section/experimental block (x 2, as you will plant two nuts per tree location). We will send you the number of packages that correspond to the number of trees in the rows. So you are going to tell us that your centre section is 20 x 8, for example, equivalent to 20 trees per row in 8 rows. The planting plan will provide you the randomly selected positions of each tree in each row, so that you would plant each of the mother-tree selections 8 times across the rows. We suggest that you limit the size of this experimental block to 20 x 8 or less, because you would require 320 (40 x 8) nuts for it, which will be a large drain on our seed resources if many people are interested, and will be the basis on which we calculate cost (cost per nut, including the planting plan, and our email support/quantitative analysis for as long as you send complete annual data sets will be about $1.00).

We would suggest this anyway, because you could always expand in a subsequent year, and you are better off starting with a small block and working out what seems to be working and what doesn’t. We suggest the minimum number of rows to be 4-5, and block size 4 x 4 or 4 x 5. We will suggest how to plant the seed in a later post, but it may be that not every nut germinates, and you will want to replace some ungerminated nuts with nuts from the same mother tree a year later. We typically do this, so factor it in as quite probable.

Participants will purchase the number of packets of seed that correspond to their plan, one per mother tree, up to the total number of trees in their rows. We will generate and post a selected list. Seed packets will be distributed (first-come, first-served) in the order of the trees on the list until that particular tree is sold out (different trees will produce different numbers of nuts; we will retain and plant a seed packet of each source tree to ensure we have trees with which to compare yours). The selected list will rank trees in accordance with the data that we currently have, using the kernel yield per tree for 2007 as the primary indicator. Every other indicator that we use (e.g. leaf disease expression) will be successively discounted by approximately 50%, so that what we know to be economically important receives the greatest weight in our selection. We will post our development of this ranking procedure.

We expect the select list to change in size each year, as we add trees to it (while we like the current 25, we do not guarantee them yet to be the best in our plantation; the current 25 will be kept on to provide replacement seed, and to act as the reference trees in our analyses). If you plant future blocks, planting plans can account for the mother trees already represented in your present block.

If you plant, we hope that you will commit to collecting data on these trees, and sharing it with us. In fact, what we are proposing is really a regional information network, to form the basis of an emerging nut industry. This requires multiple sites.

We commit to maintaining, for as long as we are able, all data on your growing trees, and providing you with annual performance charts concomitant with the number of seed trees represented in your planting. As suggested above, you may wish to undertake something like this iteratively, planting in successive years. We will accommodate your iterative program.

Why do this? We believe black walnut provides the only opportunity for nut production at a commercial scale in much of eastern Canada. It has been our observation that there is no structured program of support for landowners interested in diversifying into nutculture. A simple, practical program, based on a network of interested growers, offers the best opportunity of extending basic knowledge and skills suited to a new tree-based livelihood. It is our interest to foster region-wide adoption of black walnut. Welcome to our network!

I am sorry, but we will not be able to ship seed to the US. All other international destinations will be at your risk.

More than just seed sales

2008-09-11T05:41:00.000-07:00

Among our thousands of trees are some which show valuable characteristics: precocity, high tolerance or resistance to leaf-spotting diseases, and high kernel yield. While black walnut is open-pollinated, and there is no complete guarantee that natural offspring will be as disease resistant or productive as the tree from which the seed is harvested, there is a greater probability that these traits will be evident in such trees than those established from non-select trees of unknown origin (e.g. common black walnut purchased from forest nurseries, or grown from seed collected).

We believe that the establishment of semi-improved biomass stands, from seed from trees screened in the way we are screening ours, is less expensive and reasonably predictable compared to other options. It allows you to test many genotypes to find those best suited to your site. Our confidence in this approach can be seen in our own development strategy: expanding our own plantations in exactly this way – select and plant. We offer you the opportunity to do exactly the same. It goes almost without saying that you must have a long-term vision of nutculture on your property to make this worthwhile, as you may have to wait for your first nutcrop for up to 7-10 years from planting. In the meantime you can compare your tree growth with sister trees grown here at Lostwithiel Farm and on other collaborators’ sites.

I will start to post individual tree data soon. You will be able to see the trees we have selected and are on-planting (i.e. the trees the nuts are coming from).

If you are interested in seed this year, I suggest you send me an email. Firm commitments with payment should be made by Oct 15th.

Livelihood

2008-09-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

Let’s tackle this first. Given our penchant for money, let me ask you about units. What is the smallest scale at which it you would separate one economic activity from another? Would $1,000 be enough to make you sit up and think about changing the way you earn it? $5,000? $10,000? Interestingly enough, $10,000 is the value I give to 1 t of in-shell nut. How do I get there? By assigning an average kernel percentage of 25%, and a sale value of $5 per 100g. The latter is close enough to the cost for a baglet of black walnut pieces in US supermarkets (Giant; $5.99/5 oz., 6 Sept 08). While some may say 25% kernel percentage is high, it approximates my 2007 cracking results (22% average), and if we were able to add other income streams than just kernel (e.g. shell), effectively we could achieve more than 25%. No matter. One tonne is what I estimate my 2008 in-shell yield to be. Can I extract and sell enough to realize $10,000 before costs? Interesting numbers.

I personally believe that the only way to each such production levels reliably is by establishing black walnut plantations of 1000 trees upwards. Why do I think this? Because nut production is dependent upon adequate tree canopy development to sustain it, and I think it is better to contemplate 1000 young trees producing 1 kg ( a model built on common black walnut seedlings) than 100 young trees producing 10 kg or 10 young trees producing 100 kg (models built on more expensive grafted selections). Even grafted trees may need 15-20 years to develop canopies that will sustain high production levels. The trees don’t all have to be planted at once. As C.F. Hostetter, of the delightfully-named Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, wrote[1] in 1933:

“In 1926 I hazarded a planting of 150 trees, the next year I was steamed up to the place where I decided I should plant more, and then each year following, until my last planting this year, gives me one thousand thrifty growing black walnuts…..”

It is clear that early efficiencies in kernel extraction are going to be low. It is also clear that growing plantations will produce higher yields with time. We will have investment costs in technology. These are factors that we need to build into our calculations. But none will work unless we base our livelihood on units of thousands of trees. Does this sound unachievable? Not at all. We have about 2,500 trees on our farm, and are still hazarding more planting. We hope to leave the $10,000 mark well behind quite soon.

[1] Hostetter, C.F. Developing a Thousand Tree Nut Grove, Northern Nutgrowers Annual Report, 1933, p43.

Black Walnut Nutgrowers' Network

2008-09-09T04:55:00.000-07:00

This is an idea whose time, I think, has come. As it is mine, I can suggest vision, objectives, etc., until the prospective membership becomes disenchanted and wants to reformulate them. Why am I pushing this? Because I am convinced that innovative nutgrowing, in my neck of the woods, at least, needs a single-species focus. Each species is not only different in management requirements, but also in technology for use, markets even. Now, I am not suggesting that there are not already BWN networks - for instance, there is one within the NNGA, but I find it constrained by its cultivar focus, and it would (perhaps does) find me an awkward animal. My intention here is to explore ways of widening debate, including what I feel is a viable alternative model, and perhaps through methodology, bringing approaches together, with a wholly satisfactory outcome for all. What would this outcome be? I suggest we would measure it in economic terms.

There will generally be no directed call for members. Instead, membership accrues by a simple email to me, which implies you have read at least this post, and are sufficiently interested in my vision of a sustainable partial rural livelihood to wish to learn more.

Why sustainable? Sustainable because there is little point in even starting unless we appreciate the value of trees as intergenerational assets and their importance to future generations, especially from a perspective of environmental services.

Why partial? Partial because the days of a single job for life have largely gone (if they ever existed for the majority) and we need a portfolio of economic actions upon which to base our earnings. This is only one of them.

Why rural? Rural because nutgrowing upon the scale that I am interested in implies ownership and management of rural property, perhaps land that even now is being actively farmed.

Why livelihood? Livelihood because we want to live from something we enjoy and make it part of our daily economic activity.

From these stem two possible memberships: those who aspire to this concept and own the property to pursue it, and those who are not landowners but are just interested. I’ll call them landowning (L) and non-landowning (NL) members, as this is the biggest defining variable of them all. It doesn’t matter where the land is or what you are currently doing with it. It doesn’t even have to be in North America (black walnut exists considerably farther afield than this).

So, let’s get to objective. The objective is to generate and disseminate the knowledge necessary to achieve the vision, in location-specific terms. I live on the northern fringe of the species current range, and outside its historic range, and my knowledge needs may be different from someone who lives, for example, on the southern fringe. But we need to be actively involved in the generation of knowledge, because no-one else is going to do it for us. If you think they are, you probably shouldn’t think of membership in the BWNN. This doesn’t mean you need to be an immediate contributor, but it would be more interesting for us if you at least saw yourself as an innovator.

Here, then, is the idea. In the next post I’ll put forward my suggestion on how to start. With the trees. And if you wonder how I think about a network, I consider it: a purpose-oriented operational form for delivery of outputs and results (I admit to reading that elsewhere but don’t recall the reference). In these days of interconnectivity, there’s no reason to believe we can’t do most of this on-line.

Wet processing

2008-08-13T07:52:00.000-07:00

It has been my intention for some time now to post the developing layout for a continuous-flow wet processing area. Until now, all my processing has been on a batch basis, which is very limiting and time consuming. It is my intention to get to the point where my system will contemplate tonnes of product with relative complacency.

My wet processing is done under a steel-roofed addition to my barn. This offers ample opportunity to collect adequate rainfall for storage in two elevated cisterns (8). The area measures about 30' x 15'.

Nuts (more accurately, the fruit) will be received on a conveyor (1), lifted (2) and dumped into a geared-down forage blower (3). This will pre-split the hulls and physically propel them to the hulling machine (4). Hull material will exit the area on another conveyor (5) and the cleaned nut will enter the continuous-flow washer (6) before dropping into the dryer(7). Most transfers depend on gravity, so steps 2 and 3 are intended to lift the incoming material to adequate working height.

The continuous flow washer is this year's collaborative project with Algonquin College, and the initial design is already being critiqued. I hope we will have a proof-of-concept ready for this fall's harvest.

If you click on the above diagram it will open at larger scale in another window.

Tree scoring

2008-08-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

Once again, I am indebted to the Ontario Stewardship Rangers (this year aka Josh Bowes, Stefanie McCann, Jessica Rothwell and Eric Dopson), from the Lanark County Stewardship Council for spending a day at the farm and scoring my two main stands of trees for nut load (>1000 trees). This is the third year the OSR has done this, and each year I introduce changes to the system. The 2007 crew had the hardest job.

The purpose of scoring is to identify superior trees ahead of harvest. Different-coloured flagging tapes are tied to the tree in accordance with the assigned score. The superior trees are the ones I am most interested in selecting nuts from for on-planting, and for cracking analysis. We are a season away from mechanical harvesting, so all nuts from superior trees would be hand-harvested and counted before the mechanical harvester was passed through to pick up everything else. The following table indicates the scoring ranges used in the past three years:

2006	2007	2008
None	None	None
1-5	1-5	Few
6-20	6-20	Medium
21-80	21-80	High density
>80	80-320
	>320

The simplification of 2008 stemmed from the realization that counting the nuts on the tree was very difficult and often inaccurate at best (at the high end). Nuts are counted anyway at pickup time, so no more is needed than an estimate of ‘nut density in the canopy’. Thirty-eight trees in total fell into the high category in 2008, about 50% more than 2007.

Prior to harvest the trees will also be scored for other features, and expression of leaf-spotting diseases is one of these. The pairing of low disease expression with medium nut density in the canopy would boost a tree into the ‘of interest’ grouping, such that it would also be selected for on-planting and cracking analysis.

If one embarks on biomass nut production, as we have, where extensive plantations of non-select trees are used, it is important to find management tools which simplify and streamline management for production. Tree scoring is one of these, allowing one to focus on the trees that will eventually add more to the bottom line than others.

Thanks again to the Ontario Stewardship Rangers for their help for the day!

As I walk the walnuts - 6

2008-07-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

My tree population has become a world unto itself, massive growth this year, uplifting (in all senses) avian biodiversity from the relative paucity of two-dimensional flatland of the original hayfields into the third dimension of biomass infrastructure – that fractal takeover of the near-sky by carbonic tentacles that are uniquely black walnut.

It is when I stand in these 6m high avenues that I am aware of something fundamentally clear - that the immediate biosphere is recovering after some 150 years of agricultural exploitation and that the animate occupants of this space are the more joyful for it. Of course, they are instinctively animated, so the joy is nothing more than behavioural change or enhanced presence because of changing predator-prey dynamics, but I prefer to put an anthropomorphic slant on things. After all, I am more joyful, so why shouldn’t they be?

Elsewhere in this blog I have explained what I mean about biomass walnut production, and my ‘non-cultivar’ approach. As the years pass I have become more aware of what this broad diversity means to the farm landscape, and how I believe it adds far more value than would planting reduced numbers of named selections (the dollar-for dollar-implication). In scientific terms, I have gone back to a genetic baseline, providing the means to identify a benchmark against which to detect change; in spiritual terms, I have given worth to individuals in my populations on terms quite distinct from the do-or-die dogma of modern agriculture. At the risk of being thought to have gone over to a lunatic fringe, it important that I expand on this. To do this, I’ll bring Thomas Merton into the discussion.

Thomas Merton was a Cistercian monk who deliberated long and hard on Nature. Because he came to it as a God-fearing person, he spent much of his time contemplating its sacredness. By the definition of ‘sacred’, Nature was made holy by religious association. As a holy person (said by others), he was therefore unlikely to consider that Nature was non-holy. Merton died in Bangkok in 1968, a few short years before I got there, but I have only really discovered his writings recently (unlike John Stewart Collis, subject of an earlier post). Merton was also a bit of a blogger, and I have quite enjoyed his When The Trees Say Nothing (Sorin Books), but if I have an argument with him, and other writers, e.g. Ursula Goodenough (The Sacred Depths of Nature, Oxford University Press, 1998) who depart from the station by the same platform, it is that they are almost certain to confuse holy (to be revered) with holy (belonging to or empowered by God). I am delighted with Merton’s:

“How necessary it is for monks to work in the fields, in the rain, in the sun, in the mud, in the clay, in the wind: these are our spiritual directors and our novice-masters. They form our contemplation. They instill us with virtue. They make us as stable as the land we live in[1].”

I am less sure that he has the outcomes right, though I think this would be as good a mantra as any for the people of today who are indifferent as to where their existence owes its due. Even the practitioners of agriculture from the saddles of jumbo-wheeled tractors have lost a large part of this connection, hedging referring to how they manage their finances, rather than delineating their fields.

But I’d like to use another entry of Merton’s:

“Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no-one can make anything or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infinitely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into infinite possibilities for study and contemplation and interest and praise….”

I have deliberately excluded the last sentence: Beyond all and in all is God for the very simple reason that none of his contemplations actually deliver this beyond the level of an assumption. I believe that holiness can exist without referencing a deity, and that the reverence I have when I stand in an avenue of black walnuts derives from their capacity to fill my vision in a particular way, both when still and when moving, and that they now dwarf me, returning me to the natural condition when humans evolved amongst the trees. Perhaps that reverence has a hint from genetic memory of the dangers associated with tall trees. Otherwise, it may rest in the pleasant reflection that trees now exist where they haven’t for 150 years.

But, you see, Merton is right about those infinite possibilities, though they are as much to do with not knowing much about the future, and enjoying ourselves responsibly on the road Under Nature as much as possible. In a climate undergoing rapid change, I would rather be caring for thousands of not very expensive trees, than losing sleep at night because of what I have invested in a few. Many of my trees may not express worth in the way it is commonly measured today, but until I come to measure it I’ll enjoy having them around.

If you care for treatment of Under Nature as I mean it, please visit a future post.

[1] Merton, Thomas. When the trees say nothing. Ed. Kathleen Deignan, Sorin Books, 2003, pp192.

Managing for growth

2008-05-24T00:19:00.001-07:00

In a previous post (A bit more about cultivars, Feb 3) I promised to come back to the topic of managing for growth. All that I’ve seen in our plantations suggests that rapid seedling growth (increasing height, expanding DBH) leads to more rapid physiological maturity, and that this in its turn is displayed as fruit setting (nutting). At the core of management for early growth will be weed control, and if you plant, as I did, in old pastures or hay fields, this means grass control. Grasses are particularly pernicious, if you’ll forgive the alliteration. A little while ago I gave a talk to a local woodlot association, where I was tackled about my use of glyphosate. “Why” I was asked “didn’t I mulch my trees?” Laziness, I suppose, though economists would probably interpret that as awareness of an infinitely low return to labour were I to do so, because I am not inherently lazy. The difficulty lies in the number of trees we have – we would have to mechanize the mulching process if we wanted not to have to work around the clock. Let me first, though, defend myself to the purists. In the early years, I did work around the clock, using a Honduran sickle (don’t ask right now) to control grass and weed growth manually. The trees didn’t grow. I also used plastic brush mats (inorganic mulch, if you like). The trees didn’t grow. So I bought myself a backpack sprayer, having seen the local CN maintenance crews spot-spraying for brush control along the local railroad track. I even bought the same model. The trees began to grow. By this time I had 1,500 trees, and found that I could spot-spray the lot in one good day’s hard work. Much better than bending over for several days with my old Honduran friend in hand, without result. The trick was to lower a piece of old 15cm stovepipe over each tree, for protection, while whipping the spray-wand around it. That tells you how undeveloped they were, because even a 50cm seedling can develop enough branches that you’d need a 50cm diameter stovepipe if you were to lower it over the tree quickly.

So the trees grew, and outgrew my technology. Then I picked up an old orchard sprayer from my local machinery dealer, and gravitated to band spraying (switching a tractor-mounted sprayer off between trees requires more dexterity, accuracy, and even controls, than I had, and doesn’t do the machinery much good). Though by this time the trees were getting to the point where a continuously clear band was only going to be good for expanding root growth, so I didn’t begrudge them that extra bit of herbicide. They grew wonderfully. So the lesson in this is that herbicides can be very useful and, if the sums were done, probably far more economical (let alone effective) than mulching. And in case you believe ‘herbicide’ and ‘conservation’ shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath, or the same sentence, just try g**gling them together, e.g. http://www.appliedeco.org/conservation-research/prairie-restoration-research, or http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol7/iss1/art6/
So, let me finish this post off with a couple of photos. The first is courtesy of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and dates from the early 1980s when a lot of work on hardwoods, especially black walnut, was being done. The photo shows the contrast in tree growth between herbicide (background) and no herbicide (foreground). When I find the booklet (it’s lost in my files somewhere) I will confirm the herbicide (simazine, I think) and the agency involved (Canadian Forest Service, I think). Fred Van Althen was the principal researcher. I think the photo speaks for itself about grass effects on black walnut.

The second is from our farm, and dates from 2004. Two years before, these trees were very much like the trees in the foreground of the previous photo. Glyphosate sprayed at the recommended level of active ingredient per hectare gave the grass control you can see here. Some of these trees nutted in 2004, which does not speak to an immediate herbicide effect but rather that the previous spot-spraying was itself effective. Now, I only spray seedling trees under establishment (mainly the selection blocks). My current weapon of choice (not used in this photo) is an ATV-mounted Enviromist Sprayer, with a 60cm spraydome. I can now do hectares of plantation per hour.

Let me mention some of the other consequences of vegetation, mainly grass, control with herbicide. As I generally spray only once, in the spring, there has been an interesting proliferation of broad-leaved species, with an accompanying increase in insect and bird diversity. Note that I say broad-leaved ‘species’, rather than ‘weeds’. The definition of a weed is ‘any plant growing where you do not want it to grow’. While I was quite surprised by the influx of milkweed, and of some other species, it is only ragweed that I truly dislike. Ragweed, apart from its noxious asthmatic-inducing pollen, is a plant with no redeeming features, and can be as oppressive to young black walnut as grass can be. So a second application may be called for. The remaining vegetational diversity I value, as it co-exists with the trees without direct competition. As the trees grow they quickly shade the other species, and I am now mowing beneath them as some grass has returned. There seems to be no juglone intolerance in these broad-leaved species, as I see no major species-difference where they grow between fields with trees or without.

As I walk the walnuts - 5

2008-04-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

As I walk the walnuts, either measuring pole or diameter calipers in hand, as it is measuring season, there are things that I notice. It is spring here, though the trees are one of the last to emerge from their winter solitude. When I am measuring height, I often look beyond the tip of the tree to a solitary bird well up in the sky making use of the currents that there must be at that altitude. Not geese, for they announce their passing well in advance, and clear the sky by force. No, these are occasional hawks or gulls that catch my eye and make me pause and wish that I had their talents for silent passage. Where are they going, and who awaits them?

When I am measuring diameter (I measure height and diameter separately, because I struggle to carry all those bits and pieces at one time) my gaze is closer to the ground. Why, I wonder, is there an apparent association between ants and black walnut trees? In my field where I collect most of this data, there is commonly one ant hill between 50cm to 1m from the base of the tree, in the grass-free band along the rows of trees. I frequently find the ants cruising the tree, though sometimes stationary on the terminal buds, and I can only surmise that they are feeding on the sap I sometimes see escaping from larger wounds. But I am amazed that the rule is one hill per tree, where I find them (not all trees have anthills). If this were not a deliberate association, I would expect to find anthills at random distances between pairs of trees, and perhaps in multiples, but this is not the case. Who passes the message on? This is my tree, mate, go and find your own (actually ‘ours’ given that ants are social insects, but ‘ours’ doesn’t mean ‘yours too’). Perhaps there is a scent trail at the base of the tree which says just that: Trespass at your peril!

Applied Research Day

2008-04-11T16:02:00.001-07:00

Yesterday (10 April 2008) was Applied Research Day at Algonquin College, where student teams showed off the technology they worked on during their final year at the college. Front and centre was Black Walnut Team 3, exhibiting the current iterations of the harvester and cracker/separator (shown in the picture), and taking up the largest footprint in the exhibition hall by far. I say Team 3, because this is the third annual iteration of students to work on machinery development. It has been a pleasure to work with each team, each bringing its own assortment of personalities and skills, working towards our goal of cost-effective farm-scale technology for black walnut nut production (I think we’ve been a reasonable partner, because I frequently hear the words ‘patient’ and ‘supportive’ applied in our direction; from our perspective these are just elements of our commitment to the emergence of a regional nut production industry).

This event marks a milestone: the completion at the College of work on the cracker/separator, and the production of an experimental harvester which we can begin to analyze practically, i.e. under field conditions, before embarking on a ‘second generation’ model. Both units will come to the farm over the summer and be exhaustively tested. Only the harvester will feed back into Team 4’s program; the cracker/separator will be taken up by the members of Team 2 who demonstrated the first proof of concept to the NNGA last year. They will work with us at the farm to define efficiency, where cost savings in manufacture can be made, and to complete (by the end of the year) the construction of the first five units which we hope to offer to the market. Bookmark this post!

As I walk the walnuts - 4

2008-03-23T06:43:00.001-07:00

As I walk the walnuts, I reflect on the changes in bird life on the farm. Back in the early days, before the trees it was pretty sparse, though there were the annual visits from bobolinks, snow buntings, and red-winged blackbirds. Even the occasional kestrel, though this was a function of the hydro cable crossing the farm, and thus the prior existence of a superb scouting perch.

Those all still come, though in ways they didn’t before. The open areas of standing grass between the trees continue to attract the ground-nesters, and the trees themselves offer nesting sites for birds that wouldn’t have nested before. The red-winged blackbirds like to conduct their mating rituals on the aerial infrastructure the trees provide, making a good racket in the process. The kestrels are as likely to perch on the trees now, and it is wonderful to watch their young in their cart-wheeling antics up and down the rows in fall. This year, the snow-buntings may have had a harder time finding food in the open fields because a flock of a hundred or so took up semi-permanent residence in the few trees just outside the kitchen window, thus close to the bird feeder, and would come swooping in every half-hour or so, like a school of tropical fish flashing over a reef, all taking some sort of signal from one, feeding as a flock and not as individuals, taking flight together when someone called the time out. On those cold winter days these were my family, and I took great care to look out every hour or so, to make sure that there was sufficient seed for them, on the ground as much as on the table, as most would feed from that swept off the table either by their mates or by the blue jays that come in and shovel around, looking for the elusive peanut amongst all that other stuff.

Those spring frosts

2008-02-16T05:38:00.000-08:00

The bane of any tender fruit producer’s existence is a spring frost, occurring at bud emergence, and which, depending on severity, can play havoc with the rest of the year. I have noticed that at Lostwithiel Farm the critical period is the first week of May, and that if we can get through it with nothing less than 2^oC our course should set fair. What is the likelihood of this happening?

Environment Canada has just made it easy to search historic weather data for just such trends. I have deliberately chosen a dataset for a location slightly colder than ours (100km to the NE) as being more representative than data collected near Lake Ontario. I have graphed both date and temperature of the latest event in May of equal to or less than 2^oC over the nine-year period for which data is available at this station:

What we immediately see is a high probability of a damaging event occurring at least mid-month or later, and that we should not be surprised by any late spring frost. The 2002 event, a negative reading on the May 25^th, would have tested anyone’s resolve.

However, another factor to consider here is tree size. I collected nuts widely throughout our region in 2002, in fact, it seemed to be a bumper crop, for I have not seen the like since. Frosts generally occur as a result of a temperature inversion, and my hypothesis is that a tall tree has most of its canopy above the freezing zone. What I hope eventually to see, as our trees grow taller, is a declining effect of spring frosts on our own nut production. It is possible that many of the trees out in the landscape have been naturally selected for late flowering, though I don’t place much confidence in this. As far as I know, our first-planted trees are derived from nuts collected in our own seed zone. I actually believe lateness in bud emergence (and thus flowering) runs counter to the natural trend, and that earliness is of evolutionary advantage, but this is nothing we shall prove at the farm. What we will test is the heritability of date of bud break in the 25 lines selected this year, and see whether there is any consistent lateness between maternal and F1 lines.

The Triumph of the Tree

2008-02-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

John Stewart Collis, in his lyrical prose in the book of the same name, begins: We were nursed into life by trees. It is to trees that we owe the development of a physiology which made Man possible – that is to say, made conceptual thought possible. JSC was a remarkable writer, more a natural philosopher, a conscript to WW II who requested to spend it on the land, and who served in an agricultural brigade as a result (he’d actually served in the conventional sense in WW I, so one cannot question his motive). Out of this came The Worm Forgives The Plough (1973) among others, the first book of his I read. His writing had far more in common with the blogging style of today than with the writing of the time http://transitionculture.org/book-reviews/the-worm-forgives-the-plough-john-stewart-collis/). Again, in The Triumph of the Tree (1950), in fact it is not unlikely that in the course of the next few decades after we have had some really rude shocks – we will gradually return (this time on the plane of consciousness) into the Order of Nature, as one factor of the whole. If this happens, the turning point will undoubtedly have been this century. It seems that he was probably just a decade out, a remarkable insight into the perils facing us at a time when global warming was unknown. He is able to conjure questions enough to make a tree laugh, but in spite of its lyricism this is very somber reading, because, sixty years on, one can really see how much further out we now actually exist on the edge, and all, if we accept JSC’s arguments, because we lost our wonder (perhaps fear) of trees, and fled the Era of Mythology. I would like to think that the Era of Science could restore some of this wonder (perhaps respect).

(There have been various publishers of The Triumph of the Tree, starting with William Sloane Associates, and House of Stratus. Most are now extinct, but I see that the used book is still available through the Internet).

2007 Nut Report

2008-02-13T09:26:00.000-08:00

This week I completed the analysis of the nut samples from the trees selected for on-planting in 2007: I had collected all the nuts from these trees, cleaned and dried them in the usual way, then selected three nuts at random per tree for later cracking. These three-nut samples were then forced-air dried in paper bags at outdoor ambient temperatures for about six weeks before being transferred indoors, and left to stabilize in a warm, low-humidity environment for another six weeks. All nuts were cracked with a Master nutcracker. Nuts were cracked as replicates, i.e. one nut per tree was cracked until all trees were assessed, then the second nut in the same way, and finally the third nut from each tree. The order of cracking within each replicate was random.

Before presenting the results, it is important to note the characteristics of the 2007 harvest. A very late spring frost (May 19^th) caused widespread damage to emerging flowers. Nutting was considerably reduced when compared to 2006. Selection of trees was made initially on low expressed leaf-disease scores, then adjusted in total number for the number of trees that actually gave a sample big enough to ensure sufficient nuts for on-planting. The area selected for planting of this F1 material was big enough for a randomized complete block study of 25 lines replicated 11 times. The planted sample (two nuts per location) thus consisted of nuts from the 25 maternal trees with characteristics (traits) considered most interesting (low disease scores, high nut number in a low nut number year, precocious trees – nutting at a small size/young age, range in nut sizes, etc). As no cracking analysis had been done to date on-farm, there was no prior knowledge of kernel weights or percentages.

The mean nut weight (NW) was 15g, and the mean kernel weight was 2.5g. By themselves, these values don’t tell much about the sample. The following histogram indicates the distribution of KW. NW ranged from about 7.6g to 18.8g. Kernel weight (KW) similarly ranged from 1.7g to 3.9g (line 1-1-17), though NW and KW are not directly correlated, i.e. lowest NW did not exhibit lowest KW, nor highest NW the highest KW.

But I’ve left the best to last. The sample showed a mean kernel percentage (K%) of 22%, calculated from KW as a percentage of NW. Also shown as a histogram, we can see that almost 25% of the trees showed a very respectable K% of 25% or more. The highest recorded K% was over 28% (line 1-9-23). This was far higher than I expected to find in this sample. I had expected a mean K% of about 20%, with perhaps the top line approaching 24%. These expectations are the results of earlier surveys I’ve done off-farm where I’ve had many more trees in the sample, and mainly where lowest K% was far lower ( ~12%). But it is actually quite exciting to find 28% kernel, because the probability is that we shall eventually find higher values. Again, K% is not correlated with NW or KW. In fact, the highest K% was found in a line with mean NW <10g,>

If we complete the analysis by calculating kernel yield per tree (KY, by multiplying KW by the number of nuts per tree; no of nut data is lacking for two lines), we once again find a re-ordering of lines. Line 1-1-14 yielded 1.34kg of kernel. The tree with highest KW (1-1-17) yielded 0.45kg, and the tree with highest K% (1-9-23) yielded 0.32kg. As economic yield will be more closely related to KY, the other parameters of KW and K% become less critical in our selection focus.

Grafted named selections in the US have yielded K% of up to 39%. Our experience in 2007 indicated the existence on the farm of lines of up to about 75% of this potential K% in common walnut obtained from our own seed zone. Far less has been published on nut yield per tree. We have planted an F1 trial of these 25 lines to examine heritability in K%, and the other traits measured on each tree. Almost all of the 25 lines had good disease expression scores (lower incidence); it will be interesting to observe heritability in this trait.

The premise underlying our biomass approach to nut production is that there will be enough trees in the overall population with traits of sufficient value to exploit multiple income streams. To date we can characterize these streams as kernel, shell, and sequestered carbon. We have no intention of focusing on a single trait in our selection program but have yet to construct the functional model which will guide us in optimizing multiple selection criteria. All in all, our economic yield is likely to be defined by how we market the different carbon streams partitioned by the tree. So this is an interim report.

A bit more about cultivars

2008-02-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

I should probably qualify my last remarks, because there are undoubtedly some mid-Westerners getting a bit hot under the collar right now. What I think it is important to add is ‘especially at the northern fringe of the species range’, i.e. where I am, where graft unions are very prone to winter damage, ultimately leaving one with an expensive tree growing from the rootstock (which, by the way, will have been a common black walnut seedling grown from a nut, sacrificed for the greater good of the scion). This, also by the way, is the Third Law of Nut Production: Rootstocks Make Very Expensive Nut Trees. The following are the First and Second Laws: Use Selected and Named Varieties, and, Grafted Trees Don’t Like Marginal Conditions. If you read them in order, there is a modicum of sense to them. So, no matter how good your soils are, if you live in the same climate zone as we do, you can take the conditions as marginal.

Now let’s address the energetics of nut production. A grafted tree will produce nuts at a very young age, because it grows from a scion which is already mature wood. A common black walnut will take some years to reach physiological maturity, and the only way to speed that up is to create the best growing conditions possible so that the tree grows as fast as it can. Still you will not know when to expect nutting, but my goal is to minimize this period (more on this later). But we must still deal with the issue of the tree’s ability to fill all those nuts it is going to produce, which will be related to the canopy size for the number of nutting sites within it. A young grafted tree will still not produce an ‘economic’ yield, because it will be too small to do so. Pushing a tree to nut at an early age creates the risk that too much energy will go into multiple shell production, leaving insufficient resources for the kernels to fill them. Cumulative solar energy incident on the canopy declines with increasing latitude, so, once again, there is a risk that a tree genetically driven to produce large quantities of nuts, will, at our latitude, leave those shells empty. The tree’s root system grows in tandem with its above-ground structure. Resource capture by the roots is also important here, as the tree requires nutrients to produce fruit. Small root systems will not sustain heavy nut loads.

So, all in all, my original post was fair even if it wasn’t fully explanatory. Just remember the three Laws of Nut Production, and make your choice.

As I walk the walnuts - 3

2008-02-03T12:34:00.000-08:00

As I walk the walnuts, or more accurately, pass through on snowshoes, as we had about 25cm of the white stuff on Friday, I look ahead to the coming season and wonder what’s in store for us. Maple syrup production has turned into a big gamble, because of early sap flow when the temperature spikes, and a friend of mine wonders whether it will ever be worthwhile tapping the trees again. He’s slowly building a new sugarhouse, in case he becomes so inclined, but it doesn’t look as though it will be worth his time hurrying this year. The corollary for a nut producer is those aggravating late frosts in May, which can sweep the trees clean of the emerging flowers. So far, the walnuts will take 2^oC up until the end of the first week of May, after which it is a complete gamble. Last year, a frost on May 19^th did widespread damage, though it didn’t come close to the two consecutive nights of -5^oC we recorded about the 8^th May in 2005.

Common sense says we need to track the phenology of flowering, because later emerging flowers stand a better chance of missing the frost. However, this is a laborious task, which would require scoring all our trees. Well, you say, you already score for disease expression and nut production, why not phenology? Well, I say, if a tree bears nuts after a frost in the critical period I mentioned, there’s a good chance it did so because it flowers late, i.e. I’d rather score the result than the cause. However, now that I have this indicator, it would be a good idea to track the phenology of flowering on the 25 trees from which I on-planted last fall. My hypothesis is that all valuable traits have at least some measurable heritability from the maternal line, and that I need to determine whether the average expression of each trait in the population of offspring is at least marginally better than that same trait expressed in the maternal tree, i.e. that I can make genetic gain by selecting under our conditions for nut yield, kernel quality or whatever other characteristic I believe valuable. However, it takes that first effort at on-farm selection to know whether it is worthwhile (equivalent to concentrating beneficial characteristics in a smaller population than the one from which the selections originated).

To cultivar or not to cultivar?

2008-01-29T06:20:00.000-08:00

I am prompted to write this post because I recently received a form inviting me to list the cultivars I grow on a web-based North American inventory of nut tree cultivars. If I grew any, I’d be delighted to do so. However, I don’t, and if it’s not clear anywhere else in this blog why not, here goes…

A ‘cultivar’ is short form for cultivated variety, and is standard speak among those who’ve bred something new by crossing plants, or who’ve identified something in the wild they’d like to put a name to because of some useful characteristic – in the case of black walnuts it is so far the latter, generally related to kernel content or crackability of the nut, and because maintenance of that cultivar is wholly dependent on grafting (black walnut cuttings will not root). In such a case, the name gives that particular genotype an identity, e.g. Emma K.

Now, let me be unkind here and say that I believe the naming of black walnut cultivars has only been of benefit to the horticultural nursery industry. It has resulted in the sale of young trees at about $20-30, whereas a forest nursery will sell common (i.e. non-cultivar or unnamed) seedlings for $1-2 apiece if you buy them in bulk. The lads in Missouri* have roughly calculated that planting cultivars can bring a nine-fold advantage in nut yield over nut production from plantations of the best common trees (if you knew which they were). My response to this is that the planting stock will still be cheaper if you plant nine times as many common trees. There may still, of course be a yield disadvantage because the potential productivity of the common trees won’t be known for some years, but then again I could say the same of any cultivar, if it is planted at a site far removed from its point of origin, where growing conditions may be significantly different.

Why do I make that unkind statement? Because, and unlike the cases of the pecan and Persian (aka Californian) walnut ‘industries’, fully based on named cultivars, there is no farm-based equivalent in the black walnut. The only commercial equivalent (i.e. black walnut example) is Hammons, also based in Missouri, that survives on the annual US wild harvest (thousands of tons) . The reasons for this lack of a farm-based equivalent are various, and I shan’t go into them here and now, but one good one is that nursery stock is too expensive for the return on investment when the principal nut-buyer (already mentioned) buys at or near to equivalent-to-wild prices.

So, no cultivars, just 2,500 common trees, building the natural capital to let me exploit various income streams, and at least $45,000 of avoided-costs in the bank.

As a footnote, in 2007 I made my first selections from the trees that nutted, and am now growing 25 F1 lines from seed. These will not be clones of the mother trees, as grafted cuttings would be, but until someone has done the science that convinces me that $18 ($20-$2: I could have said $29, or $30-$1) will make up for the reduction in heritability of the productive characteristics important to me as a grower in an industry which does not yet put value on any key trait of named cultivars, I prefer to select for traits which I have observed as useful here at the farm, rather than risk capital on Emma K, when it could turn out to be Humpty Dumpty

Actually, I have some F1 Emma K also…..

*Jones, J., J.Haines, G.E. Garrett, and E. F. Loewenstein, 1993. Genetic Selection and Fertilization Provide Increased Nut Production under Walnut-Agroforestry Management. Proc. Third North American Agroforestry Conf., 16-18 Aug 1993.

Carbon tax

2008-01-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

Such is the ubiquity of CNN that I was able to see, quite by chance, Jonathan Mann’s post-Nobel Oslo interview with Al Gore and Rajendra Pauchari, from the northern Ghanaian savanna. Now there is a bleak landscape, already so ravaged by human action that it is already almost the post-apocalyptic climate change scenario predicted for later this century.

Of the many things they said, one stood out: carbon tax. The way it was mentioned it came across as a functional alternative to an income tax. The carbon tax would operate as a consumption tax, a tool appropriate, I think, to the unsustainable use of natural resources driving most economies at the beginning of the 21^st century. There is a lot of hype about the concept of a consumption tax, with many commentators expressing their objection to the idea. Perhaps, were it just a political alternative to current tax systems, and unlinked to the coming carbon crisis, their arguments might hold more weight. Unfortunately, this is just a rich people’s argument. Looking out the window towards the interior of an Africa which has already given them much of that wealth I see no alternative. Starvation is not far away, and a carbon tax is probably the only mechanism whose outcome on consumption could keep it at bay. You can be sure CNN will show Africans their starvation in all its glory. Hello, again, Ethiopia.

As I walk the walnuts - 2

2007-12-04T09:32:00.000-08:00

As I walk the walnuts, and given that there are about 2,500 of them it can take quite a while, a discussion ensues: morning wally, g’day wally, looking good wally, etc., etc. My wife will be happy to know that no words are actually spoken, but the occasional murmur after visual inspection is unavoidable. Kahlua occasionally intrudes, with notice that she has uncovered something edible, but generally it is a peaceful intrusion, a thrust of wet nose into the hand. She knows my path, and will meet me at the end of it.

So, to answer your unspoken question, do I prune the trees at all? Well, yes, but probably not in the way you think. Of the 2,500, there are about 1,800 that receive an inspection, generally in March, with a rapid appraisal of growth and form, and perhaps a cut here and a cut there. All inspection is from the top downwards, with most attention paid to serious clefts which could prejudice future strength. I have learned not to worry too much about lack of obvious leaders. The tree has its own means of assigning leadership among its myriad of branches, and it is rare to find instances of consistent competing dominance which could seriously deform a tree. If there is a cleft I don’t like, it is a two-year job to remove it, to avoid a major wound before carbohydrate resources have been reassigned within the tree, increasing relative deposition rate on the full branch remaining. Regular cuts are made above the collar, and the edges of the cut surface trimmed so that as the new cambial layer slowly engulfs the wound it does not have to negotiate right-angled bends in surfaces. A trimmed cut will be covered within half the time, or even less (thank you, Malcolm Olson).

The remaining 700 are still small enough that pruning is a process of early formation, to avoid problems that would make correction more difficult later. But even then a tree is best left alone, with only minor corrections. Splinting or taping to correct obtuse forks is the only exception.

Stay away from bottom-up pruning. It would satisfy the College of Foresters, but it will leave you with fewer future options, reduced growth, and a tendency not to address higher canopy concerns. Let the tree fill all the space it can.

Cooked spinach

2007-12-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

The New Scientist has just published an article (A forest is born, Vol 196, no 2631, p38, 24 Nov 2007; www.newscientist.com) which addresses the evolutionary emergence of large-leaved trees, which can be said to be the majority of deciduous trees we see today (my northern hemispheric interpretation). The important point to note is that while large leaves are very efficient at photosynthesis, they are very difficult to keep cool, which they manage by release of water vapour through the stomata. Apparently, the number of stomata is regulated by a genetic switch in response to CO₂ levels in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, it appears that this is an inverse relationship: the number of stomata decrease as the CO₂ level rises. Extrapolating from this article, it may just be that we are about to render our forest canopies just so much cooked spinach.

Equally interesting is that the article notes that it was plants’ rooting ability (and thus underground C₂ sequestration) which brought about the climatic upheaval which allowed large leaves to evolve.

Perhaps disappointingly, from my point of view at least, is that the article does not suggest a temperature at which declining numbers of stomata will cause “spinach-fall”, nor whether the CO₂ levels we are expected to approach this century will cause stomatal numbers to approach this critical point. Heat and aridity certainly cause leaf drop in our young walnuts, but perhaps I have been misinterpreting the cause. The leaflets are typically yellow at the point they fall. Were they still green, I might be able to provide the data required for the “spinach” test.

Shop - 1

2007-11-22T06:52:00.000-08:00

Design and development of product lines goes on apace, so for those of you wondering whether we will ever get round to announcing opening of the farm shop, here is some insight into what we are working on. There is a gradual confluence of development, and all of the nuts we have harvested to date are stored on the farm for machinery testing purposes. We will update this post regularly as more detail becomes available, so you may want to bookmark it. Until the on-line shop is open, please email for more detail. We will not ship NTTPs into the US.

Non-Timber Tree Products (NTTPs)

Seed

Kernel
Shell
Husk - We have a limited amount of air-dried husk currently available for dyers and other craft purposes.

Timber Tree Products (TTPs)

Wood blanks for joinery/turning
Carbon

Non-Tree Products (NTPs)

Datafiles
Designs
Machines
Biomass Nut Book
Carbon club memberships

As I walk the walnuts - 1

2007-11-21T07:27:00.000-08:00

As I walk the walnuts, which I do twice a day when I’m on the farm, Kahlua with her nose in the grass somewhere, I remember comments from some visitors who seem offended by my approach to tree management: you really should get rid of those lower branches. Not everyone tells me why – some assume that I’ll get the message that they know better than I do. Others clearly come from a forestry background, where any branch on the first 30’ of bole is not only an eyesore but probably also an offence punishable by excommunication from the College of Foresters. None actually asks me why I’ve left so many branches.

My purpose is actually to let the trees fill their space. Removal of a branch cannot be undone. Branches subtend the tree’s functional interface with its habitat. Remove a branch and you have reduced that interface. So what?

The conical growth rule discussed earlier ‘builds’ on one simple principal, relative growth, i.e. that growth is a consequence of growth accumulated before. Remove some of that growth and you immediately reduce the tree’s future potential growth. It affects the leaf area the tree can subtend, and the surface area upon which it can lay down the present year’s captured carbon. An open- grown tree explores every opportunity to push its tendrils out into unoccupied territory, and if I leave those lower branches where they are that territory is at my height, where I can see and feel the tree’s features, its health, and thus , in purely practical terms, its productivity.

Of tree equivalents and methane

2007-11-20T07:05:00.000-08:00

I am not the only one using tree equivalents to account for carbon offsetting. However, the term clearly means different things to different people. If you enter it as a Google search term, you’ll raise all sorts of esoteric stuff, mainly to do with analytical methods in economics, but here’s an interesting analysis from TransCanada Pipelines (http://www.methanetomarkets.org/events/2005/all/docs/cormack.pdf)

TransCanada Pipelines
Emissions saved in no of tree equivalents
Year	2002	2003
tonnes methane	191,000	223,000
tree equivalents	232,000	270,630
tonnes per tree (CO2E)	1.2	1.2

TransCanada is trying to show what impacts the prevention of emissions (basically leaks) from its pipelines will have. It assigns a factor of 1.2 t of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂E, different from the straight carbon, C_2, that I have been using – the factor would be 0.32 t C₂) to a tree, and claims that it has prevented emissions equivalent to hundreds of thousands of trees. I am assuming that the analysis attempts to quantify the offset tree planting program it would have to launch if it were to address emissions by this means.

If I have tried to do anything so far, it is to indicate that emissions offsetting must be viewed from the point of view of annual increments in sequestration per tree. A tree does not go from zero to 1 t of sequestration of CO₂E in a single year. Perhaps TransCanada wouldn’t actually plant, and has identified a stand of actively growing larger trees somewhere in the tropics of Costa Rica which have been assessed as capable of sequestering this much annually, and it is these which it has selected for its sequestration factor. This analysis is no better than that of my fuel-dump story yesterday. What is essential is to understand that the process of carbon sequestration in trees builds upon that which has already occurred (there is something called a relative growth rate), and that conditions remain such that the trees can grow actively for the period during which sequestration is being sought. In the early years, sequestration is in the order of kg, not t, per tree.

Methane has a much higher (21 times) global warming potential (GWP) than CO_2,so it is not entirely clear to me that the factor of 1.2 t is actually in CO₂E. This is actually 1.2 t of methane, equivalent to 25.2 t of CO₂in global warming terms, so if I’ve done my calculations correctly, TransCanada’s tree equivalents should more honestly be numbered in the millions. These data were shown in a Powerpoint presentation, so I’m assuming that if no-one questioned the concepts espoused, they all went home feeling warm and fuzzy.

Of tree planting and offset programmes

2007-11-18T06:29:00.000-08:00

These posts should tell you one thing - that planting trees is not the immediate solution to offsetting carbon emissions. I remember seeing an article datelined Australia, which indicated that planners of a recent major celebration in Sydney were going to offset the consequences of a spectacular fuel dump by a military jet (and the fuel's ensuing conflagration) by planting 300 trees somewhere. Given the droughts and fires in Australia, my suspicion is that if the trees were ever planted they are probably already dead. But I'd also be intrigued to know who is auditing or will audit this offset, otherwise it is just as much hot air as was left by the jet in its wake. In the case of our example, it would take close to 15 years to reach the point where the number of trees required to offset that fuel dump did not have a lot of zeros attached. In short, it takes an already-planted well-developed tree growing rapidly to offer a short-term outcome. This is why avoiding emissions has to be the first step, and tree planting an associated initiative to get as much of the free atmospheric carbon dioxide as possible fixed back into some longer-term natural form that enhances biological capital, and, hopefully, our appreciation for the aesthetic values of landscapes rather than subdivisions. I think those Aussie planners were more concerned for simple and immediate pleasures ('aaah'), and felt no personal or professional responsibility for the display's effects. I do not actually know whether the display went ahead. I do know that they should be planning to plant trees now for the probability of any such display (or any other flyby, even in Iraq) 15 years from now. Otherwise, don't do it.

So, how many trees to a tank of gas?

2007-11-15T09:44:00.000-08:00

Black Walnut Carbon Sequestration, Field 3 Lostwithiel Farm
	2003	2004	2005	2006
Average C per tree (kg)	2.37	3.54	5.56	6.98
Annual C increment per tree (kg)		1.16	2.02	1.42
Annual C increment per tree (%)		49.0%	57.1%	25.6%
Litres of gasoline equivalent in increment (l)		1.88	3.26	2.29
Tree equivalents per 50 litre tank of gas		26.64	15.35	21.82

What I really mean by this is, how many trees of the average age and size of the trees we have in Field 3 will it take to sequester the carbon emitted by combustion of 50 litres of gas? The answer is, currently, about 20. You can see that the trees are growing quite rapidly, increasing in sequestering capacity by about 50% per year (except 2006, which was very wet and cool, and apparently not favourable for growth; a substantially thinner cone was laid down in 2006 than 2005. We won't know about 2007 until we take measurements while the trees are still dormant in April 2008). Annual estimates are made on the increment in sequestration capacity, and not on the basis of total carbon fixed.

Of cones and hemispheres

2007-11-15T08:05:00.000-08:00

Here is a visualization of the annual superimposition of cones which represents tree growth (lowest/earliest cones are not shown). We can extend this a little further. At the apex of each cone are laid down the buds which will grow into our new twigs next year. These grow in the same manner, expanding into the branches which subtend our expanding canopy (shown here as successive approximately-hemispherical helmets). The relationships which govern our tree’s physical development (which make a black walnut look like a black walnut, or a Norfolk Island Pine like a Norfolk Island Pine) are under close genetic control, and it is basically the annual variability in the environment which results in our tree in any given year growing a little bit more or a little bit less.

Of straight lines and carbon

2007-11-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

At the heart of our understanding of the tree’s storage of carbon (beyond the physiological processes) is the discovery that the black walnut trunk from ground to tip grows as a very slender cone. How did we discover this? We take measurements annually of tree height (H) and diameter at breast height (DBH, a forester’s standard; for us 1.35m from the ground) of the 575 trees in Field 3. All trees grow at different rates, so what we were measuring was diameter (D) at 575 different distances from the tree’s tip (DFT) on our ‘average’ tree. When we plotted D against DFT on graph paper, we saw a straight line. Successive annual measurements of H and DBH, converted to D and DFT, of the same 575 trees gave us the same straight line. ‘Same’ in this regard means parallel to the lines for previous years, but with very small differences in lateral distance between lines. Using trigonometry, we can calculate the tip angle of our cone, which turns out to be very close to 1.5^o. In other words, the tree, every year, lays a new cone down on top of the previous one, of uniform thickness at all points along the length (actually height) of that cone.

Farm Carbon Budget - credit

2007-11-15T05:46:00.000-08:00

Lostwithiel Farm, Annual carbon budget (t)
Year	2006
Credit
Item	unit	amount	C/unit (t)	total C (t)

Black walnut, field 1	ha	3.02	0.33	1.00
Black walnut, field 2	ha
Black walnut, field 3	ha	1.92	0.39	0.75
Black walnut, F1 blocks	ha
Black walnut, barn field	ha
Hybrid poplar, clone NM6	ha
Hybrid poplar, clone D34	ha
Hybrid polar, clone D182	ha
Native bush	ha

Total				1.75

The credit side of the ledger shows sequestration of 1.75 tonnes in two of our young plantations in 2006, for a negative balance of about 2.23 tonnes. As I noted earlier, we will quantify the other items on the credit side and deliver a truer picture of overall sequestration and benefit. The principal difference between Fields 1 and 3 is plantation density. Trees in Field 1 are at 6m x 12m (20' x 40') spacing and in Field 3 at 6m x 6m (20' x 20'). Field 1 trees are slightly older on average than those in Field 3. We have less data on Field 1, and estimates are based on similar relative expansion of biomass as in Field 3 (these data are slightly different from those posted this morning – mea culpa).

Farm Carbon Budget - debit

2007-11-15T05:39:00.000-08:00

Lostwithiel Farm, Annual carbon budget (t)
Year	2006
Debit
Item	unit	amount	C/unit (kg)	total C (t)

Vehicle fuel (gas)	litres	2500	0.62	1.55
Tractor fuel (diesel)	litres	200	0.73	0.15
House, propane	litres	500	0.62	0.31
All buildings, electricity	kwh	17000	0.12	1.97

Total				3.98

My attempts to make available the spreadsheet linked to an earlier post were unsuccessful. Instead, I found that I could cut and paste from the original Excel file. Here is the debit side of the ledger. We are emitting close to 4 tonnes of carbon (not carbon dioxide) in all energy expenditures linked to the farm.

So, how many generations?

2007-11-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

Another doughty question. Generation time in our black walnuts is somewhere from 8-15 years, depending on the individual. This is not necessarily the same as the age at which a tree produces a its first nut. The generation time requires that we, as service managers, have enough time to identify and quantify key abilities. If a tree first fruits at six years of age, it is likely to be year 8 or 9 before we have enough data to decide whether we want to add its offspring to our biomass plantations. The nuts will not germinate before the subsequent year. Some trees are not producing fruit even at 15 years of age. Thus, while they are providing environmental services, unless we can identify an income stream independent of fruit production, these less prolific trees are unlikely to add to the farm's bottom-line. As we use a planting layout which requires that some trees be removed to leave room for others to grow, it is more likely to be these less-prolific trees which pay the ultimate price. The first identification of mother trees for on-planting was made in 2007. Offspring will germinate next year. From here on while those offspring will not be evaluated for several years, we will continue to on-plant from useful mother trees, according to several criteria.

Inter-generational assets - 3

2007-11-14T09:47:00.000-08:00

Let's put a bit of a different spin on this. Under Biomass Nut Production (BNP) I gave a definition. But I neglected to take it as far as it must go. If I use non-select material, my first generation of trees (the ones I plant) will have some with useful characteristics (or abilities, to use the service concept), and others with less useful ones. What I want to do is try and increase the gene frequency of the trees with useful abilities in my total population. Unlike the orchard of selected grafts, which I noted was the dominant model, I am not starting with an 'end'-product. By means of generational selection I am looking for the optimal outcome on my particular site (one of the 'land' concepts). In overall terms, I am trying to enhance the overall service value of my inter-generational asset (to me, the population) using the medium the tree gives me to do it - the fruit. In that the genetic content of the fruit (hidden away in the chromosomes of the kernel) allows me to pass on recombined abilities of the known mother and unknown father trees, it is in itself an inter-generational asset. On average, I wish the abilities of the offspring to be enhanced vis-a-vis the known abilities of the mother tree. Only by sowing a large number of nuts from the mother tree can I identify whether the ability(ies) of interest is (are) heritable, that is to say, some quantifiable level of continuity in ability from the mother tree to its offspring. As the black walnut is wind pollinated, the father remains unknown, not unlike, some would say, outcomes of male behaviour in our species.

Inter-generational assets - 2

2007-11-14T08:51:00.000-08:00

Assets -1 was important to placing the rest of this in context. My friend's maple is an example of such an asset - it provides services and, to him, has aesthetic value. So, really, does the beaver - he just doesn't know it. And that is the crux of the matter. How do we inculcate this sense of value of invisible processes, and of those silent sentinels of the land which have stood across their own generations passing on carbon at rates and by pathways which we can only imagine? Farmers have spent centuries removing trees from the landscape, an appropriation of environmental processes in order to feed their own families and ours. None of us is innocent. How little hubris we show when we protest at further deforestation, given increasing populations, competing uses of physical space, and systems that demand ever-increasing economies of scale in order to stay in business. We are the asteroid.
You probably realize by now that I think a tree is the prime example of the physical expression of an inter-generational asset. A 50' tree is the outcome of years of metabolic and physiological processes grabbing and storing carbon in the physical form which we label black walnut, oak, Norfolk Island Pine, mahogany. A tree, by definition, given how long it takes to reach its final size, is inter-generational (ours, at least, though I'm not sure about elephants). Embarking, as we have, and my friend Rod Croskery has, on extensive planting of black walnut, has thrust us into thinking about generations and inculcation of values.

Inter-generational assets - 1

2007-11-14T06:59:00.000-08:00

At the heart of my discussion is the concept of inter-generational assets. These are assets that get passed down or across generations and contribute to the well-being of the recipients. They may be measured in financial terms, but if we are talking about environmental services then they are more likely to be sustained processes of some importance, such as carbon sequestration. Where I live there is much emphasis on private ownership of land, i.e. 'this' land is 'mine' (There is a very common sign on fences or in windows: Hands off Government, this land is mine). This is an indicator of the very simplistic idea of what we think we are, and what we think we control. 'This' land was here long before 'me', and will be long after. 'I' am therefore no more than a temporary occupant, one more sedentary than your average mammal, but one even more damaging than the beaver (I have a friend with a particular dislike of the beaver, for the damage that particular individuals of the species do to some of his young maples, which he views as inter-generational assets. 'What bloody use are they?' he asks of the beaver. After some thought the answer is clear - to make more beaver). We are beaver to the power of ten, given how we have stripped the land to grow something that we, rather than the beaver, can eat. Our agriculture has largely reduced environmental services from long-term cycles of naturally-sustainable processes to annual cycles of chemically-catalyzed rapid carbon flows, effluents, and other consequences which gradually impoverish the soil's ability to withstand our onslaught. We are really just stewards of the land, during our ownership, but what sort of stewardship is this? Another friend says 'We must leave this land in better condition than we found it'. That is a far better concept of stewardship, and one which can lead to the asking of the key question of 'What is land?' Land is not just the physical 20 acres of real estate. Land is processes, biodiversity, the functional interface between a gaseous atmosphere and a solid mineral base which sustains all beings (seas excepted) in their physical existence, and if we do not come to the realization that these sustain us as well, we are pretty well doomed. This 'land' therefore is the ultimate inter-generational asset.

Biomass Nut Production

2007-11-14T06:26:00.000-08:00

My definition is nut production based on extensive plantations (multiples of 1000) of non-select trees where the objective is the production of large volumes of low-cost fruit annually. How does this differ from other models? The majority of farm-scale black walnut nut production (in the US, where the main concentration of the species occurs) is focussed on grafted selections; these selections are clones of trees found in the landscape which generally satisfied the discoverer's criteria of high kernel percentage and supposed ease of cracking and separation. These named selections, because they are all nursery stock, are expensive ($20+ per tree). While I have no axe to grind with nursery-people needing to make a living, because my broader purpose is nut production as an outcome of an environmental service, I cannot see myself getting there by putting $20,000 into 1000 trees. I might instead buy 1000 $1 seedlings from a forest nursery and work with a genetically diverse stand more likely to throw out interesting specimens under our present climate change scenario. We have 2,500 trees on the farm.

IPM 2007

2007-11-13T09:11:00.000-08:00

The cracker and separator were displayed on the Croskery Farm during the 2007 International Ploughing Match, near Crosby. During five days of perfect weather about 2,000 people came by the display and were treated to an earful of explanation, and a sample of extracted nut meat. Interest was very high, with many not even knowing black walnuts were edible. It didn't take much arm-twisting to extract confessions of greater tastiness compared to those other nuts on the market. The five days put the machines through some solid testing and they are now back at Algonquin College for improvements.

Northern Nut Growers

2007-11-13T08:25:00.001-08:00

Members of the Northern Nut Growers Association in discussion with Algonquin students over the merits of the proofs of concept they demonstrated at the farm in August 2007. Cash offers were appreciated but refused!

Thanks to Gordon Wilkinson for the photo

Algonquin College

2007-11-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

Initial support from Canada’s National Research Council (IRAP) allowed us to undertake a State of The Technology Analysis, conducted for us by Brock University’s School of Business. The outcome of this confirmed what we thought: that we would probably have to develop most of the technology ourselves if we were to advance at the scale we wished. Identification of Algonquin College’s Mechanical Engineering Technology Program as the closest fit to our needs was almost immediately followed by the College’s acceptance of our proposal for collaboration. In fact, the College seized it with such fervour that there were almost immediately six teams of three students each working competitively on designs for a harvester, cracker and separator. This collaboration has gone through two complete cycles to date with the result that proofs of concept have been designed and built, and the third cycle of improvement is now underway. Significant funding for student time was obtained from Ontario’s Centres of Excellence. Two students won first prize for Community Colleges at OCE’s Innovations competition in July 2007 for their work on the separator.

Partnerships

2007-11-13T08:12:00.000-08:00

It became very clear that we would have to forge some strategic partnerships if we wanted to be successful in our long-term goal of bringing carbon-based black walnut non-timber products to market. We say’ carbon-based’ because everything we use from the tree is the result of carbon partitioning between roots, trunk, branches, leaves and fruits. From this point of view, placing nut-meats in the market is the end point of an environmental service – carbon sequestered and partitioned into that part of the fruit. There are some very basic practical issues around materials handling that any ‘service manager’ has to address: fruit harvesting, processing, component separation. These are technological issues, and as there was no relevant technology available in the market, we had to identify the means of developing it.

Carbon budget

2007-11-13T07:15:00.000-08:00

At the core of our Carbon Club will be the annual carbon budget, our calculation of the net annual sequestration over and above our own emissions. The preliminary estimate for 2006 can be seen at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pu_-I9PdU2MfJcOELwYmOOQ . There are still extensive areas of the farm unaccounted for, but which are contributing fully to an ongoing credit balance. What is important to note is that two of our very young (10-15 years) black walnut plantations have already put us in a credit situation (4.5t at the end of 2006). In these two, sequestration is expanding exponentially. As we perfect our quantitative methods, the other fields will be included. Our methods and assumptions will be verified independently before we launch the Club.

Carbon Club

2007-11-13T07:14:00.000-08:00

In these days of emerging offset schemes, where emitters are enabled to buy credits and thus keep emitting, too much is written about national and international schemes and not enough (nothing?) about schemes to which conscientious individuals or small organizations could apply. Through our work at the farm, we have developed an understanding of our own carbon emission and sequestration, and it is our plan to launch a farm-scale carbon club, where our net carbon credit is offered for sale annually. This would probably be as a component of club membership, which would have other associated benefits (e.g. free visits to an open house, nut products). The concept is still under development, as is the carbon price.

Environmental Services

2007-11-13T05:42:00.000-08:00

A simple definition would be services provided to recover some of the tremendous environmental costs incurred by society. Most of the environment has, until lately, been considered a free good, and that we (wherever we are) can continue to spend environmental capital as we like. I think Al Gore has more or less laid that assumption to rest. But what, apart from energy conservation as a means of reducing emissions, can we do? How could a landowner provide a service? Even more how could a landowner benefit financially from doing so? Doughty questions, those, and it may take a post or two to crack them.

Multiple Income Streams

2007-11-13T05:39:00.000-08:00

If you corner an avid nut-grower he (generally, not she) will be fixated on the amount of edible kernel he can produce and extract. This is his market product. It is peculiar that in a species where edible kernel tends to be the lowest percentage by weight of any of the fruit’s components (shell and husk are the others), and where larger industry has successfully commercialized walnut shell, that the smaller grower has not caught on to the importance of multiple income streams as counting towards the effective bottom line. If shell and husk are trashed without further thought, the bottom line starts to look pretty thin. My calculations have shown, for example, that if shell can be monetized to 25% of kernel value, the general proportions of each allow equal returns from a 20% kernel line if the shell can also be sold, and a ficticious 40% kernel line where the sole product is the kernel. I say fictitious, because I have only seen data confirming occasional 38-39% kernel percentage in some lines, with this value often being influenced by environmental factors.

And what if we could also sell environmental services? What are they? How could we calculate them? Perhaps that is for another post

Carbon balance

2007-11-12T11:10:00.001-08:00

Not just another nut website. Black walnut is our vehicle for working towards a low-carbon emissions farming system, with a net storage of carbon back in the landscape. We calculate our carbon balance annually, working out our methods, and as the data become increasingly available; where positive this will then become the basis for small-scale emissions trading through our Carbon Club. This will be launched later in 2008

Use of English

2007-11-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

If 'mastery' is the dominance of a particular skill, 'biomastery' is, for me, the successful outcome of 'biomassing' - the amassing of sufficient biomass, or carbon accrual (sequestration), in a low-energy intensity system so that the reversal of past carbon extraction is achieved by cumulative net annual accrual via the carbon balance within the farm limits. There is no point in expending vast amounts of fossil fuel to achieve this outcome. The objective is to achieve a positive annual balance as soon as possible in our annual ledger. The earlier we do it, the more successful we have been in matching our accrual strategy with our expenditures.

Here we go

2007-11-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

Please bear with me while I convert most of the website into a blog. It seems to me that this will improve functionality and purpose, which is the way I want to go.