The Family of the Tree - by Wendy

The Werewolves look terrific, as trees age they acquire shapes that prompt people with imagination to recognize many mythical and scary creatures, werewolves, maybe even dragons. The magic of trees contribute to many myths with the rustling of their leaves; their dark shadows at night and the caressing cool of their shade in the summer, not all myths are scary. Throughout time heavily timbered forests have been places of the genesis of many a mythical tale.

Some werewolves may be lying low around Wallace even today; after all it used to be a heavily timbered area, before being cleared for agricultural use in early European settlement. I understand the area around the walnut orchard was first planted to cherry orchards but a pest called the cherry slug, perhaps a small dragon, ruined the orchards many years ago. The cherry slugs still hang around and share the cherries with various local parrots. To my knowledge, although there were some Welsh people, there have been no reported dragons.

Walnut trees have been historically recorded as growing in a range of climatic zones over a number of continents and cultures, and like dogs and cats have long been friends of humans. Walnut trees contribute to human wellbeing in a number of ways, by providing a healthy food, and along with all trees, they to keep the air clean. Walnut trees live for hundreds of years producing nuts, oil and from the shell abrasives or mulch material, the dried husk can be used to make a permanent dye that does not need a fixative. Also, the longer the trees live the more valuable their timber becomes, which you may think creates a dilemma but given their great contribution and beauty its better to leave them to their natural time.

While walnut trees may look as though they are just standing around with nothing much to do while nuts grow on them and they clean up the air; they are in fact very busy trees. They have two growing periods a year, one in the spring, and one in February. The spring growing period could be the busiest time as they are growing new shoots to become branches with lovely new season leaves, they also grow very tiny flowers to catch the pollen from growing small catkin buds formed on the branches by the end of winter. In early spring after the wind borne pollen from the grown catkins fertilizes the flowers, nuts start to form covered with their dark green husk. Into the summer months the trees feed the nuts while the white moist kernel grows filling the then soft shell. The nuts grow larger, with the kernel filling and expanding the shell, until they are fully grown and the tree does not feed them any longer. The nuts then start to dry out to become a crunchy nut with a hard shell; the husk also dries out and peels back from the shell to help it dry in the heat and summer wind. Harvest time comes after the dried nuts start to fall, some fall a bit before the leaves, although on some trees nuts and leaves fall at much the same time.

In about February, when the nuts no longer needed feeding because they had finished growing even though they are still on the trees drying out, the trees start their second growth period. Again new branches and leaves grow to help support and feed the following years crop. Then by late autumn after the second growth has finished all the leaves turn yellow and brown as the trees take food back form their leaves to store in their roots ready to feed their spring growth and the start of next years crop. After harvest the trees are ready for winter with their only jobs being to rest and encourage the slow, almost imperceptible, catkin growth so they will be again ready to produce pollen by the spring.

So you see there is a lot happening in a walnut grove. All sorts of creatures appreciate the trees and while I know foxes, possums and a range of birds like to eat nuts, doubtless werewolves would love them also but they would have to work much harder to be scary if they lived on nuts that have just fallen to the ground for them. One does not have to be very scary to pick up nice sweet nuts for food. Other trees also have wonderful and busy lives; maybe they will also be creating places for werewolves, perhaps even dragons, to hide until they jump out and frighten us all.

Werewolf Walnuts

If we ever decided on getting a mascot or little sacred animal logo for our nuts and oil, I vote we go for the Werewolf. "Werewolf Walnuts" sounds great don't you think? I think it would be a good sales gimick aka marketing strategy. We could imbue the walnut, walnut oil and our products with the strong, powerful and mysterious qualities of the Werewolf (plus it's cool and funny) thus dragging the nut out of 18th century France (think: Silvio Riviere narrating Global Village on SBS weekdays @ 1800h *yawn*). And let's face it, Wellwood is just a little bit haunted.

I'm deadly serious. But as a joke Liv suggested "We're-wolf Walnuts" whereupon i thought later on down the track when it takes on in households across the globe looking to add some extra feng shui to their cooking, Werewolf Walnuts could even be translated into a satisfying pop culture slogan such as We're Wolfin' Walnuts!!!

I'm a big fan of Google Image search. There's some great images of potential Wellwood werewolves online. Which is your favourite? There's even one which looks like Fang's been Got!

Brainwave, (yes, another one.)

While I was working on a proposal to present a paper at this conference I suddenly had the brainwave -- WALNUT MARZIPAN. (Image on left is Einstein's brain).

The possibilities are endless, as are the calories. Think: instead of almond croissant - WALNUT croissants with walnut marzipan.

I found this recipe online:

Walnut Marzipan
Walnut marzipan makes a nice change it is more nutty and less sweet than almond marzipan. If I were making this with almonds I would blanch off the skins but never have with walnuts. I use the following recipe which was originally from the Good Housekeeping Institute.

You need a food processor. I grind the nuts in a Bamix stick blender processing bowl in 2 batches and then do the rest by hand but it is probably easier if you ahev a proper full size processor.

4 oz broken walnut meats
2 oz castor sugar
2 oz icing sugar plus extra for dusting
1 egg yolk

Put the broken walnuts into the food processor bowl and blitz until they are finely ground. Add the sugars and the egg yolk and blend unitl the mixture starts to bind together. Take out and knead until smooth.

This will make a "sausage" about 11" long to lay down the middle of the stollen dough.

(From The Fresh Loaf)

Chocolate Walnuts

Bottles

Dad - check out this site. Maybe we can buy small quantities of bottles to give as samples here.

What farm issues are you dealing with today?

At the Victoria Market

I went to the Victoria Market this morning. I've joyfully adopted the market as my primary food supplier. Although I've always found comfort in consumerism across the board, I began dreading every trip to Safeways. For a start, I can't stand their air conditioning. Susceptible to Raynaud's phenomenon, I dislike cold, enclosed spaces because I quickly lose circulation in my fingers. I'm not fond of their artificial lighting either. And their food is crap. Basically their environment is a reflection of their product: Safeways is a shrine to the artificial. And don't supermarkets have some kind of monopoly that is bad? Last year I heard Raj Patel the author of Stuffed and Starved speak at Melbourne Uni and the verdict was that supermarkets suck for a number of reasons. Given i hate going there, I thought, I won't go there. I was worried that switching to market shopping might be inefficient and expensive. I thought i might mindlessly be embracing a cliche on a whim. None of this has been true. I spend less time shopping, spend less money, get better produce and the whole experience is dynamic of course, but mostly pleasurable. Sometimes I linger and prod and absorb, socialise and experiment. Other times I'm in-and-out in the drop of a hat.

There's a shop in the delicatessen pavillion that stocks our walnut oil. Dad: what is the name of this stall? Does anyone stock our nuts at the market? We should start compiling a list of stockists in the side bar there -->

On Sundays there is a more tourist-y atmosphere at the market and not all the food stalls are open at the cheap end. I'm fond of the stall called Tomato City. When I remember I like to catch Cam Smith's food show Eat It on 102.7 RRR FM Sundays at 12. Cam does a market report with John from Tomato City. John has a very distinctive voice and knows everything about what produce is in season, what's the best to buy, how the farmers and growers are doing, and what and how to cook and eat things. He's a legend. Ages ago I dropped off some walnuts and walnut oil for Cam at RRR HQ. I should give some to John too. It would be great to solve the issue of getting some small sample bottles together. Today when i bought my Doncaster tomatoes he said "see you next time" so I'm proudly starting to feel like a real regular. I confessed to him that i'd been keeping the tomatoes in the fridge so they wouldn't spoil before i ate them and he advised me that they'd keep just as well in the pantry.

Speaking of great resources on the topic of fresh, seasonal, healthy food and cooking, check out Kathryn Elliot's blog Limes & Lycopene. And here's a direct link to her What's in Season in April post (ok, it's for Sydney but is there much of a difference between Melbourne and Sydney regarding seasonal produce?)

Naming our Walnut Orchard

Almost 20 years ago when we first acquired our land at Wallace, Victoria, Australia, it was a run-down potato farm. There was rubbish all over the place - including old car bodies, wire, broken bottles and discarded bits of farm equipment. We spent much of the first two years cleaning up this rubbish. Among the bits and pieces wa a metal stencil that said "Wellwood". Easy, this was the name of the old farm, it would be the name of the new orchard.

What we did not find out until years later was that the stencil was the name of a previous owner, William Ellwood. Here is a picture of his cottage.

Once upon a walnut

When my parents decided to start a walnut farm, from scratch, in an area which was unfamiliar, on what was practically a rubbish tip, with little prior knowledge about walnuts, and also build a big house there, and do some other farming too, i thought "huh?" I didn't doubt they could succeed - in that way in which children struggle to see their parents as fallible - my concerns were more base. Why walnuts? I'd never witnessed an abnormal interest in walnuts in the family. Neither hoarded nor hidden, there'd been no indication that walnuts were in anyway remarkable. Then all of a sudden i had a new little sister and her name was Walnut. My older sister and i exchanged disconcerted looks. The competition had changed. Now we were vying for attention with of all things, a walnut. A beach house, i had thought, might be suitable for this time in our lives. Or if dirt had to be involved - grapes i could understand and possibly even embrace myself. If nuts - why not pistachios? Or macadamias? If wood - why not Sandalwood? So i guess this was the encouraging voice i initially presented.

Part of my (non-Freudian) reluctance to become inspired by walnuts was that i didn't even like them myself. That dry, bitter grit akin to snacking on the foreign matter of a vacuum cleaner that was the reward for walnut-chewing. The way that bit of walnut skin would hang around in your mouth, long after closing hours. *Yawn*. The walnut failed to impress. I couldn't recall a time I had ever bought walnuts, cooked with them, ordered them. Not only had walnuts been completely useless to me, they were now appearing to become an enemy. An enemy within. I had to stop my parents embarking on this disastrous journey.

Writing this I can see why Dad gave me the nickname Positive Pete. I can't remember the first harvest we had, the first walnut i ate of a tree we'd grown. But i remember the criticism and the cynicism just disappeared. I'm still astounded by the fact that the walnuts we grow taste nothing like the nuts i grew up eating as walnuts. The rancid nuts, even just the dry, bitter nuts that most people know of as walnuts are nothing like our nuts. It's really weird. I feel like a missionary about our walnuts. And this in turn has a muzzling effect on me because i feel like attempts to speak about them are a part of a marketing strategy and are therefore rendered invalid. But the fact is that our walnuts are amazing.

My first post - goals for this blog

My parents have built a walnut farm and a business which sells walnuts and walnut oil. I'm always thinking of ways to help which involve me telling Mum or Dad what they're doing wrong or what they should be doing. Now i have the opportunity to do that publicly.

Actually my goals for this blog are about connecting the farm and our walnut business with the food industry and food culture in the broadest possible way. My idea is to simply to start talking about the things we love and that we're interested in that have some connection to food and to walnuts.

Like most families, we have an established food culture within our own family and each of the four of us have idiosyncratic eating habits of our own. Dad was born in Vienna and he likes schnitzels and dripping and bacon. If i'd have to guess his favourite dish with walnuts or walnut oil, I'd say he probably likes walnuts naturally out of the shell, maybe served with some good cheese and muscatel grapes. And he'd like a simple green salad with a walnut oil dressing. Dad? Did i get that right? How would you make the dressing?

My Mum (W) was born in Cowra, NSW. I think her eating habits have been influenced by being a mother and having to prepare food for the family for years, by increasingly having access to quality produce at home and abroad and connected to that, through her interest in history and culture. W likes fresh, clean flavours which combine a few interesting ingredients in a clever way. She is also good at discovering new things with her cooking, she's not one to get stuck in a rut. For instance she buys a pomegranate and uses it in a salad. Fearless, I tell you. If i had to guess W's favourite way to eat walnuts and walnut oil, I'd say that she'd like walnuts in a crumble and (like me) she'd like my Dad's chocolate-covered walnuts (they are amazing - I want them now). She's great at adding walnut oil to baked and stuffed vegetables in the oven. Are they her favourites or just the things she cooks for others? It's hard to tell.

My sister (L) doesn't cook much. I think we all find this a bit weird. But with such good cooks around her, i guess she has no real need! I think L would like a good baklava, actually so would me and my Mum. We've never tried to make one with our own walnuts - so that would be a challenge. Actually L has one speciality - she's great with salad and salad dressings. So that's another thing to find out - what's L's magic walnut oil dressing recipe?

As for myself, I have the weirdest eating habits of all and I could talk about these for ever. Currently I'm a fish-eating vegetarian (a vegaquarian) and i've been a vegetarian for most of the past 12 years. At various times i've been a Vegan, a fitness fanatic and I've had various forms of disorderly eating along the way. I wonder if my family would be surprised to hear that I would love a walnut stuffing? I've never tried to make a vegetarian walnut stuffing - but even as a vegetarian i think that a duck stuffed with walnuts, apricots and prunes - or something like that would be quite deluxe! I will have to investigate a vegetarian walnut stuffing. I've never even made a nut loaf! So already i can see how this blog might be productive in thinking about walnuts in new ways. (Another thing i'd like to do is to try and get more local Fitzroy restaurants serving our nuts and oil). As for using walnut oil, I like it drizzled over steamed vegetables. Roast pumpkin is amazing at the moment and it tastes great with walnut oil. That might be a component of my dinner tonight.

The image with this post is a gargoyle mask in walnut.