About eight years ago we planted a chestnut tree on our block of land in South Gippsland.  This afternoon I was mowing the long grass around its base when I stopped and picked up one of the prickly cases to see how the nuts were doing this year.  I wasn’t expecting much, I’d sort of given up on them.  In previous years they’d been tiny or tiny and mouldy but this year there in my hands was a big shiny brown chestnut – not as big as Jenny Indian’s Beechworth beauties mind you, but definitely eating size.  I picked my way through the rest of the cases and filled two pockets with about 20 of them.  Eight years of waiting for a few mouthfuls of roasted nuts and I couldn’t have been happier, even with my fingers full of prickles.

My pocket fulls are a sign of  things to come – in the next few years the harvest will grow to be a shopping bag full and then a sack and by the time I’m a grandpa maybe a uteload.  And when I’m an old man rich in my chestnut bounty I’ll always remember this day when the eight year wait was repaid with this first tiny harvest.  Now I’m just hoping my sons and grandkids like bloody chestnuts… Read More