"...it amuses me and it keeps me out of mischief." You are the witchiest witch ever. The real-life Goodie Whemper (maysherestinpeace)! ❤

“Everyone needs a pet kitchen rock.” This has definitely been a missing tool in my kitchen that needs to be remedied.

If you have an oak whose acorns you're particularly fond of, the way to avoid dealing with those curculio grubs that drill escape holes is to gather up ALL the acorns from beneath the tree when you harvest, and dispose of the infested ones well away from the oak. (Freeze them, drown them, or roast them prior to composting.) We do this with our favorite trees, and some that started out with grub damage to 70% to 90% of the acorns were down to just 20% spoilage within three years. (And then, because I live in a city that needs to be smacked alongside the head, they cut down the two best acorn-yielding trees I've ever known.) Deer eat acorns; turkeys and sometimes ducks eat them; and in the arid West, the First Nations people ate them routinely. But the complete clean-up crews, the vacuum-cleaner of oak woodlands, were passenger pigeons. When passenger pigeons were driven extinct in the USA, curculio grub populations skyrocketed. If the grubs don't make it into the soil, they can't grow up to become weevils which fly back up to lay eggs in their oak. They don't tend to fly very far, so an isolated oak may end up with virtually no curculios over time. Because we do everything to excess in the US, I make three or four gallons of acorn flour every year. It's fun. It makes great bread, cookies, and a thickener in stews and soups.

As a kid I got curious about people eating acorns in fairy tales and such, and collected some to make flour. Had no idea what tannins were and how to deal with them, ended up with incredibly bitter pancakes that had to be thrown away :D

This is so neat. Our local National Park offered a class on making acorn flor but i missed it. Glad for this video.

Oh I can just tell this is close to the perfect KZfaq channel for me. History, a bit of experimenting, good in depth explanations, folklore, and also about food that is a foraged ingredient. Loots of cool and interesting ways of utilising many different parts of a plant. This is exactly the video I wanted to find when I looked for what for types of fun things I could try using the oak tree in the yard for. (Though still leaving plenty of acorns for the animals and insects in the yard as well) Because I was after some fun project and try something new, and learn a bit more about a tree that even though it’s familiar to me, I didn’t know that much about.

I gotta say these colours are friggin' GORGEOUS 😍😍🥰🥰😘😘 thanks for showing us this xx

Wanted to thank you belatedly for your video showing horse chestnut ‘soap’. At our outdoor kindergarten we have been collecting conkers and the children have been delighted at being able to turn these into an impressive, milky froth in their mud kitchen, with lots of experimenting and processing along the way. I can’t tell you how particularly nice it has been to make this natural cleansing substance during Covid, where even in the woods we now have a lot of government guidance and alcoholic sanitiser. We may need to think about a quern next.

An arborist told me that an Oak lives for 300 years, rests for 300 years and dies for 300 years.

That's a lovely shade of blue- grey; so far I've avoided dyeing my yarns as it could lead to another source of unfinished projects (!), but this is tempting me to go out and collect acorns! Oh dear!! (I have a batch of wool I've just washed which would be delightful made into a pretty jumper in just that shade of grey!)

That grey is actually pretty nice!

Great videos!! Sourdough is not dead! Just needs a couple of days to restart. Give it its food and let it go. I helped a friend pick acorns last year. Downtown Vancouver, Washington state. USA. Tragically, 3 weeks ago they took them down. Not sure why. Probably development. But I have many babies growing in my back field.

My acorns are no where near that big!!! Holy Moly! Those are huge! The acorns on my trees are literally HALF that size!

Ooh would love to try that soda bread! The yarns are looking great. Thanks Sally

Speaking of Angleland oaks, there is a great book about English wooden ship building called "Building the Wooden Fighting Ship" by James Moore I believe, and it is not about the military, surprisingly, but general ship building.

thanks for showing how easy it is to crack acorns! that is encouraging. we have lots of native oaks here in Oregon on the West Coast of the US. and far too many pesky invasive Gray Squirrels as a result ( imported from the East coast)

my son and myself (who is 4) love to gather mulberries, acorns, juniper, black walnuts and pine nuts. we even have a wild pear tree growing down the hill from us its almost ready for picking and i cant wait for them this year. we are also going to be making dye for shirts from the husks of the black walnut and pokeberries this year. Thankfully my son knows not to put his hands in his mouth after messing with the pokeberries dye or otherwise. We've also made Mulberry wine and jam this summer so we've been having fun so far.

One of the tastiest muffins I have ever had was an acorn muffin. I just discovered your channel and it's enchanting!

I love your kitchen rock. I've got one of my own but I call it a handstone.

Sally, you may be interested in a vlog by Cabinboyknits, on dyeing with leaves, bark and acorns from a white oak, in Canada. It is quite comprehensive and the results are very interesting. He naturally dyes yarns for a living. As an adolescent I read a book about someone who lived in the woods in a hollow oak tree and made acorn flour. I have no idea what that story was called or which book but it has stayed with me ever since. Thank you for your podcast, Sally. Jenny(NZ)

where I live, we have 28 different native spesies of Oak. Some have acorns the size of golf balls.

I planted an Oak tree acorn the day that me Mom died as she loved the Oak tree, it’s now the height of a two story house it’s only 11 years old, it’s now producing a lot of acorns in the past 3 years I have been picking them up and placing in a bucket never thought of using them for making a dye some of them are really dark in colour now so I might give it a try to dye some wool I have as well as my embroidery thread 🤗🤗

What a find! Thank you Sally for all your videos.

This is so cool! Thank you for sharing this knowledge

Thank you for this. Cannot wait to collect and process some later in the year 👍

You make turning the quern look so easy! I got to try turning a prehistoric one and found it super heavy and then got stubborn because I wanted to turn the darn thing!

What we have in my area (California) is the Coast Live Oak. It has hard prickly leaves, a bit like holly leaves but smaller and rounder. When you see these trees in the landscape, they look perfect for lying down under or having a picnic, but unfortunately the whole ground beneath them is very stabby because of these leaves. One year we tried harvesting the acorns. We cold leached the nuts in a jar of water in the fridge. Every time we changed the water, I was amazed at how good it smelled. Not mapley or nutty at all, but like a truly posh high-end shampoo. I wanted to bathe in it. The flour we ended up with was absolutely without flavor. I don't know if other types of acorns taste like something, but ours did not. We didn't find it to be worth the labor, so we never did it again.

I knew one person who put them in a cloth bag and hung them inside their toilet tank (the top part) for a week.

Thank you for the wonderful video! I learnt so much watching it. the yarn came out beautiful and this is inspiring me to go forage for acorns this fall, hopefully I can find some oaks here in Nova Scotia, Canada. I was surprised at how brown the acorn flour ended-up being, I assumed it would be light like the acorn nuts as they came out of their husks. I have never had acorn flour but looing forward to giving it a try!

Renaissance Fair's are people who's hobby is reinacting this womans life.

So fascinating. I had no idea these were edible. 😀

Woww...much thnx for this presentation. Information I should have received when I was a child. There used to be massive oak-tree forests all over n quite a lot of tribal communities were enjoying n living from them. Now mostly wild animals like boars, black pigs n deer are having a lot of fun with them no!? Thnx for the share n God bless ; D

It's fun to see how different common names of trees can be in other languages. In Dutch it is Summeroak (Q robur), Winteroak (Q petrea) and American oak (Q rubra)

She reminds me of Julia Child in this video :)

I have found acorn flour in a Korean grocery shop, so that’s another cuisine that uses the acorn. It made a very interesting pancake, but I’d love to know what else it’s used for in Korean cooking. Thank you once again, Sally. I hope Gareth is feeling better now.

Sally, thank you so much for this. I have been so curious as to what acorn flour looks like and what it would be like to work with it. I don't have access to acorns right now, sadly, but I'm originally from Southern California and many of the native tribes of that area would use acorn meal and flour in their dishes. I'm still hoping to scavenge a few horse chestnuts from a tree down our street for some dyeing and washing experiments. Much luck with your soda bread!

I did not know the other meaning of sessile, and now I can't get the mental image of an oak getting up and walking away on its roots out of my head

We are going to need to know thus stuff again. . . . .sooner than what we think. TGC Blessings P.S. dont forget to keep a lot of brass screws and nails in your preps. . . . .

What an enjoyable video! Thank you so much

Another great hedging around 🧙‍♀️

Fabulous video! Thank you very much for sharing with us ❤️

Oak Tannin Dye is my favorite christmas song!

14:32 Sounds like the Tardis!

How absolutely fascinating :-) Well Done!

Ms. Sally, once you have Acorn Flour, how do you store it? ...how long does it keep? Have you ever found that one species of oak makes better flour than others? Here in the woods of Deep, East Texas we have White Oak, Red Oak, Black Oak and Pin Oak. If there are more, I'm not aware. The "Old Timers" say while deer and hogs love to munch on acorns in the Fall, a side benefit to them is the acorns worm them.

Always wonderful. Do you have a good remedy for tannin stains on ones hands? I’ve been on a banana fiber bent it’s terrible for brown fingers.

Hi Sally, I have just discovered your KZfaq channel & I am enjoying it so much! I am watching your videos one after the other one. I was wondering if you are part of the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinner and Dyers? Thanks for all the information you share!

We have lots of acorns this year in Michigan! I can try your experiment! Thanks for your video!!!

Interestingly, trees are exactly why the British wanted the Americas. The first "American" flag had a white pine tree on it. Tree harvesting was the original purpose until other things were discovered. Hemp, tobacco, etc. Most Americans do not realize the vast animal life America is known for aren't original to America. They were brought over by other people's. For example: pigs, chicken, beef cattle, horses, dogs, etc. America had bison and camels. Which is funny considering when ppl think camels they think northern Africa. Camels were not original to Africa. They were brought there.

Your liquid should be fine for concentrating tannic acid for leather and dyeing... for black ink, it is the gallic acid that you're after in higher concentrations from oak galls over the leeched water and shell husks anyway.

Recently read somewhere that Native Americans in the northeast made Acorn Milk. Perhaps similar to modern nut milk only stronger.

I put my acorns in a basket in a spring in continuous running cold water It is much less work, but you do not recover the tannin.

Oaks are good hardwood and acorns are good food,the acorn can use to make tofu

That's part of the plot line of Perseus' journey to slay Medusa

I now have quern envy...in the US, it's hard to come by an authentic, functioning quern, or someone who can make one!

Wonderful! What does the acorn flour taste like, once cooked?

Have you tried putting red ochre in vinegar, letting it settle and decanting, to make an additive to your water to get your iron additive variations with tannic acid and gallic acid?

Although oaks can live a long time, typically they reach maturity at 150 years old and will last 300 years before succumbing. 400 species can be found on oak trees.

I'd be curious if I could use the oak tannins to dye/tone a cyanotype print....

tnx for your clear step by step instruction! I've processed a batch myself. I dried the roughly chopped bits after the leaching. Now they've become so extremely hard - can I still use them? (leaching end of Oct last year, now it's March)

yeast eat Glutton. so if you don't give them a glutton boost after a while of inactivity in say a fridge they remain inactive.

Great stuff Sally, really interested in doing acorn flour, I've seen it done before but the acorns were roasted on fire embers, would this make any difference to the flour? Love watching your craft videos as you make them so interesting. Take care, Nige 👍👍❤☕

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Sally, would lightly roasting the acorns before processing speed up the process?

Thanks a lot for this video! I didn't know about the stone crushing technique to open up the bark. I have one question: until now all videos I have seen say we should remove the inner skin. In your video I was under the impression that you leave it. Have you checked from scientific sources that this skin is edible? It would be great news, since removing it takes a lot of time. Thanks again very much for your videos, and for sharing great knowledge!

do you have beechnut-husks in your area? they can add a soft pinkish tone to your pallet. you need a lot (1kg for 100 gr wool, in a bucket with water and some soda (to give the pink), let it steep for 2 weeks (at least till the pH is neutral).

Hi Sally, new to your videos but loving them. I picked acorns from the American oak tree in my garden. Some already show signs of new life and have sprouts coming out at the end of them. So when is an acorn too old or not desirable for flour making? XKarlijn

Where could I find a hand grinder like you used in this video?

Sally, hi. You seem like a lovely person. And just the right person to ask a question of. I recently gathered Garry Oak (BC, Canada) which had been felled to make way for more developments. Not wanting to see this tree go to waste, I took some of the fallen leaves (ok, a bucket full) and filled it with water, leaving it now for 3 weeks. It smells a bit rotten - which I guess makes sense. But I have died some stained kitchen cloths and they became a dank grey colour. Not brown. I believe the tree was felled in autumn. How do I use the mighty Oak constituents to get a lovely brown or dark beige or anything like that? When is a good time to pick the products of the oak to get the brown I am after? Tx!

14:56 I LIKE THE FACT THAT YOU'VE MISPLACED THE CAMERA TRI-POD BUT YOU TROOP FORTH ANYWAY, MAKING THE VIDEO. SALLY, I AM VERY SERIOUS WHEN I SAY I HAVE WONDERED ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR SUBJECT {EDIBILITY OF ACORNS.} FOR DECADES. THANK YOU FOR TEACHING US.

How to make powder?

got some questions so i came back here, and something to share. I accidentally burned the first round of acorns I tried to toast in the oven for flour. can they still be used for flour? I also made an interesting series of discoveries that lead to a vivid blue and vivid pink that faded a little with each exhaust, but produced a lot of dye; purple majesty potatoes, and some sort of red cranberry like potato that was pink through and through. They'd sprouted and been infested with mealy bugs and weren't edible anymore. I wanted to try and kill the mealy bugs so I soaked the sprouted bits in brine made with some hawaiian black salt that smelled too much of brimstone to be appealing on food or in the bath. The potato bits permanently picked up the sulpher smell so I decided it was a good idea not to plant them, and I remembered that salt was a good dye preservative and helped absorbtion so I thought "eh, what will it hurt?" and integrated the salty sulpher smelling dark colored water and smelly sulpher potatoes. The result was a bright blue and a bright pink respectively. It was INCREDIBLE. Sally it was INCREDIBLE.

Just come across your work Sally! I love it! Do you have a school? I'll come lol

I have not been able to find a single unspoiled acorn this year.

Can you eat the acorns from all oak species or just a select few? I’m in Australia and there are lots of drought tolerant varieties for sale, but English Oak is much harder to find.

Portugal

Is nettle the only thing you work with?. and teach on how to use. is there other fibers you use and teach on how you make things with?, do teach tutorials on how to make clothes with any fiber?

Where can I find a kitchen mill like yours?