With all the chestnut conversation lately, I thought Id share some images from a recent trip to the heart of the known chestnut universe in east-central Corsica - Castagniccia. One of the mountain agricultures that J Russell Smith wrote about and visited. And its as he said. A wonderland of human-faciliated nut-driven ecosystems. But its also a place abandoned, even more than much of rural America, subject to the same economic pressures we deal with here which urbanize and make a population un-landed. So, as a result the castagnutu - chestnut culture - is suffering. Trees are not replanted, nor grazed with significant management, etc. The entire place actually (along with Sardinia) seemed like one massive rangeland with low stock density but restless grazing - again, much like in other parts of the world. Pigs, sheep, cattle and goats, all free ranged with little fencing or shepherding to be found. Yet the castagnetu endures - the bones of this intergenerational food and culture ecosystem persist - durable enough to withstand a century of neglect. Its still there, for at least another few decades or so, maybe a century, if people should choose to continue the legacy. Lets hear from Smith himself This Corsican chestnut farming is typical of that which covers many thousands of steep and rocky acres in central France, some of the slopes of the Alps, of the mountains of Spain and Italy, and of parts of the Balkans. Especially do I recall when crossing the Apennines from Bologna to Florence the marked and sudden increase of population that occurred at about two thousand feet elevation. The slopes below two thousand feet were treeless and on them are few evidences of people. At two thousand feet where the chestnut forests begin, the villages were numerous, large, and substantial. Compare this age-old and permanent European mountain farming with the perishing corn farms of our own Appalachian mountains. The farmer of Carolina, Tennessee, or Kentucky mountains has the cornfield as his main standby. He has a garden, perhaps in the woods some pigs — largely acorn-fed, some cows and sheep which range the glades and hills and pick such living as they can. The corn crop is the main standby. Corn bread is the chief food of the family. If there be enough the pig or sheep or cow may get a little, or again they may not. The part that corn whiskey has played in the history of this region need not be expanded here. The economic contrast between the Corsican and Appa- lachian mountaineers is striking. In Corsica the stone house in contrast to the log cabin of Appalachia; in Corsica the good stone road going on a horizontal plane along the moun- tainside in contrast to the miserable trails running up and down the American mountain; the Corsican mountain covered with majestic trees whose roots hold the soil in place, in contrast to the American mountainside deforested, gashed with gullies, gutted, and soon abandoned. When the Corsican starts a crop, he does it by planting beautiful trees whose crops he and his children and his childrens children will later pick up from year to year. When the American mountaineer wants to sow a crop, he must fight for it, a fight without quarter, a fight to the death of the mountain. First he cuts and burns forests, then he must struggle with the roots and stones in the rough ground of a new field. The sprouting shoots of the trees and tree roots must be cut with a hoe. This is the most expensive form of cultivation, but often the steep and stony ground can be tilled in no other way. In a few seasons the mountainside cornfield is gullied to ruin, and the mountaineer — the raper of the mountain — must laboriously make another field. No race of savages, past or present, has been so destructive of soil as have been the farmers of the southeastern part of the United States during the past century. There is one argument for corn. It is a great and destructive argument. The plant is annual. The labor of the husbandman is quickly rewarded. The ruin of his farm comes later. As between corn and chestnuts as types of mountain agri- culture, the labor cost appears to be plainly in favor of the chestnut. The chestnut also seems to be more productive than corn. Much sifting of facts among the chestnut growers of Corsica and France seems to show that the chestnut is a better yielder of food in the mountains of those countries than corn and oats are in the mountains of Carolina and Kentucky. 7 The 7 An authoritative book on chestnut culture in France is he Chataignier, by Jean-Baptiste Lavaille, Paris, Vigot Freres, 1906. This book says, A good French chestnut orchard yields on the average thirty-two hectoliters per hectare, or about two thousand pounds per acre. United States Daily Consular Report, July 20, 1912, p. 343, reports that 148,000 acres of chestnuts in the reporters district in Spain yielded, 1910, 2534 pounds of chestnuts to the acre. The average yield of corn in seven mountain counties of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky for 1919 was 1,124 pounds, for 1924 it was 1,145 pounds For the same counties the yield of oats per acre was, 1919, 363 pounds; 1924, 524 pounds. Mr. Raphael Zon of the Bureau of Forestry.... archive.org/stream/TreeCrops-J.RussellSmith/TreeCrops_djvu.txt
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:48:32 +0000
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