Slow, Steady, Sustainable
Harvesting + Processing Acorns
I feel the most grounded and connected to Earth when I am able to receive her gifts and nourish my body as nature intended. When you harvest your own food, your gratitude for this planet grows deeper and deeper. Ultimately, too, your appreciation for every single meal becomes more and more rich. I have come to find that there is no better way to nourish your body then to connect a story, feeling and memory of the land to each savory meal you enjoy. The more you expand your knowledge for the wild and learn how to sustainably forage your local land, the more you will become in complete AWE of how the ecosystem is in perfect harmony, constantly fluxing between give and take, weaving in life and death throughout the entire web, always in balance. When you harvest your own food, you open your perspective to look at the planet on a larger scale. You give thanks when the rain comes. You cheer on the sun. You spend more time in nature to watch the plants evolve throughout the season. This is not a just a side hobby, but a way of life + a spiritual practice that assists in truly becoming one with the Earth. Tending to her, Singing to her, and offering her your endless love and gratitude. This is a beautiful way to slow down, tune into the Earth + g r o w alongside her.
I have been Foraging Wild Edibles for almost a decade and have had a desire to harvest my own acorns and process my own flour for many many years, for living in a world with an overwhelming amount of depleting resources, Acorns are consistently thriving and offering a wildly ABUNDANT resource….but, it took me a long time to actually commit because I was always discouraged by people in my community saying things like “For the amount of time it would take you, you are better off growing your own garden or writing a book”, as well as dozens of other ways to basically say “Acorns aren’t worth your time” …. but I couldnt help but listen to the calling deep in my bones that said, “Acorns are your sacred allies. If it werent for them, your ancestors wouldnt have sustained. Get to know them, let them teach you”. So I did some diggin, bought some books, watched some films on how the Indigenous people processed them, and the more research I did, the more enamored I became with Acorns and their role on this planet.
“No other food has sustained the human race to such an extent as the acorn,” says biologist/herbalist John Slattery, author of Southwest Foraging. “If you took a gigantic table and laid out all the foods humans have eaten across the globe and over time, making an individual pile for each foodstuff, acorns would be, by far, the largest pile on the table.”
DISCLAIMER ** the older folks in my community who advised me to leave the acorns alone because they were not worth my time, were very accurate about how long, tedious, and sometimes arduous the task would be. This whole process resulted in one gallon of flour for about 60+ hours of work. BUT, I whole-heartedly disagree with them in that I believe the process is worth your time. Even if you only do it once your lifetime.
I’ll be honest… there were many times during this process I felt like giving up… It felt a lot like when you first begin meditating and you dont know how to sit with yourself in silence… this process was so so slow, in the beginning it felt impossible to slow my speed down from “normal life” to natures pace, individually giving each acorn my attention (you physically touch and treat each acorn individually approx. 9 times before you grind it up, so yeah, a LOT of Tender, Love and Care) .But I am so glad I stuck with it because in the last third of the process, I really deeply connected with this practice. I only worked on this project outside in the morning sun with all the birds singing around me. I began to sing throughout the process and something within me clicked. I began to rememeber…. this whole process began to feel familiar. And for the first time ever to this capacity, I felt blanketed in love and gratitude from my ancestors, giving thanks for carrying out this sacred tradition. I could feel their presence. And this feeling will FOREVER be tied to the satisfying taste of acorns. R E M E M B E R A N C E.
There is so much beauty in slowing down with intention to connect, even if it feels forced at first. Stick with it.
So, last October I found myself and accountability partner (Erin of Bumskis Mtn Goods) to share the process with and set out on this new journey, filling my first basket.
Because this was my first year ever harvesting acorns, I tried multiple routes throughout the process so I would know what worked the best for futures harvests, and lucky for you, I’ll share with you here which process gave me the best results.
The BEST way to begin after collecting your acorns is to let them dry cure. I made my own dry rack out of chicken wire and old window frames and let them sit out in the sun on my deck for about a week to 2 weeks. Then I began CRACKIN!
There are so many tools and set ups you can try to crack em all but, I personally loved using this old wedge I found right after a fire, hiking around a burn area. Hefty + straight to the point.
I just lined up all my acorns in a pattern on my towel, and found a rythym in my smashing.
this task was a bit more liberating than I expected!
one. by. one.
Once they are cracked, sift through them and only keep the ones with beautiful, clean white “meat”. You’ll know when you see a bad one, just toss it in your compost.
Dont worry about separating the “meat” from their shell at this point, it’ll take waaaaaaay too much muscle + will be a thousands times easier if you just let them dry out.
So, to dry them out, I let them rest in my sun drying racks I mentioned before and rotated them into my dehydrator one batch at a time to make sure they dried quickly + didnt spoil.
Once they were all dry, the “meat” shrunk in the shell just a wee bit, enough to fit this little clay tool I had lying around between the two layers, to easily separate them from their shell.
I took my time in this process, just separating a small batch each morning while enjoying my coffee. Once I had the meat separate from the shells, I tossed them into a big bowl of water and kept them in my fridge until the whole collection was separated. The reason you want to keep them in water is because when/if they oxidize, they turn a brown/yellow color and start to crumble. You want them to hold their structure as best as you can manage at this stage because if they re ground to a powder now, it’ll drift off when you go to leech them.
To think: how many HUNDREDS OF POUNDS of this beautiful acorn “meat” rots on the ground every. single. year….. yeah they animals love them too, but still there is ALWAYS, without fail a surplus.
When you’ve got nothing but the “meat”, chop them into smaller chunks, so when you go to leach them, it wont take as long.
Then once I had all my small chunks of acorn, I tossed them all into my reusable produce grocery bags (perfect mesh bag that I could seal off and close).
I then hiked these mesh bags of acorns up to a clean water source (so clean, this is actually where I collect my drinking water from), and submerge them into the stream where the water seems to be moving relatively fast, constantly flushing fresh water over them.
I put some rocks on top of my bags so they would be fully submerged and then covered them up with some pine needle debris and bark as to not bring attention to them from any hikers in the area.
I went back after 3 day and checked on them and did a taste test. Still too much tannin, which is easy to taste test for because it is suuuuuuuper bitter. so I plopped them back into the creek for another 4 days.
After a full week of leeching, they acorns were no longer bitter and therefore, ready to process!
When I brought them back home, they went STRAIGHT to my dehydrator.
Once they were leeched and dried, I used this beautifully woven plantain basket to separate the last of the skins from the meat.
This is a technique I learned from Native Americans. Continually toss your basket while blowing on your acorns and you will get rid of every last little piece of skin.
The skins are what hold the most tannins which is the toxic part of the acorn in its natural state, so removing the skins entirely is super important!
Now, we have all the acorn meats, cured + ready to grind!
They became much darker after dehydrating which is totally normal. Its just part of the oxidation. All the nutrients are still present as ever!
Pour em into a grain mill, and let them pass through several times.
The grain mill will produce about 25% flour and 75% grits. Its totally up to you in how you plan to savor your harvest, but personally chose to use a coffee grinder to take it down even further so I had 100% flour
My first meal was an Acorn Flour pancake, topped with my homemade Elderberry Jam and real Maple Syrup from our trip to Canada. SO MUCH YUM, SO MUCH GRATITUDE.
So grateful I stuck with this practice / project and would love to help you in any way to begin this journey as well. Please dont be afraid to reach out if you have any questions about the process, and how you can get started. Much Love!