the winter. As food for man the acorn has probably been used for unknown ages in many lands. It is still being used as food by man, his beasts, and the wildlings.
As the pioneer farmers of Pennsylvania pushed aside the flowing stream of oil from their springs so that animals might drink water, so the modern world has pushed aside this good food plant, the oak tree.
There is a strip of hills from New England to Alabama, from Alabama to Ohio, from Ohio to Missouri, and from Missouri down to Texas. On these hills men have been making their living by growing wheat, corn, oats, clover, and grass. Yet I am confident that in every county there are oak trees of such productivity that if made into orchards they would in any decade yield more food for man or beast than has been obtained on the average in any similar period on the hill farms of this wide region.
THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE OAK TREE
The oak tree is productive. Down in Algarve, the southernmost province of Portugal, I heard of an ilex that bore 1,200 liters (35¼ liters equal 1 bushel) of acorns. The definiteness of the report was pleasing to the ear of one in search of facts, and the size of the yield was surprising. I went to see the tree. It stood alone in an unfenced outer yard at the edge of the village of St. Bras. The branches had a reach of only fiftyone feet. By long and devious methods I cross-questioned the owner, a widow of sixty. She always told the same story, and the neighbors believed it. The woman said that the tree bore 1,200 liters on full years and 240 liters in the alternate years, and that the average yield was 720 liters per year. She said that she knew this because she had picked the acorns and sold them in the village.[1] Selling acorns is a common but not
- ↑ The usual price was 260-300 reis per 20 liters. This made 15,600 milreis—18,000 milreis or $16.84 to $19.44 American gold for the one tree on the big crop year. Data 1913. This income was based on pork, which brought nearly double the American price because of Portuguese tariff.
