At Bell Station was seen Dr. Van Fleet's work on chestnuts. Some ten years ago Dr. Van Fleet began this work for the purpose of getting something that should be blight proof, or at least strongly blight resisting and that would furnish the nuts which the chestnut blight is rapidly making impossible of production. With this end in view, some ten years ago Dr. Van Fleet planted nuts of the Chinese chestnut, Castanea mollissima, and planted out the seedlings. He also procured from the place of J. W. Killen, at Fenton, Md., nuts of Japan chestnuts that had withstood the blight up to the time the nuts were planted. The first thing to be found out was how well these would resist the blight. None were found to be immune, although the trees are still alive after ten years exposure. Dr. Van Fleet's ambition was to get a blight-resistant chestnut the size of the Japan chestnut with the delicious flavor of the chinkapin. This, as yet, has not been accomplished, although some very good nuts much larger than chinkapins were seen. One interesting fact noted as to resistance was that the Japan chestnut, which is not generally supposed to be as resistant as the Chinese chestnut, was at Bell Station apparently standing up just as well.
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At the evening session, Thursday, Sept. 27, a rising vote of thanks was
given to Mr. and Mrs. Littlepage for their hospitality of the afternoon.
The president then introduced Mrs. W. N. Hutt, editor of the Progressive
Farm Woman, of North Carolina.
Mrs. Hutt quoted H. G. Wells as saying, "The primeval savage was both herbivorous and carnivorous. He had for food hazel nuts, beech nuts, sweet chestnuts, earth nuts and acorns." She went on to say:
In Spain and Southern France, the chestnut is now used much more than in the past. You should know in what appetizing forms they are cooked. It is a question how you should cook the chestnut if you do not want to spoil its flavor. Should you steam it, boil it, or what? When you want it in bread, or when you use the tasteless forms, it is first steamed or boiled, and later is mashed up and made into bread, or mixed with cheese or tomatoes. But if you want to develop the flavor, then roast it, pick it out from the shell and crush it, using almost no other flavor with it.
Have you ever realized how much we depend on the walnut in cooking? Take the pecan, or perhaps almost all of the nuts; the flavor is diminished by cooking. But the walnut is the one nut that gains in flavor by being cooked. This means a great deal for the popularity of the walnut.
A friend of mine was captured by the Germans, and was sent out each day into the forests to gather acorns to be used in the prisoners' food. The friend said that many a time he thought he would rather die than to have to eat or gather any more acorns.
Farmers' Bulletin No. 712, "The School Lunch," by Caroline Hunt, has been especially valuable in the preparation of the school lunch with nuts. There is a man who comes to North Carolina every winter, who will tell you that he lives on ten types of nut oils and nut butter.
The great mass of people out through the country are not yet ready to comprehend this; but once they are educated to the value of nuts, the demand for them will be unlimited.
As to the question of economy, the prices should not go up any farther; they will not be used enough until they become cheaper. With many boys and girls in a family, a dollar's worth of nuts, at $1 a pound, will not go far. If we could get nuts at more reasonable prices it seems to me that women would consider them more than they do for food. They want them not only for their parties, but in everyday life.