Nutting Day - Revisiting A Post from 2018

 Did you know September 3rd was traditionally known as Nutting Day? No, I didn't either, until 2018 when I came across all this information and wrote this post.

According to the book 'Cattern Cakes and Lace' (Julia Jones and Barbara Deer, 1987).......this is the day on which children would traditionally go to the local wood to gather hazelnuts. All villages would have had local hazel coppices as the wood was so important for hurdles - no wire netting or electric fencing back then.

So what can I find out about hazelnuts (Corylus avellana).

From a little book called 'Nature in Your Basket' by Richard Mabey..............
Pollen deposits suggest that between the retreat of the glaciers and the arrival of mature forest some 9,000 years ago, hazel was the commonest tree across much of Britain, and it must have been one of the most important sources of vegetable food for Stone Age hunter gatherers.

 From the book 'Discovering the Folklore of Plants 'by Margaret Baker..............
The Celtic world treated hazel as a holy tree. Its nuts were connected with poetry, knowledge, love, fertility and childbirth. In the Scottish Highlands hazel was one of the nine sacred woods used in kindling needfire at Beltane. (Need-fire, or Wild-fire, a fire caused by friction is a term used in folklore to denote a superstition which survived in the Scottish Highlands until a recent date.) 
Hazel is the wood often used for divining rods and  if you stir jam with a hazel stick the fairies will not steal it!
The nuts were given the names of potential husbands and thrown into the fire by young girls. The loudest bang as the nut exploded or brightest flame showed which man she would marry.

Apart from the well known use of coppiced hazel for hurdle making, it was also used for baskets and the bast or stringy inner bark could be used as a tying material. The wood was used for carved walking sticks and broom handles and the oil from the nuts could be used as a polish. The nuts can be ground and added to flour for a flavoured pastry and like almonds can be used to make milk.

I'd try these ideas for cooking with hazelnuts.......if only the squirrels didn't take them before I get a look in.

That was 2018 before moving  here.

 I planted a Red Hazel in the border here in 2022, it's 6 foot tall now but every summer it soon reverts to green and only goes back to red leaves with the new spring growth. Whereas the huge Red Hazel in BiL's garden (from a seedling which popped up at the smallholding years ago) stays red-leaved most of the year. I think there's a draught along the side of my bungalow that hits the Hazel and causes it stress. It has about 4 pink tinged nuts on it this year - the first I've seen. I went along the footpath not far from home to see how many nuts on an ordinary Hazel tree that grows there - None!

Other Boot Sale Finds From July and August

Car boot finds this summer weren't very exciting. So many people just bring the same old stuff every week and it's often just the House Clearance people who have different things each time.

I've already mentioned the most interesting but these were the other small finds.

Two books - one for Grandchildren (because I'm sure one of our children enjoyed one of these Usborne Puzzle books  when they were 8 or 9 and yes, that is possible because this is dated 1990) and a book for me that I used for pictures for my scrapbooks as it had lots of pages stuck together but enough interesting pictures to cut out. Paid 50p for both -  from house clearance boxes as usual.

A bundle of postcards with pictures of commemorative stamps . Some of these were also for the scrapbooks. 50p for the bundle.

Another 50p on this suet block for the birds - I'm only feeding sunflower hearts and Nyjer seed at the moment but this will go out for them in Autumn. This also came out of a box of house clearance stuff.

50p again for this new jug, a replacement for a very old one that no matter how often I gave it a scrub, it still looked nasty.

The book below I bought because it was only 20p. It's all about the old businesses in Stowmarket. I could have borrowed it from the library there but now there's no hurry to look at it. At another boot-sale I saw volume 2 but the girl wanted £3 - I said " No Thanks"

Christmas Wrapping Paper 50p

Pack of notecards 50p, a couple will be used in the scrapbook and the rest for birthday cards.

An old crime fiction book  and a small watercolour pad 50p each again

And finally this little pack of three turned wood garden cane toppers were £1 which I will add to the hanging plant pots for my sister and her husband for a Christmas gift.

Which makes a total spend of £5.20 for all sorts of useful bits and bobs

Looking at September

    from  THE GARDEN IN SEPTEMBER

Now thin mists temper the slow ripening beams

Of the September sun: his golden gleams

On gaudy flowers shine,that prank the rows

Of high-grown hollyhocks, and all tall shows

That Autumn flaunteth in his bushy bowers;

Where tomtits, hanging from the drooping heads

Of giant sunflowers, peck the nutty seeds;

And in the feathery aster bees on wing

Seize and set free the honied flowers,

Till thousand stars leap with their visiting:

While ever across the path mazily flit,

Unpiloted in the sun,

The dreamy butterflies

With dazzling colours powdered and soft glooms,

White black and crimson stripes, and peacock eyes,

Or on chance flowers sit,

With idle effort plundering one by one

The nectaries of deepest-throated blooms

                                                   Robert Bridges (1844 - 1930)

The 1st of the month marks the start of meteorological autumn, astronomically Autumn doesn't begin until Mabon or the  Autumn Equinox which is on the 23rd this year.

Fair on the first of September, fair for the whole month

The Anglo-Saxons called September Gertsmonarth, meaning the Barley Month

There are generally three consecutive windy days around the middle of the month, millers called these the windy days of barley harvest.

In this year of excess heat the wheat and barley harvest is long finished. There isn't any sugar beet growing close by this year but farmers who have grown it will be looking at a very small crop later. Maybe sugar will be yet another thing that will see a price rise in winter as well as flour and dairy products - all due to the heat and lack of rain.

Young September's Cornfield 1954

Oil on board

Alan Reynolds (1926-2014)