Sweet Chestnut: Benefits of the Wind and Rain
We have so few Sweet Chestnut trees near where I live, that it was a lovely surprise to find the plump, ripe nuts recently fallen, during a visit to my daughter. I’ve also been gathering and drying apples, from trees that have become feral there.
Swollen by all the rain this year and dropped by the wind - they are a bountiful, unexpected gifts. As a forager I always have some form of bag with me, ready just for such occasions.
Sweet Chestnut is a tree of nourishing wisdom, while Apple is one of sweetness and love. Their abundance comes from the overflow of their own nourishment. Apple is adaptable, finding the spaces in-between to fill and expand past and soften those hardened edges. Chestnut is strong, straight and true - a resilient master of self, solid standing, protective of his core values. Together they weave prosperity - one that flows from the wisdom of a full heart.
I was amused to find that so many recipes advice to avoid foraging and buy ready peeled or frozen chestnuts. Though I can understand this, there is not then the joy of finding them, popping them from their shells, roasting and peeling them, before infusing the food with the connection to the trees, the Earth, the meditative love and joy received and shared through the process.
Repetitive work, such as this, is meditative, draws us into deeper connection with the Earth, her abundance and nourishment. It is slow work, yet there is no time to do anything else in-between, there is a slowing down to the seasonal rhythm.
As I stare into the fire, while roasting them, memories emerge of the roast chestnut sellers that would be outside the stations when I got the train back home, from where I once worked in London - and wonder if the current regulations still allow this … chestnuts are so strongly connected with the Christmas holiday season here, memory threads of other times, other places float on by …
I’ll be freezing the nuts until I’m ready to use them and will make a sweet spread that reminds and connects me with the gathering and preparing over winter … a thread of memory of warmer times that sustains through the darker nights and colder days on their way.
with much Love
from my Heart to yours
Tania Aurora White Crow