Pine Nuts: a Utah Forest Product
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Volume 10 Number 4 Fall 2006 Pine Nuts: A Utah Forest Product Pine nuts are a fall tradition in Utah. Roadside stands Pine nuts are delicious raw, but many prefer their with hand-painted signs spring up in places such as taste when salted and roasted in a 350 degree oven for Cedar City and Price about 10 minutes. There Canyon. The nuts are is a trick to cracking usually eaten by using open the individual nut your teeth to crack the with your teeth. Being shells one-at-a-time an amateur, it took me to get the buttery and several tries before I nutritious nut inside. learned the soft touch For many families, this required to avoid biting is an activity associated through the entire seed. with elk or deer hunting You want to try to keep season. the nut whole until you remove it completely These pine nuts come from the shell. from the cones of pinyon trees, of which Utah has People tend to prefer two varieties (species): the nut that they grew The singleleaf pinyon Pinyon cones, seeds, and branches up eating. If you are (Pinus monophylla), from southern Utah which has needles arranged singly and produces a or Nevada, the soft-shelled nut from the singleleaf large, soft-shelled pine nut, and the Colorado pinyon pinyon is preferable, but if you grew up in New (Pinus edulis), which has two needles per bundle and continued on next page produces a smaller, hard-shelled pine nut. Most of the pine nuts offered at roadside stands in Utah are the soft-shelled variety. The pine nuts we use for pesto INSIDE THIS ISSUE: Utah 4-H Forestry Team and are accustomed to seeing in bulk at the grocery Aspen Conference Materials Online store are typically from the Siberian Pine (Pinus New State Foresters Hired sibirica) and the Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis). Harvesting Methods on Display They are typically grown in Russia and processed and imported from China. 2 continued from previous page Mexico or Arizona, the smaller hard-shelled nut is crop, and only lasted six weeks. Pickers usually get the taste of choice, according to Larry Shurtliff, co- around 15 to 20 sacks per day, but this year they had owner of Blue Coyote Pine Nuts, in Gunlock, Utah an especially strong and adept picker who managed (northwest of St. George.) to collect 40 sacks of cones a day. This is a record, according to co-owner Calero Romero, who Shurtliff Blue Coyote hires 17 workers to harvest pinyon cones describes as the “brains of the operation.” and remove, process, and package the pine nuts that are their fi nal product. They originally started with Romero is a native of Chihuahua, Mexico and has 27 workers, all from Chihuahua, Mexico. However, been in the business for much of his life. One of his the work is hard and dirty, often covering pickers main responsibilities is taking care of their workers in sticky pitch, and 10 of the original workers quit – making sure they have good food and water in before the fi rst season ended. camp, comfortable sleeping accommodations, and of course, making sure they are paid fully and promptly. The harvest starts with “green picking.” Pickers use His workers pick an average of 45,000 pounds of 28-foot ladders to climb the trees and gather the cones each year. still-green pinecones, which have not yet released their seeds. Some use poles with hooks at the end to All of the processing goes on at the picking site. pull down the branches with the cones attached. The After the cones are picked and repacked into burlap cones typically grow at the tops of the trees, which bags, the bags are laid fl at in the sun and turned can easily grow taller than 30 feet. Ten-gallon canvas after a week or so. This will dry the cones until they sacks are used to collect harvested cones. open up in the heat and release the seeds (nuts) they protect. The cones are then placed in a machine called The season typically lasts two months, although this a tumbler that is equipped with special screens that year it was cut short by the weather and a poor cone allow the nuts to fall through. The nuts come out the front and the cones come out the back of the machine. The cones are then collected and go back through the drying process, and through the tumbler again, to ensure that all of the nuts are extracted from each cone. Some cones never open, especially if they were picked too soon. A burlap sack of cones will yield about fi ve pounds of pine nuts. After green picking comes “dry picking,” when the cones have dried on the tree but the seeds have not yet been released. The now-brown cones are placed on screens mounted over tubs and hit four or fi ve times to release the seeds. This operation usually takes place at the base of the tree the cones were picked from. Pinyon cones typically grow at the tops of the trees 3 The fi nal step in the process is separating the good crop in Utah and Nevada. Businesses also negotiate seeds from the empty shells. About 10% of the seed directly with private landowners to pick on their land. shells are empty in a typical year due to The BLM allows blight or other factors, individuals and and another machine families to pick up to is used to separate 25 pounds of pine nuts them from the good per person for personal ones. When all steps use without a permit. are completed, a little A common harvesting vegetable oil is added to method for individuals coat the shells, giving is to spread out a tarp them an appealing below a pinyon just luster. after the cones have begun to open, then The whole process starts shake the cones to early in the spring, release the nuts into when the owners spend the tarp. Care should a few weeks scouting be taken to avoid mountain ranges and Blue Coyote Pine Nuts is co-owned by Colero Romero, breaking branches and canyons, looking for Larry Shurtliff, and Joseph Smith (not pictured) damaging the tree. In favorable cone crops for Southeastern Utah, the upcoming season. picking pine nuts is Cone crops tend to be quite variable, as the cone reportedly a Navajo tradition; they harvest the nuts production occurs in pockets throughout a range. The by hand soon after they fall to the ground. Many Utah owners drive mountain roads, go on four-wheelers, Indian tribes historically used pine nuts to make a and even hire helicopters to help them determine fl our that they would mix with dried berries and store where the good picking will be. Once found they as an important winter food staple. Pine nuts were revisit the site two or three times to ensure the crop also an important commodity for trading with early still looks good before bidding on a specifi c area. Mormon pioneers. On Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in Blue Coyote has markets for their pine nuts all over Utah, almost the entire pine nut crop comes from the Southwest and as far away as Missouri. They can the Indian Peaks range, which parallels the state’s be reached at 435-574-2485. Other western border with Nevada, northwest of Cedar City. pine nut producers in Utah include the In Nevada most of the crop comes from the Roberts Dayer LeBarron family (www.pine- Mountains. The BLM holds a formal auction annually nut.com) and the Liston family (www. where the pickers bid for the right to harvest pine nuts liston.biz). These companies are also on districts the BLM has assigned to each area. Utah interested in purchasing picking rights has 19 areas to pick from, while Nevada has about 60. from individual landowners. 7 or 8 commercial picking businesses compete for the by Darren McAvoy 4 Utah 4-H Forestry Team Goes to National Invitational A 4-H team from Emery County got a crash course team members were also active in Future Farmers in forestry and a trip to Appalachia last July when of America, where they had learned about forestry, they were selected to participate in the sixteenth and some of them had previously participated in 4-H annual National 4-H Forestry Invitational. Held contests such as the Horse Bowl. Extension provided near Weston, West Virginia, the Invitational lasted the team with a trunk of study materials to prepare four days and drew for the Invitational. It teams from 15 contained a forestry states. This was textbook for each the fi rst year that member, Biltmore a team from Utah sticks, and tree participated in the identifi cation guides. event. The team arrived Emery County at the Jackson Mill Extension Secretary Resort, near Weston, and team chaperone West Virginia, on July Gaylene Condor 22nd. During the fi rst explains that she few days there, the became interested team participated in in sending a team demonstrations and to the Invitational competitions on a wide after receiving variety of forestry an email from Emery County’s 4-H Forestry Team: Caleb Jones, Whitney topics, including the Invitational Jensen, Gaylene Condor, Jacie Fasselin, and Cade Whittle. tree identifi cation, co-chair Robert forest insect and Hanson. Hanson, disease identifi cation, who attended college at Utah State University, compass and pacing skills, map reading, and tree was eager to have a team from Utah participate.