Dec 24 2013

A Christmas Song

Christmas Album – Nat King Cole

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    • on 12/24/2013 at 07:45
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    This Christmas season, I am roasting chestnuts by the fire. American chestnuts, to be exact. These nuts, once widespread, were almost wiped out by a fungal blight. For a century, most of the chestnuts we eat, like the sweet Castanea sativa variety, have been imported from Europe and Asia.

    And yet, I have been enjoying American chestnuts for several years now, harvested from some trees that are now part of my forest of 600 acres in western Maine. I planted four seedlings in the spring of 1982. Beyond all my expectations, the trees thrived, and some are now 35 feet tall. I never would have imagined such success; it was a Hail Mary shot in the dark to see if they might grow in the forest where they were once so common.

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