"The primary use of chinkapin is for wildlife food and cover. The nuts are an excellent food source during the fall and winter. Squirrels, deer, grouse, bobwhite quail, and wild turkey particularly enjoy the nuts. It can be used as a wildlife component for stabilizing disturbed areas." ~ USDA Plants Database

Here we go again. Today! It's already Wednesday, March 25, 2026, and, I am wondering this morning how many of my readers have ever eaten Chinquapin nuts. (Both chinkapin and chinquapin are correct spellings, just so you know.) Never heard of them? In my growing up days, they were not too plentiful, but, there was this one tree and it wasn't that easy to get to, but, the nuts would be ready to harvest from late summer into November each year. That actually made it worth going over the hills and through the woods to get to them. That is actually more true than you might think. This tree was located in the thick brush and woods near Brushy Creek and you had to want to get there to wade through the briars and the thickets. I'll put it to you this way: It's kind of like the saying about a wife kissing her husband with a beard. ~ "Kissing him with his beard is a lot like going to a picnic. You don't mind going through the bushes to get there!" ~  While I am not sure the wife of my youth would 100% agree with that saying, let me get back to the point of my story. The chinquapin nut has been best compared to a sweet tasting chestnut. The ones on that particular tree were small and not easy to open, but, they did taste good. I did like them and because I did I would wrestle my way to get there, eat as many as I could and stuff my pockets full to take with me. You didn't have to worry about overeating because you would tire yourself out shelling them. The forest animals liked them too, so, there was some competition to get there and get what you could. Many years later, many, I drove back up into where I thought there might be reasonable access to the Chinquapin Tree and sadly, through a little progress near that little township, they had moved in several mobile homes, therefore, the tree was either gone or I could no longer find it. That's my chinquapin story. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I did my best to keep it a secret. I did. I really did. Why? Let me set the record straight here. Having access to those treats was a real treasure to a country boy like myself, therefore, I treated it as such. Okay. What's your chinquapin  story?

 

I'm pretty sure I've written about this earlier, buried somewhere in the nearly 3,900 blogs I've written. If this story is different from the previous story, clock it up to the way my memory works these days. That's not a cop out, it's the reality of the changing landscape within my noggin. You know the one. It's the one I'm doing my best to use for something other than a hat rack. I know Paw Paw Mac would be glad to know that. You may have noticed because it's hard not to, that I've added a new logo-like image to my blogs. It was a collaboration between myself and Mr. ChatGPT. I address that artificial intelligence utility that way because it always says, "Hello Santa, how may I help you?" when I use it. It does. It really does. I gave it a photo and told it to create a character, specified the keyboard and background and after several iterations, well, there you have it. Instead of saying Blogmaster, I went with the German, Meister. Why? I thought it sounded a wee bit better. What's that you say? Very wee? I put it out there so I should be willing to take any and all thoughts about it. Right? Right! Thanks again for your time and we do appreciate the many prayers offered up on behalf of the wife of my youth. We do. We really do. She is much better and busy scheduling the myriad of tests the doctor ordered up. (More tests than Carter has liver pills, if you ask me, and if you don't get that dated reference, look it up.) I was thinking some about her transient amnesia and it would be nice if it was more selective, like maybe forgetting the times she was angry with me. Ha! Just thinking out loud, and, just sharing. Be careful out there and stay close to the Lord by staying close to His Word. Amen.