Wild Irish Hazelnuts
Can you spot the hazelnuts in the picture? Getting your eye in when you’re out collecting can be harder than you think!
Even this far north, here in County Donegal - there can be quite a bounty of Wild Irish Hazelnuts aka “cobnuts” - appearing in the woods and hedgerows around mid-September or so.
Particularly in isolated pockets of woodland where there aren’t many squirrels (and like much of Ireland, in Donegal there are both the native red squirrels and the introduced grey squirrels present, in varying proportions from place to place).
The photo above shows the hazelnuts ripening on the hazel tree - you need to “get your eye in” in order to be able to spot the nuts. And unless you pick them off of the tree you’ll be competing with the mice and other rodents if you try collecting them off the woodland floor!
You can see in the photo here that you will usually be second place in the race for the hazelnuts if you wait for them to fall from the trees:
Rewilding.ie will generally focus more on connecting with nature rather than collecting from nature - but it’s nice to forage a little from time to time….
Hazelnuts are delicious fresh from the tree but you can shell & roast them to make them last longer - you can see here the shelling to roasting process.
And then once the nuts are shelled, they can be placed on a tray to be gently roasted. This helps to dry them and makes them last longer.
It’s worth noting that they can also be used to make a home-made chocolate spread that more than gives Nutella a run for its money.
On the Rewilding.ie blog we’ve written recently about how orchards can be a great way for people to connect with nature whilst still yielding some productive benefit locally, too. The same principle applies to hazel - a native Irish tree which is of enormous utility. It produces a totally natural protein/fat rich food and useful wood (traditionally in conjunction with the craft of coppicing) and of course with great ecological value itself as well, as the squirrels will attest!
