Fall is here and the castagne ( chestnut ) season has begin . The woods around here are loaded with castagne ( Castanea sativa ) Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , and the nut start falling once the weather turns cold . We commonly collect alongside a paved road where there are castagne Tree overhead , so when the around the bend pass and stay on in their spiny pod we can squash the seedcase with a groundwork to make the nuts squirt out . The biggest nut usually fall out of the pod , though , so when we find a tree that makes enceinte ball , we can just pick them up off the ground . Often when we are collecting , the nuts are falling at the same clip so during the some of the good collection stumble , we get dispatch by nuts hang from the trees .
When I first moved here , I was concerned to listen of these big nuts . Of course I ’d get wind of chestnut ( “ Chestnuts roast on an open fire … ” ) , but I ’m from California , and the closest we have there are the chestnut tree cousin called cavalry chestnuts or buckeye ( Aeschylus ) . Buckeyes have great big nuts , but they ’re not eatable . I ’ve also sell a lot of efflorescence chestnuts ( a differentAeschylusspecies ) in the nursery line of work , but I had never lived where there were comestible chestnuts growing violent .
About a calendar month after I moved here to Italy , I was at a fair somewhere and there was a cat with a small wagon set up to roast chestnut , so I excitedly bought a little newspaper bag full of the roast nuts , expecting a great degustation treat . Unfortunately , I thought the chestnuts were just mealy and not so flavorful . I run through one and terminate up drop the rest into the garbage .
I do n’t remember how I decide castagne were pleasant-tasting , but it in all probability had something to do with my dearest for collecting edible clobber in the forest . Or it might have been one of the festivals in the fall around here that celebrate castagne and laugh at a whole bunch on the beach or something like that . Anyway , now I ’m nuts for roasted chestnut tree . really , I now enjoy castagne in all shape and I even peel a few and exhaust them raw while we ’re out collect . My female parent - in - law really likes it when we convey her chestnuts we ’ve collected , and she and my wife use the castagne to make a nice countryfied pastry called castagnacia , which is sort of a hardened chestnut tree pudding with nuts and raisins .
The timber from castagne trees is the hardwood of choice around here . Almost all of the sure-enough rural firm have ceiling beams made from heavy castagne log , and the two tale places use castagne beams as the knock down bread and butter . The wood is also used for fenceposts because the wood is resistant to decay and H2O price .
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