CARROLLTON, Ohio — At Route 9 Cooperative Farm, there's a heck of a deal on pick your own. These rows of trees are loaded with a fruit that's making a long awaited comeback in Ohio.
Chestnuts!
These trees are the Chinese variety.
"What we grow here have been several generations in North America we've selected over the years," says Amy Miller of Route 9 Cooperative.
The nuts are beginning to drop and the farm is open weekends for pick your own. They also have an option where you can harvest for the co-op. They pay $17 a bucket for the brown beauties.
"This time of year, they'll pick for Christmas money," Miller explains. "We'll get a lot of student groups come pick if they want to make money for a fundraiser."
They even have Chestnut Field Day. These "students" are learning about this versatile agricultural product from processing to pizza!
"It is local and it's a bit of a novelty still, but I mean we're baking goods, we're making ice cream, brewing beer and liqueurs and there's like a range of possibilities for it," says Eleanor Reagan of Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative.
Some of those possibilities were on display, both sweet and savory options, all made with chestnut flour. It's very educational.
"We talk to a lot of folks who just have never seen chestnuts before. They don't know what they are. They don't know how to eat them," says Miller.
They are graded by size, some to be washed and sold whole, some milled into flour. The chestnut co-op is working.
"We really think that this local agriculture and the ability of small farms to work together is really important to the future of agriculture in Ohio," Miller adds.
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