That the geographical areas favorable to chestnut trees and their fruits were precisely the areas in which populations adopted chestnuts as a staple food seems obvious enough. But in order to make full use of the opportunity, populations had to create what might be called a “chestnut civilization,” meaning that they had to fashion their lives around the trees, from planting the trees to processing the fruits.
Planting
Chestnut trees seldom grow spontaneously. Moreover, pollination rarely occurs wherever the trees grow in relative isolation from one another, and fructification is poor when the tree is not regularly attended. For all these reasons, it is generally the case that the presence of a chestnut tree is the result of human activity, in contrast to a random act of nature. This is clearly so in the case of plantations, or trees whose alignment marks the borders of fields and pathways. But it is also the case with the countless clusters of two or three trees that cast their shadows upon the small hilly parcels of poor tenants.
It is important to note, however, that people do not plant chestnut trees for themselves. Rather, they do it for generations to come because the trees do not begin to bear fruit until they are at least 15 years old, and their yield is not optimal until they are 50 years old: “Olive tree of your forefather, chestnut tree of your father, only the mulberry tree is yours,” as the saying goes in the Cevennes (Bruneton-Governatori 1984:116).
Cultivation
Most of the operations connected with chestnut cultivation involve looking after the trees. This means clearing the brush beneath them and, when possible, loosening the soil; giving water when really necessary; fertilizing with fallen leaves; repairing enclosures to keep away stray animals whose presence could be catastrophic and whose taste for chestnuts is well known; and above all, trimming branches so that they will bear a maximum amount of fruit. Yet, tree care is hardly an exacting task, requiring only 3 to 8 days a year per hectare of trees (Bruneton-Governatori 1984). The trees, of course, would survive without even this minimal care, important only for improving the yield of nuts, which prompted some critics in the nineteenth century to compare chestnuts to manna falling directly from heaven into the hands of lazy onlookers (Gasparin 1863,Vol. 4:742).
Yet, when all of the exacting and repetitive tasks involved in growing and preparing chestnuts are contemplated, with an absence of mechanization the common characteristic, chestnutting suddenly seems like very hard work indeed.
Collecting
Efficient collection required that the area under and around the trees be clean so that few chestnuts would be overlooked. Collecting was a manual job, lasting at least three weeks (chestnuts do not fall all at once), and required the efforts of all members of the family. Perhaps half of the burs - the prickly polycarps - open on the tree or when they hit the soil. The other half had to be shelled, often with the bare and calloused hands of those viewed as tough “chestnut-ters” by fellow workers. Next the fruits were sorted. The very best nuts were sent to market, about 20 percent were judged “throw-outs” for the pigs, and the rest were set aside for domestic consumption.
Chestnut collection was tedious and hard on the back, requiring about 10 hours of labor for an average collection of between 50 and 150 kg per person. An estimate was made that 110 working days were required (100 women-children/days; 10 men/days) to gather the chestnuts from 2 hectares, which would amount to about 5!i! tons of fruit (Hombres-Firmas 1838).
Peeling
Fresh chestnuts constituted the bulk of the diet for those who harvested them until about mid-January - about as long as they could safely be kept. But before they could be eaten, the nuts had to be extracted from their rigid shell and stripped of their bitter and astringent skin. This is a relatively easy procedure when chestnuts are roasted, but generally they were boiled. Peeling chestnuts was usually done by men in front of the fire during the long evenings of autumn and winter. To peel 2 kg of raw chestnuts (the average daily consumption per adult in the first part of the nineteenth century) required about 40 minutes. Therefore, some three hours, or more, of chestnut peeling was required for the average rural family of five. The next morning around 6 A. M. the chestnuts, along with some vegetables, were put into a pot to begin boiling for the day’s main meal.
Drying
The only way to preserve chestnuts for longer periods was to dry them. The method was to spread out the fruit on wattled hurdles high over the heat and smoke of a permanent fire for about two weeks, often in wooden smoking sheds built specifically for this purpose. Following this step, the dried chestnuts - from 5 to 10 kg at a time - were wrapped in a cloth and rhythmically thrashed against a hard surface to separate the nuts from shells and skins that the drying process had loosened.
Dried chestnuts had the effect of liberating peasants from the irksome chore of daily peeling, and the drying procedure had important social consequences as well. Diego Moreno and S. de Maestri (1975) have noted that the expanding cultivation of chestnut trees in the sixteenth-century Apennines gave birth to hamlets that sprang up around the smoking sheds.
Grinding and Flour
After the chestnuts were dried, they could be ground into flour that would keep for two or three years, provided it was not subjected to moisture. From this flour pancakes and bread were made, although because chestnut flour does not rise, many commentators refused to call the loaves bread. There were also others who had harsh words for other chestnut products, making fun of “this kind of mortar which is called a soup” (Thouin 1841:173) or that bread which “gives a sallow complexion” (Buc’hoz 1787:126).
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