White oak and potatoes

October 13. 

So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year.  This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones (were there any ?) or hemlock or larch, and a great abundance of white oak acorns in all parts of the town.

This is a white oak year, not a pine year. I should think that there might be a bushel or two of acorns on and under some single trees.

It is also an apple and a potato year.

I rejoice when the white oaks bear an abundant crop. I speak of it to many whom I meet, but I find few to sympathize with me. They seem to care much more for potatoes. 

The Indians say that many acorns are a sign of a cold winter. It is a cold fall at any rate.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1860

It is also an apple and a potato year. See  October 3, 1860 ("Gathered to-day my apples at the Texas house. . . .between ten and eleven barrels."); see also October 13, 1852 ("It is a sufficiently clear and warm, rather Indian-summer day, and they are gathering the apples in the orchard."); October 21, 1857 ("Those who have put it off thus long make haste now to collect what apples were left out and dig their potatoes before the ground shall freeze hard.") October 16, 1856 ("The ground was so stiff on the 15th, in the morning, that some could not dig potatoes. Bent is now making haste to gather his apples."); October 20, 1857 ("Apples are gathered; only the ladders here and there, left leaning against the trees.")