How chestnuts are planted and new forests raised

December 31. 

I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. 

I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised. 
First fall the chestnuts with the severe frosts, the greater part of them at least, and then, at length, the rains and winds bring down the leaves which cover them with a thick coat. 

I have wondered sometimes how the nuts got planted which merely fell on to the surface of the earth, but already I find the nuts of the present year partially mixed with the mould, as it were, under the decaying and mouldy leaves, where is all the moisture and manure they want. A large proportion of this year's nuts are now covered loosely an inch deep under mouldy leaves, though they are themselves sound, and are moreover concealed from squirrels thus. 

It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut. Will not the trees look finely in the morning?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1852

Gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook.   See December 27, 1852 ("I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised."); See also August 14, 1856 ("Just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook”); November 28, 1856 ("To chestnut wood by Turnpike, to see if I could find my comb, probably lost out of my pocket when I climbed and shook a chestnut tree more than a month ago. Unexpectedly find many chestnuts in the burs which have fallen some time ago. Many are spoiled, but the rest,. . . are softer and sweeter than a month ago, very agreeable to my palate"); December 12, 1856 (“At the wall between Saw Mill Brook Falls and Red Choke-berry Path, . . see where they [squirrels] have dug the burs out of the snow, and then sat on a rock or the wall and gnawed them in pieces. I, too, dig many burs out of the snow with my foot”);  December 22, 1859 ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow."); January 10, 1853 ("Went a-chestnutting this afternoon to Smith's wood-lot near the Turnpike. Carried four ladies. I raked. We got six and a half quarts"); January 25, 1853 ("I still pick chestnuts.")


How chestnuts are planted and new forests raised. See October 22, 1857 ("Nature drops it on the rustling leaves, a done nut, prepared to begin a chestnut's course again.”)

Scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods. See October 24, 1857 (“I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk . . .It is best to reduce it to a system.”)

A sort of frozen rain this afternoon stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut. See
December 6, 1858 (“Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it.”). See also See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve