The Squirrel is after my nuts!

My Kentish Cobnut tree.

This is my Kentish Cobnut tree, fully loaded with nuts. Every year I prune it and train it and tend to it and some years it yields nuts and other years it seems to take a rest.

This year I have a bumper crop. Some of the clusters have eleven nuts on them. This munificence, welcome though it is, comes not without its problem in the shape of the squirrel. This animal can strip the tree in a couple of days.

The clusters of nuts.

As soon as I see a nut on the lawn which has been cracked open, I know that the squirrel is around and it is time to call in the grandchildren whose task it usually is to pick the nuts. Three days ago I came home to find about a dozen nutshells scattered around under the tree. Panic. No time to call up the team; I rescheduled the rest of my day and stripped the tree of its harvest.

This year's harvest – about three thousand nuts.
For scale: the shoes are size 12 (UK).

This year I beat the squirrel!

I brought the nuts indoors and spread them on the floor of my hallway to allow them to ripen.

One day in the future when there is a good long programme being broadcast on the radio, I will sit down and crack them and then roast them.


In the meantime, the squirrel is methodically collecting the nuts that I have missed and is burying them around my garden.

A poor quality video still of the squirrel burying one of my nuts in the lawn.