You all have a lot of heart out there and a beautiful farm to show for it. We had to resort to a pull behind lawn sweeper for the burs. They just became too much. It misses the ones you run over with the tires, so some genius should design one that goes in front of you. Still, it gets 95% of them. We have to collect nuts with the rolling "wizards" and then sweep, almost in one action to not collect the new drops. I can't imagine having 3000 mature trees to manage. We have 100 and it's hard work. Ours are grafted Eaton, Qing, Pandora, etc, and my own cultivar, Black Satin. Good luck to you folks, you certainly have done the work to deserve it.
There would be few alive that could have experience eating an American. They do sometimes produce small crops from stump sprouts, so there are those. Then you have the American Chestnut Foundation folks you could ask. I suspect they would say the Americans are sweeter. They are certainly smaller. We grow grafted varieties, and one, 'Eaton' , is a complex hybrid, has some American in it. It also has some Chinese and European genes as well. For all the different varieties we have growing, 'Eaton' is the favorite for flavor among our customers, who are mostly Asian. The variety 'Qing' is much sweeter, so it is not the sweetness that they seek, but something else. Very complicated.
@@Qingeaton We have 6 Chestnut trees here in mid-Missouri. Qing Chestnuts are our favorite, though we have two other trees that have not produced seeds yet. Deer are also our main problem; I wrap a piece of galvanized fence wire around the trunk (loosely) and that has solved the problem.
