With a combination of nature, entrepreneurial farming and some help from Michigan State University, Michigan has become a national leader in growing chestnuts and is harvesting more than 100,000 pounds a year.
It's a comeback of sorts for the nuts after the trees that grow them were nearly wiped out by a fungus that destroyed billions of chestnut trees across the country by the 1950s.
"If I had a million pounds of chestnuts, I could sell them tomorrow," said Roger Blackwell, president of the Chestnut Growers Inc., a cooperative of 29 growers across the state.
Roasting the nuts at Christmastime still is popular, Blackwell said, but additional uses have fueled the industry's growth. Unlike other nuts, chestnuts are full of water — rather than oil — which means they can be dried out and ground up like grain to make flour. Their natural sweetness makes them ideal for pastries.
Researchers say the American Chestnut tree was once king of the forest in the eastern U.S., producing a decay-resistant hardwood perfect for building things like railroad ties, barns and other structures left out in the elements. In the 1940s, Mel Torme and Bob Wells lionized chestnuts in "The Christmas Song," later made famous by Nat King Cole.
But a fungus, first noticed in the early 1900s, took out billions of the trees. By the 1950s, it was rare to see a mature tree that hadn't been destroyed. Most chestnuts sold in stores were imported from Italy and China.
By the 1990s, Michigan farmers sensed a potential cash crop if the nuts could be grown successfully. Dennis Fulbright — a professor of plants, soils and microbial sciences at MSU — was researching chestnut trees and isolated a natural advantage that Michigan could exploit.
The fungus that kills the trees was itself susceptible to a virus tha! t occurs naturally in Michigan.
"We don't know where the virus came from," Fulbright said. "But it slows down the fungus considerably to the point where the trees' resistance can work."
Scientists helped by finding a hybrid tree that combines European and Japanese varieties. They produce larger nuts and a larger crop.
Fulbright said that eventually farmers hope to grow about 3,000 pounds of nuts per acre. The nuts sell for about $2 per pound wholesale and can fetch three times that much when sold retail, said Joyce Ivory of the Chestnut Growers.
The Henry Ford buys Michigan-grown chestnuts, and roasts and sells them during its Holiday Nights in Greenfield Village.
Jesse Eisenhuth, director of Food Services for the Henry Ford, said it's important to musuem to buy local.
"Chestnuts are a type of food most people equate with the holidays," Eisenhuth said. "Few people, however, have actually tasted them. We see a lot of people at our Holiday Nights program in Greenfield Village, eating chestnuts for the first time."
Fulbright said chestnuts give growers a diversity of products to offer; that helps when something goes wrong with their other crops.
"It's an alternative crop," Fulbright said. "We didn't freeze out the year of the big freeze in Michigan. If your apples or cherries are damaged, you still have your chestnuts."
Fulbright said Michigan's fruit belt on the west side of the state, where apples and cherry thrive, is perfect for chestnuts. But he sees other areas that can grow them, too.
Ivory and her husband, Peter, grow chestnuts on their property in Lapeer County in the Thumb. Fulbright said he initially doubted they could do well there, but: "They've proven me wrong, and I like to be proven wrong."
Fulbright said soil conditions and other factors in metro Detroit could make chestnut-growing possible here, too.
"This a great agricultural story," Fulbright said. "There are not too many start-ups in agriculture in our lifetime."
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