Yellowbud Hickory Harvest Event: Hollidaysburg

Rain or shine!

Join us for yellowbud hickory harvesting at Hollidaysburg Senior High School! KTCC's yellowbud hickory oil is pressed from nuts gathered by foragers across the state. There are currently no producing orchards of yellowbud hickory, but its abundance is all around us. If you'd like to harvest and sell nuts to KTCC, this is the perfect opportunity to learn how to ID, harvest good quality nuts, and plug into our operation. We will have oil to share and love harvesting together in community. Hope to see you there!

If you're interested in becoming a forager for KTCC, please check out our Yellowbud Hickory Harvester's Handbook. Also, check out ktcc.coop/harvest for other gathering events and our current prices offered for nuts.

At harvesting events, all nuts will be paid $ 7 . 5 0 / gallon. There will also be an option to trade for oil at 3 gallons of nuts for one 5oz bottle. Some harvesting events are purely educational as there won’t be enough nuts to sell or trade.

Hickory oil is not a new invention. For thousands of years, Indigenous communities across eastern North America pressed and boiled hickory nuts for oil and nutmilk, and the word "hickory" itself comes from an Indigenous term for that preparation. KTCC gathers yellowbud hickory nuts (Carya cordiformis, also called bitternut) from wild trees across Pennsylvania and surrounding states, working with a growing network of harvesters. The nuts are bitter because of tannins, but tannins don't dissolve in fat. The pressed oil comes out mild, golden, and smooth, with a quality often compared to fine olive oil. It is about 70% monounsaturated fat, has a smoke point around 450 degrees Fahrenheit, and works for everything from high-heat cooking to finishing dishes. Cold-pressed from raw nuts it is clean and neutral. Pressed from lightly roasted nuts it turns warmer, with notes of pecan.

We are deeply inspired by these trees that are thriving and abundant in our landscape. Making the oil takes care at every step, but it requires no clearing, tilling, irrigating, or chemical inputs, and a well-sited yellowbud hickory can live two centuries or more. KTCC sees hickory oil as a step toward a regional food economy built on native perennial crops, shared infrastructure, and fair returns for everyone involved. It is still early days, with only a few commercial producers in North America pressing a few hundred gallons a year. We are building the supply chain alongside our members and the wider community, and we think now is the time to build a better relationship to land and to each other.

For more information check out ktcc.coop/hickory-oil