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Hazelnuts

Old Roots. New Growth.

A Great Lakes food crop carried forward for the next seven generations.

Hazel belongs here. It has been part of the Great Lakes landscape since the forests returned after the glaciers, growing along openings, woodland edges, sandy uplands, and disturbed ground. For Anishinaabe people, plants like hazel were never understood as isolated crops. The forest, the water, the animals, the gardens, the berry grounds, the maple stands, the rice beds, and the people were all part of one food system. Nuts supplied concentrated food and oil, while mast-producing landscapes fed deer, birds, and other relatives that fed the people in return.

That relationship is where Seven Fires begins. We are not interested in forcing another crop onto the land because there is a market for it. We are interested in looking at what this land already knows, what our people once depended on, and what can be carried forward in a way that works today. Hazelnuts give us an opportunity to rebuild a perennial food crop that can feed people, support wildlife, heal damaged ground, and create a regional economy without separating production from stewardship.

THE LAND WAS ALREADY A FOOD SYSTEM

Long before the language of agroforestry, regenerative agriculture, or ecosystem services existed, Indigenous people were managing productive landscapes. Food was not confined to a tilled field. Trees and shrubs were tended, useful plants were encouraged and moved, seed was exchanged, fire was used to shape vegetation, and the plants that performed best were carried forward. Modern agriculture calls this selection, propagation, breeding, and land management. None of those ideas are new.

Indigenous agriculture was never genetically frozen either. Corn itself exists because generations of Indigenous farmers selected and transformed wild ancestors into an extraordinary diversity of locally adapted landraces. New seed moved between communities and was selected again for different climates, soils, foods, and cultural uses. When introduced fruits such as European apples reached Native communities, they were not rejected simply because their genetics originated somewhere else. They were recognized as useful plants and incorporated into food systems already under active management. In northern Michigan, early Europeans encountered mature orchards associated with Anishinaabe communities before large-scale settler occupation. The principle was not purity for purity's sake. It was relationship, usefulness, adaptation, and responsibility to the generations that came next.

That is an important foundation for how Seven Fires looks at hazelnuts today.

FROM WILD HAZEL TO A GREAT LAKES CROP

American hazelnut carries an extraordinary amount of diversity. Research led by Michael Demchik examined more than 1,100 American hazelnuts across the Upper Midwest and found that roughly 90 percent of the measured genetic diversity existed within populations rather than between them. Plants growing beside one another can be substantially different, while plants separated by hundreds of miles are not necessarily more genetically distinct. The researchers concluded that breeding selections should be driven heavily by what the individual plant actually does — productivity, nut size, kernel percentage, ease of harvest — while still preserving genetically distinct populations.

That finding fits an older way of working with plants. Diversity is not something that has to be removed from a system before it becomes useful. It is something to observe and work with. Indigenous farmers selected the plants that fed people well, stored well, survived difficult seasons, matured at the right time, or carried other useful traits, and those plants became the foundation for future generations. Hazelnut breeding continues that process with another native food plant.

Philip Rutter and other Upper Midwest breeders intentionally brought American, beaked, European, and existing hybrid hazelnuts together into broad breeding populations, allowing enormous variation to emerge and then selecting the plants that performed best. Modern research on Midwestern hybrid hazelnuts shows just how blurred the genetic boundary can become: despite European ancestry, these populations genetically cluster with Upper Midwest American hazelnuts rather than European hazelnuts or hybrid populations developed elsewhere. They retain high levels of genetic diversity while adding traits that can make commercial production possible — larger kernels, stronger yields, improved harvestability, and more reliable production.

That is why Seven Fires does not see native genetics and improved genetics as opposing ideas. Wild American hazelnut populations need to be protected. Verified native material has an important place in restoration and conservation. But when the purpose is feeding communities, establishing agroforestry systems, restoring working land, or developing a regional perennial crop, splitting hairs over an arbitrary percentage of ancestry can distract from the larger responsibility.

The better question is what does this plant bring back to the land?

Does it survive our winters? Does it resist disease? Can it grow on difficult ground? Does it feed wildlife? Does it hold soil? Does it produce a nut worth harvesting? Can a farmer make a living from it? Can a community propagate it themselves? Can the next generation take what we planted and make it better?

For Seven Fires, those are native questions too.

Why Plant Hazelnuts?

A hazelnut planting can do several jobs at the same time.

Hazelnuts are a high-value food crop with uses that extend far beyond the whole nut. They can be eaten fresh or roasted, ground into meal or flour, processed into nut butter and spreads, pressed into a rich culinary oil, or used in baked goods, confections, sauces, beverages, and other value-added foods. The kernel is naturally dense in fats, protein, and calories, which is part of what made nut crops so important in northern food systems historically and what continues to make them economically valuable today.

That versatility also creates multiple market pathways from the same harvest. Larger, high-quality kernels can move into whole-nut and premium food markets, while smaller or cosmetically imperfect nuts can still be processed into flour, meal, butter, or oil. Pressing adds another layer of value, with the oil going into culinary products and the remaining press cake retaining potential as a protein-rich ingredient or feed material. Rather than depending on one single market, hazelnuts can support a broader regional food economy built around processing, storage, and value-added production.

Hazelnuts offer something unusual in agriculture: the potential for a long-lived perennial oil crop. Instead of planting, fertilizing, and harvesting an annual oilseed from bare ground year after year, an established hazelnut planting can remain in place for decades, producing nuts from the same woody root system while continuing to hold soil, cycle nutrients, and build biological structure below ground.

The kernel itself is naturally rich in oil, creating value well beyond the whole-nut market. Hazelnut oil can be pressed for culinary use, specialty foods, cosmetics, and other value-added products, while the remaining press cake still contains protein, fiber, and residual oil that may have additional food or feed uses. That means a regional processing system could potentially capture value from several parts of the same harvest rather than depending on one finished product.

Hazelnut oil has also been studied successfully as a feedstock for biodiesel. That does not mean hazelnuts are ready to replace conventional fuel crops tomorrow, but it points to a much larger possibility: a perennial food crop that could also supply industrial oil and local energy markets. Lower-grade nuts, processing byproducts, or material that does not meet premium food standards could still retain value through oil extraction rather than becoming waste.

For farms and rural communities, that creates an especially interesting model. The highest-quality kernels can remain in the food market, while lower-value fractions can move into oil, feed, or potentially fuel uses. Over time, a mature regional hazelnut industry could support not only growers, but also small presses, food processors, livestock operations, specialty manufacturers, and localized energy systems.

The larger opportunity is not simply replacing one oilseed with another. It is building an oil crop into a perennial landscape—one that can produce for decades while continuing to protect soil and support the surrounding ecosystem.

Hazelnuts create a permanent woody root system that holds soil in place year-round, giving them value far beyond the harvest itself. Unlike annual systems that repeatedly disturb the soil surface, established hazelnut plantings maintain continuous root structure through changing seasons, helping stabilize slopes, field edges, sandy ground, and other areas vulnerable to erosion.

Planted as hedgerows, contour rows, or field borders, hazelnuts can slow the movement of water across the landscape before it gains enough speed to carry soil away. Their stems, leaf litter, and surrounding groundcover create physical resistance at the surface, while the root system helps reinforce the soil below. This gives sediment more opportunity to settle out, increases infiltration, and can reduce the amount of soil and nutrients moving downslope or leaving a field altogether.

Over time, hazelnut plantings also contribute organic matter back into the soil through fallen leaves, fine-root turnover, prunings, husks, and other plant residues. That steady return of carbon can help improve soil structure, aggregation, moisture retention, and biological activity, especially on degraded or coarse-textured ground where organic matter is often limited.

The effect is even stronger when hazelnuts are integrated with grasses, clovers, native forbs, or other perennial understory species. Instead of a single row of shrubs, the system becomes a layered living cover with roots occupying different depths and functions. That can improve infiltration, reduce exposed soil, support soil biology, and keep nutrients cycling within the site rather than washing away.

For Seven Fires, that is one of the strongest reasons to work with hazelnuts. The same planting that produces a marketable crop can also become part of the infrastructure of the land itself—holding soil, slowing water, building organic matter, and helping damaged or vulnerable ground become more stable over time.

Hazelnuts can be incorporated into riparian buffers, filter strips, and agroforestry systems where their dense perennial root systems help slow water, hold soil, and intercept nutrients before they leave the field. In suitable soils, mature hybrid hazelnut roots have been observed reaching around 10 feet deep, giving them access to nitrate and other nutrients that may move below the rooting zone of annual crops.

Above ground, hazelnut hedgerows slow runoff, trap sediment, and create a biologically active buffer where nutrients and some agricultural contaminants have more opportunity to be captured or broken down before reaching streams, wetlands, and lakes.

That combination makes hazelnuts especially valuable as a working buffer: deep roots below, dense vegetation above, and a productive food crop in the middle.

Hazelnut thickets provide both food and structure, making them valuable habitat across farm edges, woodland openings, wildlife corridors, and restoration plantings. The nuts are eaten by deer, grouse, turkeys, squirrels, chipmunks, and other wildlife, while the dense multi-stemmed growth provides nesting cover, browse, and protection for birds and small mammals.

For Seven Fires, that matters because food production has never been only about what people harvest directly. A plant that feeds deer, birds, and other relatives is still contributing to the food system. Hazelnuts reconnect agriculture with that larger web by producing a human food crop while also supporting the animals and habitat around it.

Hazelnuts can be planted along field edges, property boundaries, contour strips, shelterbelts, windbreaks, and living snow fences. Their dense growth can slow wind, catch snow, reduce erosion, provide wildlife cover, and help define working spaces across a farm or restoration site.

What makes hazelnuts different from many conservation plantings is that those same rows can also produce a harvestable crop for decades. Instead of dedicating land to a single function, hazelnuts allow food production, habitat, and land protection to happen in the same space.

American and beaked hazelnuts evolved in landscapes shaped by disturbance. Established plants can resprout from belowground structures after many low- to moderate-severity fires. Hazelnuts should not be treated as a firebreak, but their ability to recover from disturbance is another example of the resilience built into these northern shrubs.

A PLANT THAT EARNS ITS PLACE

Hazelnuts are valuable because they do not have to perform one job.

The kernel can become whole food, flour, meal, nut butter, and a high-value culinary oil. That same oil chemistry has also made hazelnut an experimental feedstock for biodiesel and other industrial uses. A regional hazelnut economy therefore does not have to depend entirely on selling premium whole nuts; the crop has the potential to move through multiple food, oil, livestock, processing, and energy markets.

But the value of the plant begins before anything is harvested. Hazel establishes a permanent woody root system, holds vulnerable soil, captures carbon and organic matter below ground, creates habitat above it, and keeps land biologically occupied. Rows can become windbreaks, living snow fences, contour plantings, field borders, riparian buffers, wildlife corridors, and productive edges. Within properly designed buffers, woody perennial vegetation can slow runoff and help intercept sediment, nutrients, and agricultural contaminants before they move farther through a watershed.

That matters across the Upper Great Lakes because much of our land was never deep prairie soil to begin with. We work with glacial outwash, coarse sand, acidic ground, disturbed sites, old fields, and soils with low water- and nutrient-holding capacity. American hazel already occupies many of those conditions. It does not mean hazelnuts require nothing from the soil, but it means productive agriculture does not have to end where conventional row-crop ground ends. Sandy and marginal acreage can become part of the food system again.

Hazel also belongs to a landscape shaped by disturbance. Fire may top-kill American and beaked hazelnut, but established plants can respond through their crowns and underground systems. It is not a magical firebreak, and we should not sell it as one. Its value is deeper: it is a plant built to persist, recover, spread, and remain part of a changing landscape.

And every nut not harvested by people still has a place in the system. Deer browse hazel. Grouse, birds, squirrels, and other wildlife use its nuts and cover. A productive hazelnut planting therefore does not have to choose between agricultural value and habitat value. The old food system did not make that distinction either.

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY BEGINS BEFORE THE HARVEST

If we want thousands of acres of perennial food systems across the Great Lakes, somebody has to grow the first plants.

Food sovereignty is not only the ability to harvest food. It is the ability to hold the genetics, maintain the seed, propagate the plants, understand the land, train the next grower, process the harvest, and plant again without waiting for somebody outside the region to provide what is needed.

That is why Seven Fires is interested in hazelnuts at the nursery level.

A community that purchases every tree from hundreds of miles away may own the orchard, but an important part of the food system still lives somewhere else. Building mother blocks, regional seed sources, propagation knowledge, breeding populations, nursery infrastructure, grower networks, and processing capacity brings another piece of that system home.

It also gives us the ability to keep selecting.

The hazelnut that survives a brutal winter when the others do not should matter. The plant thriving in dry sand should matter. The one untouched by disease, carrying heavy clusters, filling its kernels consistently, or ripening at the right time for northern Michigan should matter. Those observations become tomorrow's genetics. Over generations, the crop becomes increasingly rooted in this place because people here are the ones making those selections.

That is how landraces are built. That is how food systems adapt. And that kind of relationship between plant, people, and place is much older than the nursery industry.

REMEMBER. RESTORE. REGROW.

The Seven Fires prophecy tells us that moving forward requires looking back along the trail for what was left behind.

For us, hazelnuts are part of that trail.

Looking back does not mean trying to freeze the landscape in a moment before contact or rejecting every tool, plant, or genetic resource that arrived afterward. Our ancestors were innovators. They traded seed, selected plants, incorporated useful foods, managed landscapes, and continually adapted their food systems to the world around them.The responsibility is not to recreate the past exactly as it was.

The responsibility is to remember enough of it to choose a better road forward.Hazelnuts give us a way to do that: protect the native genetics that still remain; work with the tremendous diversity within them; bring forward improved plants that can feed more people; establish them on land that needs roots again; build local nursery and processing capacity; and leave behind something more resilient than what we inherited.

A hazelnut planting can be food and habitat. Agriculture and restoration. Old genetics and new selection. Human harvest and wildlife forage. A commercial crop and a living piece of the Great Lakes.

Those things do not have to be separated.

That is the kind of food system Seven Fires Initiative is working to rebuild.

SEVEN FIRES HAZELNUT NURSERY

Seven Fires Initiative is developing a northern hazelnut nursery centered on Great Lakes genetics and the conditions of the Upper Midwest.

Our work will include American hazelnut, regionally adapted seedling populations, improved hybrid material, selected genetics, propagation and mother blocks, and partnerships that help expand hazelnut production throughout the region. We are interested in plant material for Tribal food systems, farms, agroforestry, conservation districts, watershed work, wildlife plantings, restoration projects, homesteads, and larger commercial acreage.

We are still building the nursery, evaluating genetics, developing regional seed sources, and laying the foundation for future production.

The goal is not simply to sell hazelnuts.

The goal is to help put a Great Lakes food crop back onto the Great Lakes landscape — and build the local capacity to keep it there.

Plant availability coming in Fall 2027.