One of the few producers of hickory oil in the United States, Levi Geyer knows yellowbud hickory trees better than almost anyone else today. He also knows his neighbors better than many people — and that’s not a coincidence. 

Fancy Twig Farm, the company Geyer started in 2023, doesn’t resemble most people’s idea of a farm: He doesn’t grow annual crops, doesn’t use much equipment and doesn’t have his own land. Instead, the 25-year-old makes oil out of nuts foraged from trees growing wild in his area. 

“Working without land has forced me to be more creative in how I think about what I’m doing,” Geyer said.

In the process, he is discovering a unique way to live into Jesus’ mandate to love your neighbor. 

I worked for Geyer for three weeks in October, helping him with his goal of gathering 1,400 gallons of nuts last year, enough to make 100 gallons of oil. It was a down year for yellowbuds, but even if he stopped at 70 or 80 gallons, Geyer would produce about as much as the other handful of U.S. producers last year combined, predicted Sam Thayer, Geyer’s mentor, who holds the record of 82 gallons of oil produced in a year. 

With an oil content of over 75%, yellowbud hickory nuts, when pressed, produce a mild cooking oil similar to olive oil. Geyer processes his oil himself and sells it at the Iowa City Farmers Market.

Thayer, a world-renowned expert on foraging and the author of four books on the subject, has been producing hickory oil for over 10 years. 

“I am excited about hickory oil,” he said, “because as a local, native tree crop that is easy to grow without pesticides or herbicides, it is a highly sustainable food source.” 

The yellowbud (also known as bitternut) hickory is native to much of the Eastern U.S. and Canada. The trees are long-lived and adaptable to a huge variety of soils. Thayer’s research suggests Indigenous groups used the nuts as a source of oil in cooking. 

As climate change accentuates the need for more sustainable, local food systems, yellowbud hickories provide a potential solution to securing a major dietary staple: fat. 

On my first day of work, Geyer picked me up in his 2005 Toyota Corolla at 8 a.m. The back seat of the car was already loaded with 5-gallon buckets for harvesting and 15-gallon tubs to empty our harvest into. 

In the next few weeks, combines and tractors would dot the corn and soybean fields outside our car windows, bringing in the fruits of industrial agriculture by the truckload. But our harvest would come not from the vast, cultivated fields that cover over 85% of the state but from self-planted trees growing in overlooked corners where their potential as a food source has been ignored. 

The day’s circuit included half a dozen sites within a couple of miles of Geyer’s aunt and uncle’s farm where he parks the school bus he lives in. At each spot, we grabbed our buckets and made a beeline for the trees Geyer had scouted on his neighbors’ land.

My first task was to learn to identify the species by its bark, leaves and — of course — yellow buds. Geyer pointed out the trees, and I studied their bark — grooved in a tight, tidy weave, completely unlike the messy flakes of the more widely recognized shagbark hickory — and their compound leaves, each with seven to eleven leaflets the length of my fingers.

In the fall, the leaves turn a school-bus yellow, a color I learned to pick out from a distance. The tree’s crown has a light, frilly contour that reminds me of a stand of bamboo. 

The nuts themselves are not as uniform as the trees. Ranging in size from a marble to a plump cherry, the nuts have a thin outer husk that can be anything from a bright yellow-green color to brown and dried up, splitting partially to reveal the light brown shell inside.

I had to learn which nuts were alive and healthy and which ones were not. After a while, I developed a feel for the subtle weightiness that indicates life. 

We gathered the nuts by hand, a task that required either bending over at the waist or squatting for long periods of time. I was thankful for my healthy body and familiarity with physical labor. Seasons of working on farms, building trails and biking for days on end had trained me well for the unusual postures.

It wasn’t easy work, but it felt natural, like something I had done instinctively as a child. By the end of the day, I knew I would enjoy the next three weeks: There is something exciting — and deeply human — about spending a fall day gathering nuts alongside the squirrels. 

Geyer grew up on a farm in rural Johnson County, Iowa. He attended Hesston College and Eastern Mennonite University, where he studied disaster management and environmental science. He decided to become a nut farmer. 

Returning to Iowa in the winter of 2022-23, he knew that as a young farmer in the United States the cards were stacked against him. Record-high land prices, prohibitively large start-up costs and little promise of profitability made becoming a conventional farmer unrealistic. 

In addition, Geyer said, “I see creation care as a big part of my faith. And doing agriculture in a way that is good for the Earth is really important to me.” 

Iowa is one of the most productive farming states, leading the country’s production of corn, pigs and eggs, according to the Iowa Farm Bureau. 

But the main commodity crops, corn and soybeans, are mostly sold to make ethanol, animal feed and other products rather than to feed humans. And the way they are farmed degrades the environment. 

As a Christian, Geyer said, “I see very little difference between God and the land, God and God’s creation.” He is alarmed at how the land in his home state has been treated. 

“We have sinned against God by mutilating his creation here in Iowa,” Geyer said. “By destroying 99 percent of the native prairie. By eroding a third of the topsoil and washing it down the Mississippi. We’ve sinned against God by depleting 80% of the insects with chemicals, by completely altering the hydrology of the state with all the tiling, getting the water off the land as fast as possible and [polluting it] with our chemical and fertilizer runoff.” 

“Iowa is the most altered state [in the U.S.],” Geyer said, “and the destruction that we’ve caused to God’s creation is going to come back to bite us.” 

These beliefs have motivated Geyer to farm in ways that contribute to the health of natural ecosystems instead of damaging them.

“I try to leave the land better than I found it,” he said. 

When he goes into a forest to harvest nuts, Geyer spends time removing invasive species like honeysuckle and multiflora rose. This improves the ecosystem’s health and makes it easier to harvest nuts off the forest floor. 

As Geyer works, he pays attention to the many species that live alongside and interact with the hickory trees. One day, as we picked through underbrush and dead leaves in a wooded area, he told me he had noticed that hackberries often grow next to yellowbuds — an arrangement he believes benefits the nut trees. 

Hackberries provide food for birds, he said, so if there is a hackberry next to a yellowbud, birds will eat there and inadvertently fertilize the yellowbud with their droppings. This makes Geyer more likely to leave hackberries when he’s thinning the forest around a yellowbud tree. 

“Once we learn what’s going on,” Geyer said, “we can make a positive impact on the ecosystem.” 

The landowners Geyer works with often appreciate his management efforts, too. 

“People are usually happy to have someone come in and remove invasive species from their property,” Geyer said. “Hunters like it because then there’s better visibility. And people who care about the land in general want the invasives removed. There’s now a cooperative land management going on.”

Foraging on other people’s land has broadened Geyer’s social network.

“I’ve developed a lot of connections,” he said, “especially with a lot of my neighbors.” 

He believes building human connections is an important part of developing a resilient food system. But depending on the goodwill of his neighbors for his livelihood involves a risk, and Geyer has leaned into his faith for reassurance. 

“Jesus said: Love your neighbor,” Geyer said. “We often take that a little more abstractly, anyone who has a need, but there’s also a lot to be said for your literal neighbors, especially non-Mennonite neighbors.” 

In rural Iowa, many people crave social connections, Geyer believes: “Older people like to have a young person stop by to chat with.” Many crave a more tangible connection to the sources of their food, which Geyer can help provide. 

Interacting with neighbors, Geyer doesn’t push an agenda on climate change and sustainability. Instead, he connects over a shared need: food. 

He set aside nuts for seed and began planting them this winter, using 600 tree tubes. One day, each tree will produce enough oil to meet the needs of one person — or, in some cases, a whole family — for a year. 

Geyer doesn’t plan to charge for the trees he plants. He sees them as an investment in his future and that of his neighbors. 

“Anybody who will let me plant a tree, I’ll plant a tree,” Geyer said. “Hopefully in 40 years a lot of people will know about hickory oil because they have a tree growing right in their yard.” 

Planting his crop on others’ land is an act of faith. It means entangling his future with that of his neighbors and building relationships. 

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in this world,” Geyer said, “but when you focus on meeting each other’s needs, I think a lot is possible.” 

Sierra Ross Richer is a freelance writer and farmer from Goshen, Ind. She is the author of the “Climate Pollinator” series for the Anabaptist Climate Collaborative and often writes on the topics of climate change and sustainability. She works at small, organic farms, including Clay Bottom Farm in Goshen. This article is the first in an occasional series on faith-based action caring for the land and environment.