https://www.businessinsider.com/appalachian-history-chestnut-currency-2018-5

So many people were involved in chestnut harvests that it was actually a common place to meet your future spouse. The elderly participated as well, though they were often strapped to the backs of horses or mules via packsaddle, too frail to hike through the woods on their own two feet but reluctant to miss out on all the fun. The nuts were so plentiful, sometimes inches deep on the forest floor, that Lutts remembers a woman who once said “a chestnut grove is a better provider than a man, easier to get along with too.”