Posted on 12/06/2008 8:09:53 PM PST by Coleus
“The first walnuts I found this year had fallen from a tree on a park road. I was a half-mile from the car and the day was unseasonably warm, so I took off my shirt and knotted it into a sack to hold about a dozen nuts, which were half green and half brown. I was proud of my ingenuity until I got home, untied the shirt and saw the deep brown stains all over it. I didn’t even bother putting it in the hamper.”
Pfff. Freaking city boy.
Black walnut angel food cake, THAT’s why you pick up walnuts and crack them open.
Freaking city boy.
Nashville House in Nashville, Indiana does a landoffice business with black walnut pie (like pecan pie but better) when in season if they can get enough of ‘em.
What a special local treat! I’m going to make a note of that. Thank you!
When I was done I pulled off the work gloves and it looked like I had been stacking wet cow patties. Since I had to go to work the next day I put band aids on all my fingers. Told people I had a farm accident.
Next year left the walnuts to the deer.
Brought back childhood memories. We gathered buckets and buckets of walnuts.
Use a board with a hole in it to get the outer green skin off. Rubber gloves will keep the stain off your skin. Let the nuts dry in the sun for a couple of days. Do cover with screen to keep the squirrels from stealing your food. Don’t remember any worms.
growing up in the city i never did that; however, I did pick there was a non-edible chestnut tree nearby. It was good for climbing not eating.
Those black walnut husks could have been used to catch a lot of fish.
My aunt and uncle would spread them in the gravel driveway and just leave them for a week or two of getting run over. I used to wish they could grow pecans - that would have been worth it. But God or nature had black walnuts and persimmons growing there.
Its easy to make a walnut hulling machine.
Cut two 24” round pices of 3/4” plywood; drill a 5/8” hole in the center of each. Go to a building supply store and get about seven feet of 36” wide galvanized hardware cloth and a four foot long steel rod 5/8” in diameter.
Drive the rod through the holes in the plywood disks so that they’re about 6” from each end. Wrap the hardware cloth around the disks to form a cylinder, and staple it to the disks, except for the last foot of it, which has to remain free. Build a support base out of 2x6 doug fir or pine and drill each upright to accept a bearing that will support each end of the rod. place the bearings on the rod and insert into the 2x6 uprights, then fasten the uprights to the base. Now you have a drum that can be turned to tumble the hulls off of the nuts. Finally put a 12” diameter V-belt pulley on one end of the 5/8” rod, and take a long v-belt (72” or longer) and wrap it around the pulley, and set an electric motor with a 2 1/2” pulley on the base and place the belt on the motor pulley and position the motor to provide just enough tension to keep the belt on the pullies and fasten the motot at that point.
Then put the nuts in the drum, wire the flap closed, and plug the motor in. It will take about 1/2 hour in most cases to tumble the hulls off.
A friend & I picked up several sacks full in the Ozarks last week.
You could do the gravel driveway technique, or build a frame from hardware cloth and 2x6’s. Put the nuts in and allow the husks and stain to drain out the bottom of the frame, through the HW cloth. It’ll take several months, just as the driveway technique - but I think it is easier to find the nuts in the frame after an early snow than in the driveway. ;-)
As for cracking them: We found that hammers are counter-productive. A good machinist’s vise works much better. Better than that, after you get the husks off, put them in an oven at 250F for about an hour. After that, they’ll crack *much* easier.
BTW — the stain from the husks makes excellent wood stain. I’ve seen it used on regular walnut on gunstocks. Beautiful results. Add a little mineral oil with some paint thinner as a carrier.
There’s also wild pecan trees in NJ, not to mention low & high bush blueberries, red & black rasberries, blackberries, elderberries, etc. There’s food all over the place in NJ - and most people are utterly ignorant of it.
Now let me tell you what I have learned over the years that makes it a whole lot easier and cleaner. To start with, once you have found a good free source, there is a company in Indiana that sells a handy tool to pick them up. It looks like a football shaped wire cage with a wooden handle. They work as I own one. No sore knees or back from picking them up. Next, build yourself a 4ft by 8ft wooden frame and a couple of sawhorses, if you don't already own some. Gather the walnuts right after first frost while they are as green as possible. Place them on the wire frame. Pile them up if you gather lots of them. Every couple of days pick up one end of the frame and just bounce them a few times to turn them for drying. Buy yourself a hand corn sheller. Once the walnuts turn black, for easy shelling, mount the corn sheller on a sawhorse and run the walnuts through the sheller. Takes a little adjustment to get the sheller to work right but it isn't that hard to do. Place a container under the sheller to catch the hull mess. Be sure to wear heavy rubber gloves. Once all the hulls are off the walnuts put them back on the wire screen and wash them clean with the water hose. In a couple of days, when the outside shell is dry, put them in potato sacks, the ones that potatoes come in at the store, and hang them in a shed or some place until you have time to finish processing. I have kept them for a year and they were still fine. If the trees there are prone to producing nuts that do not have any kernel in them, go back to the washing process and put them in a tub of water. Any that float are bad and have no kernel. I have found the best way to crack black walnuts is with a medium weight bench mounted vise.
Now if you are really energetic you can save the walnut hulls and with a little imagination you can produce your own walnut stain for finish wood. And, if that isn't enough for you, you can grind the walnut hulls finely and use them in your shot blaster to remove rust from metal. Black walnuts are a valuable commodity.
Sound like a lot of work? Sure is. But just imagine all the fine candies and cakes you can enjoy from you labor. By the way all you cooks, they keep good in your freezer for a long time.
You were truly blessed then. Nothing like black walnut cake and fudge or persimmon pudding. yummy!
When I was a kid my basketball goal was on a Walnut tree. Lots of ankle injuries during walnut season. The huge-gutted squirrel who lived there only ate sugar cookies so he was no help.
We used to have two Black Walnut trees on our property, when I was a kid. About the time that my mother sold the house, a neighbor came over and asked if they could cut down the tree that was near their property because they said that the trees gave off an acid that killed other vegetation and that they had never been able to grow anything on that side of their house because of that walnut tree.
I looked it up and it is true. Oh, and we never tried to open any of the walnuts because my mother hated black walnuts.
Ain't that the truth!
If you are having trouble with Black walnuts, you might try your hand at English walnuts. I do not think they taste as good, though. You guys that are finding the buggy walnuts; a good way to test them out beforehand is to put your walnuts in a bucket of water. The good ones will sink and the bad ones will will float.
Also, has anybody here ever tried pickling walnuts? I am curious as to how they taste. Here is a YouTube detailing the process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBoPw5FwKFw
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