Aw Nuts

[RJSakowski]

Over the years, the squirrels have been busy planting American black walnut trees around the property. Many of the trees are mature enough to bear fruit and this year there is a bumper crop. The walnuts in the husk are the size and shape of a bright green billiard ball and the ground under the trees is littered with thousands, if not tens of thousands. I mowed with the riding mower yesterday and it was like driving over ball bearings. The nuts litter the road as well and with passing traffic, it sounds like a distant battle with all the cracking and popping.

Two years ago, we also had a bumper crop and I decided to collect them. When I was growing up, we had a butternut (white walnut) tree in the yard and every fall, we collected them and would crack them open during the winter. Compared to the English walnut, they have a more sweet flavor which isn't unpleasant and my Mom would use them in baking cakes and cookies.

Anyway, I picked up a couple of five gallon buckets and dehusked them by crushing and rolling over them on a concrete slab. The instructions on the internet said that I should wash them until the water ran clear so I tried that. It was soon apparent that it would take forever and a day doing that by stirring in a bucket of water. I got the brilliant idea of using my cement mixer. I loaded the mixer with about two gallons of nuts and threw in about a half gallon of fine gravel and a couple of gallons of water. After fifteen minutes of running, I emptied the mixer into a course screen and rinsed. I repeated this several times or until the nuts looked free of the dark fibers from the husks. Then I put the nuts on a screen in the greenhouse to dry. Once dry, I bagged them in a mesh bag and hung the bags in the basement.

Supposedly, the nuts would keep in this condition for months, if not years. However, when I cracked some that winter, I found the nut meat all shriveled and rather tasteless.Given the effort that I had gone through, I deemed it a failed experiment and would toss the nuts out for the squirrels during the winter when they found it more difficult to find their caches.

This year though, they will have a veritable feast as it is hard to imagine that they could utilize all the nuts that are lying about.

 

[john.oliver35]

We have 3 or 4 black walnuts on the farm as well. We have never had any luck trying to get any nuts from them, but our methods were hand based. Never thought of the cement mixer!

 

[MrWhoopee]

My wife and I were just noting that there seems to be a bumper crop of California black oak acorns and Ponderosa pine cones this year.

 

[francist]

I remember as a young lad of 17 applying for my first job. I was going around to all the furniture makers in town seeing if they needed someone. Nobody did, but one of the places went to great trouble to show me around their place (this was down in Chinatown before it became really trendy) and in one corner on the wood stove quietly simmering away was an old coffee can full of black murk. "Ahh, what the heck is that?" "Oh, walnuts, we make our own stain with them..."

He explained the process -- take the shells and husks, put them in a coffee can of water, and then just keep them gently simmering on some sort of heat source. It takes days so you want something slow, like a wood stove. Anyway, the water eventually turns purple-black and when it got to the intensity they wanted they'd use it for staining furniture. They loved it, said it was the best colour and imitation of the real wood.

I still think about it and every time I walk past a walnut tree (not too many in Victoria) I think about trying the recipe myself just to see how it comes out.

 

[MrWhoopee]

I remember as a young lad of 17 applying for my first job. I was going around to all the furniture makers in town seeing if they needed someone. Nobody did, but one of the places went to great trouble to show me around their place (this was down in Chinatown before it became really trendy) and in one corner on the wood stove quietly simmering away was an old coffee can full of black murk. "Ahh, what the heck is that?" "Oh, walnuts, we make our own stain with them..."

He explained the process -- take the shells and husks, put them in a coffee can of water, and then just keep them gently simmering on some sort of heat source. It takes days so you want something slow, like a wood stove. Anyway, the water eventually turns purple-black and when it got to the intensity they wanted they'd use it for staining furniture. They loved it, said it was the best colour and imitation of the real wood.

I still think about it and every time I walk past a walnut tree (not too many in Victoria) I think about trying the recipe myself just to see how it comes out.

Fred told me that his mother kept a jar of walnut husks soaking in alcohol in the bathroom. She would dip her comb in it and comb her hair. This was ,of course, before Clairol.

 

[markba633csi]

Great preservative for those pesky excess body parts you don't know what to do with
"Norman!--- Don't put me in that fruit cellar!"

 

[RickKr]

I'm surprised the squirrels didn't eat most of the crop. That is what happened where I used to live, but that was a single English walnut and the invasive grey squirrels had overrun the area, pushing out the native red squirrels. One of the first years I lived there (1977), I tried collecting a bunch (of the nuts, not squirrels...) and drying then on screens in my basement. Bad move. I had a massive invasion of tiny moths the next spring.