black walnuts

[greg setter]

One of the things I like to do in the fall is gather some black walnuts, clean and dry them, and crack them over the winter to eat. I prefer black walnuts to english walnuts for flavor. They are everywhere in the southern half of NJ, so finding plenty of nice ones is not problem except in a low mast year. Another thing I like to do as part of this process is check out various people cracking nuts on youtube videos and see some of the contraptions they build. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat and crack a nut, and some of them are hilarious.
This guy takes the cake for one of the best ever. I think there are some people on duckboats that could make something like this, and maybe even a few that could narrate the working of it as well as this guy also does. In any event, if you like black walnuts and take the time to watch it, I think you'll enjoy it.

 

[Huntindave McCann]

My neighborhood is loaded with black walnut trees. Many folks in town collect them. Years ago, when I still ran a trap line, I would boil the husks to dye my traps. I would harvest some of the walnut meats but not at all like the scale of the elderly couple at the end of our street. Those folks had a full scale operation. They used an old washing machine to separate the husks from the hulls. Then the hulls would be spread out to dry, upon screen doors laid across saw horses. The dried hulls were bagged and stored, to be cracked inside their home during the winter months. I think they gave away more of the nut meat than they actually sold, but they always had black walnut meat on hand.

 

[noweil Mike]

We have lots of black walnuts in this area. We even had a small local dairy that made black walnut ice cream for many year. It was mostly all older folks I knew of that gathered and cracked walnuts. Some used to keep the nuts segregated based on what trees they came off. They claimed the nuts off of certain trees were easier to crack. Then there were the people who tapped the walnuts to make walnut syrup in the spring.

 

[Carl]

I learned to wear gloves after taking the outer husks off a batch of walnuts to use the husks as trap dye. My fingers were tan and brown for months! We have lots of pecan trees down here but walnut trees are few and far between.

 

[greg setter]

I have a fun method of taking the husks off. I step on them and roll them under my feet (wearing a pair of ankle length LL Bean boots) then use rubber gloves to pick up the nuts. Works pretty good and keeps my hands from being dyed for weeks. I like to get at them within a day or two of them falling off the tree. I also will fill a 5 gallon bucket with water and dump them in and then throw out the floaters, then I clean them with a power washer and put them in a utility closet next to my furnace which stays a little warmer than the house but also very dry, usually by mid to late December I'll start cracking them. I eat them with my blueberries and yogurt in the morning and once in a while I will bake something with them. I also love hickory nuts, but shagbarks are rare around here, you have to get a little further north. There is a place in PA north of Lancaster where I know a couple that sell hickory nuts shelled and whenever I am out that way I will make a detour to their house and buy some from them.

 

[George Goodsell]

We have 8 full size trees on our 1 acre lot. Back when I was a much younger man we would to run em through a hand crank corn sheller until I got smart and motorized it. It would spit the nuts out into a wheelbarrow full of water then we'd work em good with a stiff broom and dry em on a screen frame. My mother would spend all winter cracking walnuts and my fingers if i reached for any nut meats... Now days i let the squirrels bury em in my wife's flower pots, I keep missing pieces of the shells so eatin em isn't as much fun.