Black walnuts

[yoteassasin]

Any one forage black walnuts ? I took the kids out on thanksgiving and we gathered 100# or so .. now we need to hull and dry them .. any pointers ?

[GunDog]

Watch out for worms.

[WOODY2]

Wear gloves or your hands will be stained for a very long time.

[gorn5150]

Originally Posted by WOODY2

Wear gloves or your hands will be stained for a ery long time.

That is true. I picked walnuts to pay for my first dog. I had black stained hands for a month.

[yoteassasin]

I’ll be wearing gloves obviously . The hulls are almost dry so I was thinking a dull knife or a putty knife would be good to get them off .. should I wash them after ? I was planning on drying them in milk crates in the garage ... or should I sack them and hang them ?

[TrailerparkTrash]

I would just buy walnuts at Vons. Easy.

[Squirly]

Where does one go to find wild Walnut tree's? WALNUTS ARE GREAT

[superdave50]

Black walnuts aren't worth the work, imo.

[yoteassasin]

I love black walnuts . A home made black walnut pie is second to none and they are high test super food ... i find abandoned trees in open spaces and flood control property just a couple miles from me . Hopefully I can get this dialed .

[tokuno]

Grew up with a large black walnut in the yard.
My Mom loved black walnuts (was one of the reasons they bought that property), so I spent many a rainy childhood afternoon in front of the fireplace with a hammer.
Lots of work, little meat (and always in broken bits, unlike when we shelled the neighbors English walnuts - so easy to shell those), but what we got was mighty tasty.

[jeffrice6]

Originally Posted by superdave50

Black walnuts aren't worth the work, imo.

Except for cookies!

[Epaphroditus]

Build a crusher to crack the shells.

[lowracer]

Harvested about 25-30 gallons worth of Black Walnuts from the tree out behind the henhouse on our farm this past weekend. Got one of those roller wire-basket tools and man it made quick work of picking them up. It's a wire basket on a long broom handle, you just roll it around on the ground and the nuts squeeze into the basket. After the basket fills, you just grab the basket, spread the wires open and dump the nuts into a bin.

Cranked up some Uncle Ted on the jam box, this particular concert from 1976. Got to say that made even quicker work of the harvest.



I have built one of these Michigan style nut hullers out of a 55 gallon drum to hull the walnuts. Almost finished with it. Mine is powered by a Ford 8n tractor PTO instead of a dedicated gas engine.



As for cracking black walnuts, there is no better method than this product: The Master Nut Cracker.

[ChuckD]

When I was a kid my grandpa had a couple walnut trees in his yard (I don't remember which kind). Us kids used to collect them off the ground and put them in 5 gallon buckets and stored in a shed until our next visit. My Grandpa had an old table that had a blade set into it (from my memory he must have cut a slice at an angle and slid a hoe blade into it, the blase didn't sit up very high, maybe a half inch), we'd grab a nut with the hull on and run it across the table with the blade in it - that would tear the hull almost to the nut, then we'd put them back in the buckets. By the next visit the remainder of the hull would be soft & dead and would fall off with just a little peeling, then we'd brush them with a coarse bristle brush and a bucket of bleach water and put the nuts in burlap sacks to air dry. We'd end up leaving about half a burlap sack for Grandpa, and each of us would take home about half a burlap sack. We'd leave them in the sack and hang them until we wanted a nut. There was a rock next to the back porch that was about the size of a dinner plate & had a dip in it almost bug enough for a walnut to sit in, I'd set the walnut in the rock and tap it with a hammer - the secret is to put a large crack with one hit without shattering or breaking open the shell, then once you have the large crack you can pry the shell open. I could usually get the 2 halves out in tact.

Anybody know of a place in San Diego County where a person could collect walnuts?

[superdave50]

Originally Posted by ChuckD

When I was a kid my grandpa had a couple walnut trees in his yard (I don't remember which kind). Us kids used to collect them off the ground and put them in 5 gallon buckets and stored in a shed until our next visit. My Grandpa had an old table that had a blade set into it (from my memory he must have cut a slice at an angle and slid a hoe blade into it, the blase didn't sit up very high, maybe a half inch), we'd grab a nut with the hull on and run it across the table with the blade in it - that would tear the hull almost to the nut, then we'd put them back in the buckets. By the next visit the remainder of the hull would be soft & dead and would fall off with just a little peeling, then we'd brush them with a coarse bristle brush and a bucket of bleach water and put the nuts in burlap sacks to air dry. We'd end up leaving about half a burlap sack for Grandpa, and each of us would take home about half a burlap sack. We'd leave them in the sack and hang them until we wanted a nut. There was a rock next to the back porch that was about the size of a dinner plate & had a dip in it almost bug enough for a walnut to sit in, I'd set the walnut in the rock and tap it with a hammer - the secret is to put a large crack with one hit without shattering or breaking open the shell, then once you have the large crack you can pry the shell open. I could usually get the 2 halves out in tact.

Anybody know of a place in San Diego County where a person could collect walnuts?

See, this is what i mean - too much work! English are much easier to work with. Of course, I am biased

[ChuckD]

Originally Posted by superdave50

See, this is what i mean - too much work! English are much easier to work with. Of course, I am biased

When I was a kid I didn't know it was work - I thought it was play. I still think it would be fun to do in small amounts. I wouldn't want to do it as job or all the time, but just as from time to time it would would be fun.

[Epaphroditus]

Trees of Antiquity has several varieties of walnut (and many other) trees. Excellent investment that will produce for many decades.

[Notpc]

When I was a teenager, one of my buddies was learning how to make knives. He used black walnuts in his old blacksmith forge as fuel. They burned really hot. I would break a few while watching him work. They taste good, but a lot of work for what you get.

[tokuno]

Originally Posted by ChuckD

When I was a kid my grandpa had a couple walnut trees in his yard (I don't remember which kind). Us kids used to collect them off the ground and put them in 5 gallon buckets and stored in a shed until our next visit. My Grandpa had an old table that had a blade set into it (from my memory he must have cut a slice at an angle and slid a hoe blade into it, the blase didn't sit up very high, maybe a half inch), we'd grab a nut with the hull on and run it across the table with the blade in it - that would tear the hull almost to the nut, then we'd put them back in the buckets. By the next visit the remainder of the hull would be soft & dead and would fall off with just a little peeling, then we'd brush them with a coarse bristle brush and a bucket of bleach water and put the nuts in burlap sacks to air dry. We'd end up leaving about half a burlap sack for Grandpa, and each of us would take home about half a burlap sack. We'd leave them in the sack and hang them until we wanted a nut. There was a rock next to the back porch that was about the size of a dinner plate & had a dip in it almost bug enough for a walnut to sit in, I'd set the walnut in the rock and tap it with a hammer - the secret is to put a large crack with one hit without shattering or breaking open the shell, then once you have the large crack you can pry the shell open. I could usually get the 2 halves out in tact.

Anybody know of a place in San Diego County where a person could collect walnuts?

Probably English walnuts. In my experience, black walnuts are really hard to pry apart, and very rarely yield whole halves

[Epaphroditus]

^^^ yup, blacks are very tough to crack. English can be cracked with bare hands.

[Darto]

The farmers have a tractor powered shaker that rains the nuts down from the trees. I don't know if there's a clever manual version that could be home brewed?

[Notpc]

My grandfather designed and built nut harvesting equipment in and around Colusa CA.