But before we get to the curing part, we have to get the things off the ground! I used my fantastic Nut Wizard and got 3 buckets full. There are tons more in the trees! 2 of the 3 buckets are still sitting out under the trees because i ran out of juice before I could carry them in!
The green hull on walnuts will stain anything it touches (which is why it's used as a natural dye!) so I was trying to be careful and wore leather gloves. I didn't want to mess up my shoes by stomping on them to get the hull off, so I just did the ones that I could rip off with my hands. THEN, you have to wash them to get all the fiberous hull parts off - that's the part that isn't so fun. Oh, this is the point when I realize that leather gloves were a stupid choice because they'd soaked through. My fingers got a little brown, but not too bad. I switched to rubber gloves. Then I rinsed and rinsed in a bucket and I was afraid to dump the water because it's toxic to a lot of plant, so the first two bucket fulls I took out and dumped around a walnut tree. then i got sick of that and just dumped it! Some people use a concrete mixer with some gravel in it to get off all the hull. I do not have a concrete mixer. I do have a wire brush, so that's what I used. whew. This is what I got from half of a 5 gallon bucket. some were tossed because they were "floaters" - those are ones with undeveloped walnuts. Not a lot of walnuts.
But about 3 hours of work!
My hands are only a little stained, but I'm not too worried - i'm not a hand model! I've noticed that it's gotten a bit darker as the night goes on - so maybe it'll be horrible by tomorrow!
Perhaps tomorrow I'll find some shoes that I can sacrifice as stomping shoes and get more done! After they dry, you have to let them cure on the racks for a month or so. After that, the fun of cracking them - black walnuts are like the diamonds of the nut world in terms of harness! I saw a you tube video of a guy using his bench vice, and that's what I'm going to try too! I know my neighbors all have walnut trees too, so maybe eventually I will get tips on being more efficient!
1 comment:
Chris-
When I was young we used a device my Papaw made to remove the hull. It was just a piece of wood with holes of different sizes, up on a little wood stand. We chose the smallest hole that would work for each nut and whacked it with a hard rubber mallet. It would pop through with the green part removed. This was messy and fun - we did it outside on the porch over a tarp. Then he cured them in his garage for weeks, then we would sit at his bench vice cracking them, with a box underneath to catch the shells. I think we did this with pecans too, I remember working for days after school to get enough for one pecan pie!
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