Walnuts.

Is anyone else harvesting black walnuts?

I have always liked the flavor of black walnuts, since I was a kid, but seldom messed with them because they are so hard to crack. A few weeks ago, I bought a G. Gardner Master Nutcracker. It makes cracking a black walnut very easy. With it, I can crack over 20 black walnuts a minute. I just drop the walnuts into a big plastic bin, as I crack them and then pick out all the meats. I got about a pint of nut meats in 20 minutes.

I used up all my black walnuts from last year and been picking up a bucket, at a time, of new walnuts, about every day. I've been hulling by hand. I just bought an antique corn sheller, at auction, that I hope will make hulling faster and less messy. I've been spraying the hulled walnuts with a hose, but I am going to start using a pressure washer on them. I put then in a cage with 1" by 2" wire to spray the walnuts.





Diane made some very good brownies and oatmeal cookies with last years black walnuts.

I hope to collect a couple of hundred pound of walnuts in the shell. They will keep for up to 10 years.

I have found a lot of Native American nutcrackers and mortars and pestles on my farm.

I am going to go over to a friend's farm to collect hickory nuts.

Keith

I love black walnuts. I've been getting a pint of cracked for $7 -$8. So $24 bucks an hour for you.

Seen many a cookie, cake, brownie, fudge and ice cream ruined with those nasty things. Good for dying traps though.

A fair number on my tree this year. Pollination conditions must have been just right. This isn't a big walnut area.

gotta wear a hard hat in my back yard

Let us know when your hands are white again.

We have a fair number of walnut trees. Looks like you got a nice yield this year.

i have several large butternut trees on my property. Not much of a crop this year.

They were falling all around me up in the tree stand last weekend. I usually get a couple buckets full for the trap dye pot.

from a loggers perspective i hope your stand isnt attached with hadware i cut a tree last year that would have been worth over $2000 gross if somebody hadnt nailed a deer stand to it 40 rears ago .It wasnt a veneer tree just big diameter . It is heart breaking to see all those walnut trees with screw in steps and spikes in them I see tens of thousands of dollars of walnut trees ruined every year . I had a client bannish the neighbouring family from hunting on his place because they had built several stands in his walnut trees .

Bigfoot, what is the primary use for walnut wood? Excuse the ignorant question.

cabinet lumber , trim , flooring

Nope, lock ons and strap on ladder stands on my place and I wasn't sitting in one, just surrounded by them. I have dozens of old growth walnuts on the property, no intention of selling them off but it's always nice to know the option is there.

Got a steep cleared hillside that I was thinking of Planting a bunch on. Wouldn't benefit me at all but maybe my kids someday. How long to average maturity for a walnut tree?

I like deer stands that lock on . White oak and walnut are my most valuable species . I run into several trees a year of both species that would have paid the landowner 3,4,or 5 hundred dollars if it wasnt for the deerstand hardware grown into them . Landowners dont take it kindly when they find out the lost value

Spot on ADC

Black Walnuts are great.
Also Shagbark Hickory nuts, if i can beat the squirrels to them
White Walnuts ( Butternuts ) are my favorite.
Extremely easy to hull.
Half a bucket of water , nuts, cordless drill , paint mix tool. ( 5 min max )

Very, very hard to crack .
Could use some advice there.

You have about as much taste nuts as you do in baseball. He's a Cub fan.

The G. Gardner Master Nutcracker will crack black walnuts, butternuts, heartnuts, hickory nuts and pecans effortlessly.

http://www.masternutcracker.com/

Keith

I do love to eat black walnuts. I really like them in pancakes. Great in trail mix, or just plain.

But NEVER, NEVER, EVER ruin brownies or ice cream with walnuts! Or any other nuts for that matter.

The hardest part for me has always been picking the meat out of the shell. Seems to take forever just to pick out each tiny little piece of the meat. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. I've always just smacked the shells with a hammer to bust them into pieces. But that busts the meat into tiny pieces, too - and they are still stuck in the shells.

My dad used a diagonal cutter to trim the shell away from the meat. he just cracked them enough to open them up.

I got a pretty decent walnut cracker. I don't think it's a high end one like Keith has. It does a decent job way better than a hammer.

The nut cracker I have gets a lot of sections of nut out whole. I wish I had it 42 years ago, when I first had a walnut tree in the yard.

I really like black walnuts in chocolate brownies. The nuts make the flavor much richer.

Keith

crack them then let set for a couple weeks to dry then pick the meat out

On yeah...brownies and fudge...best of the best...


Donnie

It's a bad year for black walnuts here, but I've still gotten a fair amount from around a dozen trees on my farm. 7 buckets of walnuts in hulls makes 2 buckets hulled and pressure washed.







Here's the nut cracker I use. The G. Gardner Master Nut Cracker.




Anyone else collecting nuts.

Keith

Thanks for posting the picture of the walnut cracker. I've never seen one like that.

It works very well. You can put the lever in whatever notch gives you the most torque, based on the size of the nuts. You can also adjust both of the screw pieces that hold the nut. It operates very smoothly.

My friend James bought a cheaper knockoff, that doesn't work near as well. The knockoff doesn't automatically adjust to the size of the nut as well and catches some.

Keith