Tell Me What I Need to Know About the Black Walnuts I Gather

 
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McGiever
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Post by McGiever » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 8:30 pm

Picked up a 5 gallon bucket of Black Walnuts today.

Thought I'd see what good info I might glean from the fellow members of the board as to learn about and make the best use of this treasure :)

I quit after the 5 gallon bucket got full...they had collected nicely in a ditch alongside of a little traveled road...some had the hulls or husks loosened from being driven over.

Seen a couple more black walnut trees, w/ dropped nuts, further down the road as I headed on towards home.

Now, if I can only remember where I saw those Butternut Trees??? ;)


 
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Post by VigIIPeaBurner » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:13 pm

I'd leave them to the squirrel's :D I had a grove of them at my first house and would rake 3-4 30 gallon garbage cans of them - and there where squirrels galore! I did collected black walnuts as a kid. Hulled them with bricks and got all stained up. You have to let them dry after dehulling. They are buggers to open and then you find that after all that struggling, there's next to no meat! I'd say give it try and see how you make out. I did try running them over in the driveway to dehull them. Better have a gravel driveway nobody walks on afterwards or you'll be tracking the stain and hulls into the house. PIA - squirrel food, IMHO ;)

 
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Post by freetown fred » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:29 pm

There real good for home invasions MG ;)

 
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McGiever
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Post by McGiever » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:34 pm

Gee, I was hoping someone was going to say they were good on ice cream...not that they were good for home invasion. :shock:

 
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Post by Sunny Boy » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:39 pm

My place is covered with black walnut trees. The hulls make a very good brown/black dye, but only on things you don't want it to ! :D

Yeah, like Vig said, alot of work to get at very little inside !!!:D

Paul
Last edited by Sunny Boy on Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.

 
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VigIIPeaBurner
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Post by VigIIPeaBurner » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:40 pm

Pretty strong tasting, quite concentrated. Not like the English Walnut you're familiar with.

Forgot to add the squirrels would chew into my attic and stash their little treasures in the insulation. What a mess and a lot of damage. I worked swing shift and I swear they had bowling teams up there :lol: Always seemed to have league day when I was trying to sleep after midnight shifts. We had a long (rifle) talk about that. 9 separate talks as I recall :roll:

So there ya go. To stay on topic in the Food and Recipes section, let the squirrels the Black Walnuts and then make Brunswick Stew. Good use for'em after you take your child out for their first small game hunt early in the fall, about now as a matter of fact.
Last edited by VigIIPeaBurner on Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

 
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Post by Sunny Boy » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:44 pm

VigIIPeaBurner wrote:Pretty strong tasting, quite concentrated. Not like the English Walnut you're familiar with.

Forgot to add the squirrels would chew into my attic and stash their little treasures in the insulation. What a mess and a lot of damage. I worked swing shift and I swear they had bowling teams up there :lol: Always seemed to have league day when I was trying to sleep after midnight shifts. We had a long (rifle) talk about that. 9 separate talks as I recall :roll:
The lil' stinkers stash them up between the rotor and the dust shields of my car's disc brakes where they get jammed in. What a noise that makes until the darn things wear down enough to fall out. :mad:

Paul


 
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Sunny Boy
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Post by Sunny Boy » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:46 pm

McGiever wrote:Gee, I was hoping someone was going to say they were good on ice cream...not that they were good for home invasion. :shock:
You don't ever want to step on a hulled one when your bare foot !!!! :shock:

Paul

 
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Post by Cap » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:48 pm

Leave the black walnuts alone. Go for the English Walnuts. The squirrels eat or hide all of the English nuts first before going after the black walnuts too. Black nuts are bitter and I can't believe used for much since the days of the first winter in MA.

 
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Post by warminmn » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:49 pm

An old crank corn sheller will remove the hull and will dye the sheller black. The taste was always a little strong for me. Butternuts have mostly been wiped out by a fungus. Those taste better. If you want a walnut tree just stick the whole nut in the ground and it will grow.

 
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Post by VigIIPeaBurner » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:50 pm

IIRC, they use Black Walnut shell powder to polish brass casings before reloading. Hard stuff. I think they use the same stuff to decarbon gas engine cylenders :?

 
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Post by McGiever » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 9:57 pm


 
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Post by McGiever » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 10:03 pm

warminmn wrote: Butternuts have mostly been wiped out by a fungus. Those taste better.
I will sometimes come across a Butternut tree, but they never get to be any good size...must be the fungus that takes them out before they get very big. :idea:

 
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Post by Lu47Dan » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 10:38 pm

Jeesh guys, chill out.
Black walnuts are a great source of Omega 3 fatty acid.
Now black walnut meats vary in size, fullness and shape from tree to tree. I have three trees here on the property. Two of them have real nice nuts the other one has a three cornered nut that is hard to crack. The other two crack nicely.
So when gathering the nuts it is best to cull the nuts. I have gathered nuts from an unproven treein a 2gal bucket than hulled them and dried and cracked them to see if they were worth collecting.
If they are worth collecting I will collect them and process them.
When hulling them out I wear latex gloves or nitril gloves, when I have them all hulled out I place them on hardware cloth drying screens and set them out on sawhorses in the sun. If it is going to rain I cover the screens with either rubber roofing or heavy plastic sheeting. Once they are dry I store them in plastic feed sacks in the mudroom. I must have five full bags of nuts here.
Last year I gave away all the nuts from my three trees, the guy that picked them up got a pick up load of un-hulled nuts in fiberglass totes.
Cracking.....
I have used numerous methods of cracking them.
Hammer and wooden block.
Hammer, wooden block and a cement block under it.
Hammer, wooden block about 24" tall and a square steel plate.
I am working on building a lever operated nutcracker, close in design to a O frame reloading press. I have some of the machining done and I am redesigning a couple of parts to make the machining easier to do.
The nut will crack against a top die shaped like a "+" sign in a cup.
The base design will just be a cup.
Some tips for getting full nut meats.
A pair of diagonal pliers can be used to cut the shell open more to remove the nut meat.
A pair of linemans pliers helps also.
Do not try to crack the nut with one fell swope, allow the hammer to "bounce". It is also easier on the fingers as it is less likely to smash the nut and get your fingers.
A dense wood is is best to be used as the block I think the one I have now is hard maple, I am going to replace it this fall with a hickory one.
A medium weight hammer, is better than a heavy hammer.
Good luck and happy cracking. :D
Dan.

 
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Post by McGiever » Wed. Oct. 01, 2014 11:04 pm



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