After six weeks of curing, these were my walnuts. It was no surprise that curing them was by far the easiest step in the process.

Cracking the walnuts wasn’t exactly difficult, just tedious.  Black walnuts are notoriously hard and will break regular nut crackers.  Therefore, I needed a special nut cracker — a hammer and anvil.

It’s messy and takes a long time, but it’s not a bad way to spend a morning with a cup of coffee and a pipe.  I wound up having to put on a pair of safety glasses.  These things can really fly apart when they finally break.  There actually is a technique to breaking them properly.  You hit the nut pretty hard several times all the way around, then settle on the fat side and hit it harder until it cracks.  That yields some pretty large chunks.  If you do it wrong, you end up with this:

As you can see, really difficult to remove.  Breaking the shell further from this point usually results in mostly crushed pieces of nut meat.

After three hours, this is what I had.  I really like black walnuts, but about half of the nuts I cracked were spoiled from over-curing.  Shoulda cracked ‘em after five weeks, I guess.  I’m going to pitch the rest and give it a better try next year.  For a learning experience, I’m happy enough with the way it turned out.

This thing is FUN, and useful too!  Of course, few good things come without a price.  I sold my bike, which hadn’t seen much use since I moved way out here in the woods.

The Beast graces the driveway of my parents' house

Click the picture to bask in the glory

Farewell, my little black friend.  Thank you for making way for the Great Pumpkin.

]]> http://www.davidbarwick.com/hello-goodbye/feed/ 0 http://www.davidbarwick.com/walnuts/ http://www.davidbarwick.com/walnuts/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 02:18:23 +0000 David Barwick http://www.davidbarwick.com/?p=693 Ever since I bought my new house I’ve had so much fun stuff to occupy my time that I haven’t felt like blogging.  But now the days are getting shorter and I feel like blogging again.  So here’s what I did today!

My house has 45 walnut trees in or directly around my yard.  It’s a big yard.  I didn’t gather walnuts to sell this year, but I did gather some to keep.

This is what 800 walnuts look like.

Considering that this was maybe one quarter the production of one of my smallest trees…. yeah, I got nuts.  It took less than an hour to pick up this many nuts, and that was even being picky about getting only the best ones.

Next I had to hull them.  I dumped them onto my driveway and rolled them underfoot until they came out, then kicked the nut into one pile and the hull into another.  This was a surprisingly fatiguing chore, and I wound up doing only about 300 before I quit.  This part took two hours.

Very messy.

Next you have to clean the walnuts.  This could have taken forever.  I cleaned them with a wire brush and water.  You put them in a bucket and if they float, they’re bad.  The first two I did I cleaned really well, tossed them in the bucket, and — they floated.  After that I didn’t clean them as much.

This water is still healthier than Mountain Dew.

Next you lay them out to dry in the sun (and wind, today) for a couple of hours.

You can click these pictures for larger versions, but in this case I'm not sure why you'd want to.

After they dried, I put them in the barn to cure.  You can eat them now, but they will be rubbery and kinda gross.  In about four weeks’ time they will firm up and get the flavor they’re supposed to have — at least I hope so.  This was more work than I envisioned, so it had better be worth it.  Right now the other 500 walnuts I gathered are still in those bags, and I probably won’t bother to hull and clean them unless I learn about a quicker method for doing so.

Of course, walnut juice stains everything it touches.  I didn’t really care about it staining my fingers, and it shows.

Walnut fingers.

Aaah, yes…. getting hungry.

Eventually, I got it out.  So I bought new nuts and bolts, got them tightened down, and the saga ended.  I think it looks pretty cool, and it’s way more comfortable than the stock bars.

One of the good things about naming him Shithead is the opportunity for nicknaming.  Basically, any word that uses “shit” becomes a nickname.  I’ll just let your imagination run wild on its own.

He’s actually a pretty darn good cat.  His personality closely mirrors my own: playful 8 hours a day, sleepy 16 hours a day.  He’s pretty big, too.  Not in a fat cat kind of way, but just in a big cat kind of way.  And he’s only about nine months old, so he could get bigger.

He definitely lives up to his name, but he’s a good little companion.

He looks fat in this photo, but it's just the angle.

This is probably too many pictures of my cat.

Most importantly, I only have about four weeks of school left.  This is exciting, because it means that I will get to do more of my favorite activity: drink sleep.

Hmmm.  This time it’s an ’08 Nightster.  More fun to mod.  I’m no mechanic, so it’s mostly cosmetic mods, although it already has some light performance mods.

The other one is for sale.  I’d love to keep ‘em both, but common sense has to win out on this one.

I’ve never been a fan of the heat and humidity that summer brings to our area, but I recently remembered a reason to love summer.  After owning a motorcycle for 5 years, I can’t believe I spent the last 2 years without one.  Now I’m back on two wheels, and I can’t get over how much it feels like a part of me.  I hope that I can always own a motorcycle.

For those interested, it’s a 2005 Harley Sportster 1200 Custom.  It sounds quite nasty, in a really good way.

I remember when I first decided I wanted a motorcycle.  I was 20 years old and had just begun working at the Sears shoe department.  I remember riding in the car with my family in Branson and watching with awe and lust as motorcycles passed all around. I remember telling my dad that I wanted to buy one the next summer.  My new job turned out to be good enough that I bought one that fall.

My old bike, the one that started it all… the lowly but stylish Yamaha V-Star 650.