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.