Harvesting Black Walnuts

Fall is beginning to come here on our hill in Tennessee.  Leaves are falling already, and our woodpiles are stocked.  So it's about time to start picking up walnuts.  We've done this every year since we moved here.  Most people don't fool with picking up walnuts, so there is an abundance every year left for the squirrels.  It's an activity that we enjoy doing together each year though. 

We have a few walnuts trees on our property but the easiest place for us to find them is down at the end of Buck Graves Road.  There are several walnut trees growing on the right of way there, so we usually walk down and pick up sacks full of them.  We leave the sacks lying there on the ground and stop and pick them up when we're there with one of our vehicles.  No one has ever bothered them lying there.  Most people don't even bother to steal black walnuts.  Perhaps because they are a little difficult to hull. 

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To hull the walnuts we crush the outer green husks and remove it with our hands.  It is important to use good gloves to do this because they will stains your hands if you don't do this.  Black walnuts were used by early settlers for dying.  They are still used if a natural dye is preferred. 

After we hull the walnuts, we spread them out to dry.  After they've dried a couple of weeks we crack the nuts with our nutcracker that's designed to crack hard nuts.  We bought this nutcracker the first year we moved here and it's really been a good investment.  It would be very hard to crack these without this type of nutcracker. 

After we crack the nuts we store them in the freezer and use them for cooking all through the year.