The only thing better than free materials are free snacks. Although this delicacy is free there is a cost associated, time. With the right set up the time investment can be reduced to a couple hours, not including clean up :) Yah, this is a messy one! You might not notice these beautiful trees at first but when the fruit start falling you can see one a mile away. Dark stains on the sidewalk and dented car hoods are a telltale sign of this wonderful tree. With this workflow I can hull and clean at a rate of 300 walnuts an hour, once you get your work flow right you can really fly through it. Its funny, after you have done this once your mind has been trained to see the evidence of walnut trees everywhere. Sometimes I'll see a fragment of shell left behind by a squirrel and will go running off to hunt the tree down. If you get through the how to and are still interested, check the disambiguation section. There is a lot of misinformation and conflicting points of view that I have tried to clarify.
Safety:
Take this seriously. I took one drop of barely tainted walnut water to the eye and it hurt like the dickens. Always wear safety glasses and gloves at a minimum. Last year I saturated myself so much with the walnuts that I had an allergic reaction. Now while processing I were full rain gear as well as eye pro and long rubber gloves.
The Tools:
- 2-5 5 gallon buckets (depends on the volume you are dealing with)
- Corded drill
- Large paint mixing paddle
- Hose
- Window screen
- 2' length of twine
The Steps:
1 Collecting
2 Hulling
3 Cleaning
4 Drying
5 Curing
6 Storage
7 Shelling
Collecting:
Gather your nuts in 5 gallon buckets. Larger nuts will be about 100 to a bucket, smaller nuts will fit about 200. This is fairly accurate give or take 10. If the tree hangs over a road you will find many that cars have hulled them for you. These are good even if there is a little mold on it. The shells are the seeds armor and do a very good job at protecting it. Out of the 2000 I processed I only saw a few with holes in the shell.
Hulling:
The cornhusker although designed for separating dried kernels from the cob is very efficient at forcing the nut out of the hull. I run 50 walnuts through the husker at a time and separate the nuts from the husk pile manually. This is a good point to consolidate your husks if your making ink or dye. I use a trash barrel. There are a few other methods but I will cover those in another post.
Cleaning:
Fill the bucket of 50 nuts with water so they are submerged by an inch or so. A percentage of the nuts will float, but don't throw these out. There is one type of floater I can identify by eye that is guaranteed to be empty but its not worth looking for. When dry these shells crack so easily that the time saved by simply processing everything is greater that the energy spent cracking them later. With a corded drill and a large mixing paddle installed, slowly bring it up to full speed. The bottom of the paddle should be in contact with the bottom of the bucket. This will help keep it stable. If you just jump right into full speed water and nuts will fly everywhere. Let the drill run for a full minute. The walnuts are acting as aggregate smashing the bits of hull off each other. Hold the Walnuts back with your (gloved) hand and poor the dirty water into another bucket. Repeat this again combining the water from the two washes. Fill one more time with water and poor of without agitating. This water can go in with the hulls. The water from the first two washes is very dark and, with the addition of a few fist full's of hulls, can go right into a pot on the stove if you are making dye. I keep these buckets separate from any other uses throughout the year to prevent contamination, last year I built up a allergy to the Juglans toxin.
Drying:
Now that the nuts are clean you'll need to lay them out on a flat surface with air flow on all sides. If you have a gas stove with a pilot just place them on a cookie sheet and leave them in for 8 hours. I use a large piece of window screen placed on my hammock. A full day outside is usually all it takes. If they are still not dry you can pack them in a cardboard box with bunched up newspaper. Be very aware of squirrels. They go crazy for walnuts and you have just laid out a feast. I tend to throw some around in the yard to distract them from my stash. If the nuts are not fully dried in this step the nuts will get moly while curing so make sure they are completely dry before moving on.
Curing:
Once thy are fully dried wrap the nuts up in the window screen or put them in an onion sack and hang it in your basement. If cured in a humid environment, 2-5 weeks. If cured in a dry environment 5-8 weeks. There are a lot of variables as Im sure we are not all using climate controlled environments to do this, so crack one open every week and give it a taste. If you think there done start cracking. You can continue to test the ones left in long term storage to gain insight into curing times in the spaces you have at hand. They will last a long time in shell, I shelled my 2013 harvest in march 2014. Six months in the basement, just don't let the temperature or humidity get to extreme.
Shelling:
Ugh! Im still working this one out. There are walnut crackers new and antique that all work well but only one at a time. Last year I used vice grips and my hands were raw after a week of cracking. I have plans for a concrete cracker that could handle any nut. Maybe Ill find the time before this years haul needs to be cracked.
Storing:
Cooler temperatures will allow for longer term storage. You can keep them in shell up to a year but make sure that after curing they are in a cool and low humidity environment open to the air. This can be elongated to two years if refrigerated in shell. If your like me you have a giant pile of nuts that would fill the fridge so its not a viable option and will need to shell most of them after curing. Once shelled the nut meats can be kept for many months in the refrigerator. If frozen they can last up to two years but the texture is changed and is better suited to be ground up to flavor dishes rather than being kept whole. My advice, do a little of everything. Keep some in the basement in shell, a lot in the fridge unshelled, a lot in the freezer shelled and when you finally dip into the basement stash put a few in the fridge to keep you going as your processing next years crop.
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