the Nutty Buddy Collective (SPAM alert)

[blueadzuki]

They do (though I think they are a bit thinner).And I suppose that your method would work as well with them as it does with conventional black walnuts (thought with the smoother shells, it would hardly surprise me if it took less time to get the nuts free). I suppose the advantage is really for those of us who are processing on a sufficiently small scale that giving each nut a one on one treatment is feasible, and who don't want to deal, with potential hand marks from any hull material that hides out in the little channels. I also imagine that, if you happened to have whatever mechanism or use whatever process is used by people who farm the Persian walnut do to clean them, it would work better with Hinds than with normal black.

I also think it is possible that the amount of staining compound may (emphasis on "may") be less. This is probably a good thing if all you want is the nut, but if you are some sort of get-every-useful item from a product homesteader and wanted to RETAIN the soaking water (for dyeing purposes, or to concentrate down to ink) it might be important.

[Walk]

May 7, 2017 5:39:33 GMT -5 khoomeizhi said:

May 7, 2017 1:05:37 GMT -5 blueadzuki said:

A normal black walnut usually does need things like being run over with a car and allowed to weather for mass harvest. With a hinds all you really need is a brillo pad (or other scrubbing sponge) and running water to get them squeaky clean without your hands getting stained)

they do still have hulls, though, right? in my experience the running-over-with-a-car trick is really only useful for de-hulling. when dealing with volume, it would probably be the same process for cleaning, since i don't want to touch each nut with a scrubber: cement mixer or the one-bucket-batch equivalent, the five gallon bucket with nuts, water, an couple handfuls of sharp gravel, and an electric drill with cement-mixer attachment.

We use an old cast iron hand-cranked corn sheller to remove the hulls (we don't use this sheller for corn so we don't have to scrub it up when we're done for the year). You still have to pick the nuts from the debris pile, and even if you use gloves you can be sure that they will leak ;>). The nuts are rinsed and spread on screens to dry thoroughly before being put into storage. We don't aim to get them squeaky clean. When we shell the nuts, the shells get burned for heating fuel. The hulls are stored in a garbage can until used for dye.

[walt]

There used to be a group of men around Joplin. MO, that I met through North American Fruit Explorers.  They were growing and selling black walnuts in large quantities.  They had started out going out into the black walnut forests.  Not pure walnut forests, but a good proportion of the trees were black walnut.  Anyway, they would go out with nutcrackers and crack a few nuts from each tree as they went along.  When they found a tree with superior nuts, easier to crack, higher % nut to shell, large, and lots of nuts, they would mark such a tree and go back in late winter and cut scion wood for gafting.  They would graft them onto trees much closer to their houses.
By the time i met them, they were in production .  One guy had built a cage out of reinforcing rod that moumted on the back  of a farm tractor.  Inside the cage a flat tire mounted on the tractor's power take off would spin, rubbing the nuts on the rebar until the hulls came off and the nuts would then fit through gaps between the bars.
I forget how they cracked the nuts, but someone had figured out how to build something that did it..
They were disapointed after all this to find out that nut dealers wouldn't pay any extra for the improved walnuts,  Dealers said they could sell the shells for as much per pound as the nutmeats.  The shells were powdered and used to sandblast jewelry, or the powder could be mixed with resin to make a "grainless wood" for carving.

[reed]

Our use of black walnuts is purely small scale, only for our own use. To crack them I use a hammer, it does not take long to get enough for a batch of ice cream, some brownies or a black walnut pie assuming you don't eat too many as you work. Whole nuts are stored in a metal garbage can out by the shed. I'v done the run over them method and I have a section of steel pipe that the hulled nut will fit through. I put them in a metal bucket and just jam the end of the pipe down on them. When it clogs with partially shelled nuts I tap them out, this works better if they are pretty dry.

Easiest and cleanest way is more or less let the husk rot off, there is a large maggot here that is very helpful in eating the rotting husk. Then you can just wash them with a garden hose.

My sister and I spent many, many hours as kids siting on the cement slab around the cistern cracking walnuts. My Mom's and Granny's tolerance for shell fragments in the nuts was ZERO, mine still is. It is hard for me to imagine a machine that could do that. 

[khoomeizhi]

May 7, 2017 13:43:55 GMT -5 walt said:

One guy had built a cage out of reinforcing rod that moumted on the back  of a farm tractor.  Inside the cage a flat tire mounted on the tractor's power take off would spin, rubbing the nuts on the rebar until the hulls came off and the nuts would then fit through gaps between the bars.

we're probably going to fabricate one of this style dehuller for this season's nuts. we bought a big cracker and are looking at the various oil presses for dealing with the bits. you never know how it will turn out, but there's LOTS of flowers on the trees now - hoping for a big nut year to start our larger-scale processing facility off right.

[steev]

The Paradox walnut's only use, that I know of, is as a common root-stock for English walnuts; the Chandlers I just put in are grafted onto Paradox.

Re: black walnuts, I would point out the desirability of "Thomas" strain, so eponymous.

In my teens, I spent many hours fungoing black walnuts for our Cockerspaniel to chase; she wasn't worth a damn as a retriever, but very enthusiastic as a chaser, withal.

It's remarkable to me how underappreciated black walnuts are; granted, they take a bit more work, but the results are excellent, IMHO, far beyond English walnuts, which I can crack in my hand (it's a folk-skill; they're white bread; I don't disparage white (balloon) bread, it just doesn't achieve excellence, though I have noted that it is the only proper partner with Velveeta in an iconic grilled cheese sammich).

When I drive the "back" way from my farm, there's a section bordered by black walnuts that are clearly never gathered; what a waste; I must endeavor to remedy that. So much to do, so little time. It offends my sense of Freeconomics that I don't get to it.

[mjc]

I wish I had access to the one black walnut tree that my neighbors had in their yard, when I was a kid. While not exactly as easy to deal with as 'Thomas', it was a 'splitter'...the husks split on their own and it was relatively thin shelled (for a black walnut that usually means something less than industrial tools are needed to open it). It was nearly as heavily ridged as normal, but they were more 'soft' than 'sharp' like most. Also a large meaty nut.

Unfortunately, they cut it down before 1982...and none of the neighborhood seedling trees have ever really resembled it, but there were several other trees in the area, so it's really hard to say what the parentage of those seedlings really was.

[steev]

Well, of course it was cut down; I've seen so many fruit/nut trees cut down for lack of appreciation or (informed) thought; what a travesty! We congratulate ourselves on our intelligence, but we do so much on thoughtlessness and ignorance.

"I don't know what that is, so I don't value it; destroy it"; I think I've addressed this ignorant bullshit in plumbing rants, but it is no less apropos in regard to plants; actually, plants are more important, since they can be exterminated, while plumbing can be fixed.

[prairiegardens]

Trying to identify local plants has been an issue because of this attitude. I used to take examples of unknown plants into the afternoon coffee gathering of farmers and although sometimes there'd be a bit of an argument about what it was, more often there would be blank looks. If it wasn't crop it was to be exterminated if possible, it's a waste of time to learn your enemy's name.

Right now it's distressing to see people justifying ripping out shelterbelts wholesale to get that extra room to turn their equipment around to get that extra half bushel of grain. They insist that they farm differently now i.e. leave the stubble on the fields over winter so they have no concerns about a return to dust bowl conditions that were so catastrophic 80 odd years ago. Besides, the "trees  are dying of old age so have to be removed." So so foolish in the face of climate change to throw out whatever buffers are available, imo, but they are all so sure so there's no future in arguing the point.

Something else sad and odd is that relatively recently there's been a backlash against the Russian olive that was a mainstay in establishing windbreaks because it was imported and is now labelled by some as invasive. It's a bit difficult to understand how exactly it could be invasive if it isn't even maintaining the stands that were planted beyond the original trees. Even in the road allowances where spruce, willow and poplar often show up unexpectedly, I've never seen a volunteer Russian Olive. 

[mjc]

May 10, 2017 11:19:16 GMT -5 prairiegardens said:

Something else sad and odd is that relatively recently there's been a backlash against the Russian olive that was a mainstay in establishing windbreaks because it was imported and is now labelled by some as invasive. It's a bit difficult to understand how exactly it could be invasive if it isn't even maintaining the stands that were planted beyond the original trees. Even in the road allowances where spruce, willow and poplar often show up unexpectedly, I've never seen a volunteer Russian Olive. 

It's rather simple, really...it is TOO GOOD at what it does. It not only provides windbreaks, but stabilizes and builds soil. And there in lies the problem. It doesn't fit the 'we're DOOMED!!!' agenda.

And the whole 'native/non-native' issue is BS, too...because if people didn't move plants around, birds, animals and 'forces of nature' sure would...and if plants don't move, the 'system' stagnates. And stagnate system is a dead system...what's the climate/ecosystem of Mars?

[steev]

Sub-surface, if any.

The ecosystem of much of Cali was oak-savanna; primo for cattle, so it has been used so long and thoroughly that the old oaks die and the cattle prevent new oaks from growing. No biggie; just another ecosystem diminished. Fewer trees inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen, more cattle farting methane.

[prairiegardens]

Right, the too good thing certainly applies. I planted aronia last year, two provinces are muttering about labelling it a noxious weed, like dandelion apparently it grows pretty much anywhere and is hugely productive of highly nutritious food, in this case berries. One plant is still making up its mind about everything, the other is just about ready to burst into very enthusiastic blooms. The intention is to try to use these as nurse plants for the main property, so it's exciting to see such exuberance. I really don't care if it reseeds everywhere, a couple of sheep or goats will keep it as contained as needed, diversity in diet as good for them as for us.

Btw Steve cattle really don't fart that much at all when out on range, it's the ones contained in feedlots on mostly grain. It sorta would be the same as if people were on a constant diet of nothing but cooked dried beans and dried apricots or whatever, their system is trying to cope as best it can with a diet it was never designed to handle. I grew up on a dairy farm and spent a whole lot of time with them over the years and don't remember ever seeing a cow fart. In the spring after they've been on dry hay and then get into lush grass it can probably happen but ours were out except for milking every day so it simply never occurred. Their manure is naturally very loose but that's not the same thing. But it's a whole lot easier to study cattle in feedlots than on range...

Of course that doesn't in any way justify what they are doing, but even that isn't their fault, it's abysmal management. Done right, running cattle restores ecosystems including trees, done wrong as most have done over millennia, cattle (or sheep or especially goats) will destroy ecosystems. 

[mjc]

The natural progression is generally from barren ground to grasslands to forest back to barren ground (usually resulting from cataclysm). To keep an oak savanna a savanna instead of dense forest or treeless prairie there needs to be a balance struck between grazers and tree growth. In a completely 'natural' system, the deciding factor in keeping that balance is not the kind/number of grazers...but rather fire. Without periodic burning, a savanna WILL not remain, regardless of the grazers.

Suppress the fires, then the actual management of the land must be increased to the point to compensate for the lack of burning.

[steev]

First, one doesn't "see" a cow-fart; it's an auditory/olfactory event, unless you light it.

I'm not dealing with cattle under reasonable management, but factory-ranching, which I consider an atrocity, both for the animals and the ecosystem: I think you agree with me.

mjc: I must reject your progression: "barren ground, grasslands, forest, barren ground". So far as Cali is concerned, oak savanna was a very stable environment; there were few animals, like bison, to heavily graze, and while the native population did occasionally use fire to clear undergrowth, that tended not to much affect the oaks (an important provider of the native diet); nor grasses, which as we know, are not forest plants, and have always done fine between the oaks.

I think your premise simply is inappropriate to Cali; not to say Cali is special, but it's not the Eastern Coastal area, the Mid-West, nor the Mountain area; think Mediterranean; that's the ticket.

[steev]

Thinking of nuts, I'm pleased that my newly-planted walnuts seem to be happy; I really hope to increase the varieties of nuts on the farm, given that I seem to have gotten the irrigation to reliability (after 2 or 3 years, they're good to go). Now I just need to re-up the planting lanes on either side of them, so they get water, as I'm no longer going to water tree-lanes, as such.

I have several out-lying black walnuts; suppose I should consider grafting pecans or whatever.