The Black Walnut
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- I consider myself lucky to live in a place where such a tree grows so freely. My neighbor just dropped a medium sized black walnut tree because it was problematic. I helped him for the day, and we chain-sawed, lopped, burned and split. In return, he is providing me with more of the stuff than I can possibly use (which is a fair trade if you are a wood-person).
I do apologize for not taking footage of dropping the tree or using the log splitter (which, incidentally, my neighbor fabricated, and it would have made for an interesting video), but it was a tiring and busy day. I will be uploading some of the process of turning logs into usable material in the near future, so stay tuned. Also, thanks for reading the description. That means that you are a good person; maybe we would even be friends in real life.
Side note:
Don't drink black walnut tincture. I have found absolutely no evidence to support the claim that it cures anything, or that it has any health benefit whatsoever. In fact, it could make you horribly sick. The year that I made these jars of stain, I ended up with a nasty rash (it was similar to a poison ivy reaction) from the prolonged contact that I had with the walnut juice. Just imagine what it would do to your insides after you mix it with alcohol and drink it.
"Alternative" medicine. lol.
For more on the black walnut:
tomclothier.hor...
I found this to be an incredibly good read that was written by a person with obvious experience. Most things on teh interwebz are obvious crap; speculative ramblings and anecdotal garbage written by intuition, rather than intellect, comprise the majority of web pages. This is not one of those. My Grandpa once referred to the internet as "a vast wasteland." I later found out that he had borrowed this clever phrase from Newton Minow, who, incidentally, was referring to television programming during his famous speech.
*A note on long term storage:*
Hi, I'm from four years in the future! I no longer shell and jar my black walnuts. They lose flavor that way, and don't keep as long. If you leave them hanging in their netted bag in a cool, dry place, they will keep for a few years. I recommend only shelling what you are about to use.
This way, you won't have to harvest every year- which will allow you time to gather other wild nut varieties, like the Hickory or Butternut. Here's a video about those:
ua-cam.com/video/VKvv61NWr9g/v-deo.html
My mom always stored them in a mesh bag. They kept for years!
I was thinking about useing black Walnuts for ageing alcohol ,is there anything you could tell me about that , can I just put in a few whole dry nuts without the husk ,or use the green husk's ....any advice would be great please
How about long term storage of the stain? Did yours keep well?
I recently made some stain (European walnut) and I wonder how long it could last, being natural materials and without any additives.
@@mversantvoort If you can remove enough of the moisture, many years. Some of my jars have now lasted a decade. They were bottled hot, and alcohol was used to clean the jar immediately before adding the stain.
However, note that my experience relates specifically to Black Walnut; yours is a different species that is unfamiliar to me.
Great video. My Grandmother had a huge old black walnut tree in her front yard. We were at her house one Sunday and came out to leave and discovered a dent in the roof of my Dad's new Mercedes that looked like it had been hit by a baseball but it had been bombed by a large nut. The drive home was pretty crazy because Dad was so mad about the damage to his pride and joy.
Mom used to make some of the Christmas sugar cookies with Black walnut pieces in the dough. I hated the taste of those cookies and of the Turkey dressing she used to load down with the nuts. I'm afraid they are an acquired taste that has forever escaped me! If one likes them they will do anything for that taste. I say give me a bag of Chinquipins any day!
Harvested about 100 of these about 2 weeks ago. I just removed the outer husks and dried them last night per your video instructions. Even made some stain. Took about 4-1/2 hours to boil down. I got about a pint, maybe less from 100 nuts. Thanks for the inspiration, pocket!
Had one of these trees at the house where I grew up. They would drop all over the gravel driveway where the cars made short work of the husks. We would gather more than we could eat ever season. Thanks for the vid!
The nuts are a delight to eat that's a fact, but, working with Black Walnut wood is like working with one of the best cabinet wood of all time. It cuts ,planes, routers, sands, and finishes like no other wood, and the colors are a sight to behold for the avid woodworker! Only Black Cherry wood can come close!! Stu. (:
Glad you missed me. Hey, it was only two or so months. I was working on some vids, I just never finished them. They get so complicated, and the competition is brilliant. I just want to put out a decent product- you know, something worth your time. I have a few on the way, I promise.
Here is an easier way to remove those green husks. Buy a dog toy called a "chuckit". Put the whole nut into the chuckit and launch it against something solid like a brick wall. the husk will fly off in pieces. You can use a pressure washer and a bucket to clean off the rest from the hull.
Put the nuts in an onion bag and hang in a dry area for a few weeks. The meat will shrink a little and come away from the inside of the hull easier.
To prevent shards of hull flying everywhere, take a piece of pvc pipe or the cardboard core from a roll of duct tape and place it on the deck of an arbor press. Place the nut in the center and use the press to crack it.
What do you use that stain for?
That's fucking stupid. You don't need to purchase any item to remove the husks.
That tip about how to align the nut in the vice was fantastic! It does indeed make the nutmeats easier to get out. Been cracking them for a few years, and I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to me to align them that way. I've been using the more common diagonal wire cutters but the end-snipping tool you show in the video (but don't mention in the audio track) looks like it may be even better.
I agree that ingesting any quantity of the juice from the fruits is probably a real bad idea. While it hasn't irritated my hands, I unintentionally transferred a small quantity of the juice from my hands to my lips, and it resulted in chapped lips the next day.
Glad this was useful to you! Coincidentally, I just harvested a bucket-full last night (Oct. 2). Cracking them diagonally like that has given me the overall best result after trying every position imaginable. The trick is to only tighten a little after they pop; if you squeeze too much after you crack it, it damages the meat. As for that tool: Google "end cutter pliers." They are _extremely_ useful, especially if you are a carpenter.
The stain (juice) only ever bothered me once. Once, when I was younger (dumber), I had prepared around two buckets of nuts, and along the way I gave up on the gloves. I continued to make stain mash by hand. After the hands turn brown, they then turn *black, wrinkly, and extremely itchy.* Two weeks I'll not soon forget. Never again.
What? It has to work! I just tried it. PM me before you give up if you can't get it to work. I'll send it to you if I have to. Keep in mind that the internet has to flip it upside down to get it to play in Australia, maybe that's the problem.
Looking for ways to remove the hull? We dump them on the dirt or stone drive way. In a day it two depending on the amount of home traffic the nut can be picked up almost dry on the outside. Don't worry, the nuts are too hard to crush even with a vehicle. Pick them up and rinse them off then store in burlap or similar plastic feed bags for about two months. Then have fun and crack.
My SISTER, hired a tree company to cut down a large black walnut in her yard, cut it up completely into stove wood sized pieces so people could haul it off easily, and gave it all away before I knew anything about it.
Such is life.
I showed my young nieces how to use the husks to dye some T-shirts (a warm, rich, yellow-
brown color). What a mess, but it made an impression on them!
Definitely going to be gathering these next year, have three trees on the property. I know someone who uses them for dye (they make a gorgeous brown for yarn) and I wanted to get her a bunch, but I came too late last year. Blasted squirrels.
I just ordered a black walnut tree. They sell them here in Europe. I assume it will take decades before it is a really big tree but, hell why not. Before this video I didn't even know that thee is several sorts of walnuts. Well, there are different walnut trees here as well but they are not that different, just slightly in size and taste but essentially the same nut. Thank you for the video
I'm glad it was useful. Careful where you plant your tree though, it produces a natural herbicide, so lots of things will not grow well under it.
Sometimes. Sometimes I just ramble, though. For me, the description is kinda like those vanity cards that are hidden on "the big bang theory," maybe it's relevant, maybe not, but sometimes it just feels good to think out loud. Thanks.
Wow. I had no idea "black walnut" came from the actual nut. I always thought it was just supposed to look like the wood.
That's exactly why I made this video. We take for granted the things we grow up around, like they are commonplace, while people in other places are just not familiar with them. For example: I have never seen a pineapple plant. I'm glad if this was informative for you, especially because this one does relate to wood-working.
pocket83 i have these all over our land and just this year witch is about fall here in oklahoma about to pick hundreds off these trees they are so good i remember when i was young my parents would pick these for us ha
pocket83 have you seen a whole pineapple(with the leaves on the end)? A pineapple plant looks just like that, only with more, less prickly leaves growing out of the crown. :D
I was amazed when I discovered pineapples didn't grow on trees. It really blew my mind.
I have these in my backyard, when I was a kid I would use a scooter to chop it in half. And my hands would be yellow afterward lol
Yes. Obviously, the process kills bacteria, as well. This makes it able to be canned for long-tem storage. I mashed hundreds of those husks with a paint mixer on a drill. I then boiled over 5 gallons of juice down to under a gallon (with a propane burner in the garage). The only additives were a small amount of ammonia to the juice, and a spritz of denatured alcohol to each mason jar before I added the hot stain.
I have 10 acres of walnuts and make my own stain. I use methanol to extract the stain. It dries quickly and, although it takes several coats to achieve a very dark color, works well to accent the grain of almost any project.
This made me nostalgic, we had black walnut trees near the house where I grew up.
Interesting that you can extract stain from the nuts so easily.
I've read that if you soak the whole nuts in water for an hour and pour it on the ground, the nightcrawlers & worms will crawl out of the ground within minutes, giving yourself free & easy bait for fishing.
Really wish that they grew more prevelantly around my location...
I age less than 5 gallons (husked) per year for personal use. Obviously, quality is more important to me than quantity. I want the best possible taste and the fewest possible bad nuts. If you are selling them, I get it. But this video was mostly intended for viewers who, in their part of the world, have never seen a black walnut.
Excellent and informative. I would just object to injecting chemicals into a pure & natural object. It’s just not the wisest or best choice. Ever. Thanks & btw your way of cracking black walnuts is the most effective method I’ve seen so far. Although it’s still laborious as hell to harvest them. Delicious treats tho!
These trees grow like weeds where I live...they can be rather invasive because they kill everything around them with the juglone they produce. But, the wood is awesome for making stuff, and the walnuts are very tasty. I saw a method of de-hulling them by simply drilling a couple holes of a few different sizes in plywood that allow the nut to pass but knocking the hull off by simply smashing them through the hole. Never tried that method but it seems it would work. Shagbark hickories also make for some tasty nuts too. They're just hard to get to.
***** We do have Hickory trees around here, but they are nowhere near as abundant. When I do find one, I take home some of the bark, because I sometimes add a piece of it to the top of the ceramic briquettes on the grill when cooking. As for that plywood method, that might work- especially if you use a rubber mallet. Then again, that might spray you with little brown specks ;)
+pocket83 Can you use the shells for fuel for the barbeque or for heating in a pellet stove I wonder? The wood of this tree is so darn expensive. I wonder why we dont grow more of these? Thanks!
Sure would like to see a video on sawing the wood you got from the tree. Walnut is a very beautiful wood!
Excellent video, Pocket83. I am sorry about the reaction that you had to the tincture you drank. I'm not sure if you drank too much or if you are allergic. I myself (a Christian, not "new age") and many other Christians that I know use the tincture regularly with nothing but positive results. I hope this revelation is useful to you and to all the viewers and readers. Again, great video!
What! You are baiting me for a reaction- you must be. lol.
I like your video and want to complement you. I am also sharing my experience. :-)
JGurl Ok, if you are drinking black walnut tincture, you should stop. Please read my previous responses on the subject, as well as the description of this video. You have misunderstood me; I would *never* drink this substance. There is zero medicinal value in doing so.
I am not concerned with whatever religious rituals or beliefs you and your friends apply to the drinking of it, but ingesting such a compound is in all probability dangerous, and you should not do it without first consulting a (preferably secular) physician. The "positive results" that you are experiencing are likely placebo effects, which are experienced only in the short term, and your "regular" long-term usage could result in serious damage to your health. Go talk to a doctor. Seriously. Now.
Wow! Thank you for your concern.
Do you still harvest them? I'd bet that if you don't, you miss them. They are addictive, and I think you develop a tolerance. I've noticed that most don't like them at first, too strong. I think it's an acquired taste;)
What? How could you?
Just kidding. The black walnut is extremely desirable (to eat) for two reasons:
1) as this video demonstrates, it is very difficult to extract.
2) it has a flavor that is far superior to the more common English walnut. It is much stronger tasting. I would describe it as smoky, nutty, and manly.
It is also a useful ingredient for baking, because far less are necessary to achieve a good flavor (think banana nut bread or muffins).
Glad Your Back Producing Videos. Thanks
Great informative video, pocket!! Helped me alot to prepare my walnuts for this year!!! Best videos I've seen yet. You have gained one new sub
Actually, you just leave them there for a couple weeks. Might not be practical for you, but when you're doing a 55 gallon drum worth.. Well..
Another good method of husking them is to run them through an old hand corn sheller.
I have had Black Walnuts that I found in My Uncles barn that where over 20 years old and 60 percent of them still edible.
Good stuff, really interesting process. I had never seen anything like this before. As always, thanks for your time.
stained hands to go away? the stain or the hands?
InfinityPlusOne Both
Every carpenter should try it. Once.
Did not realize that they could be used for stain never thought about it. I've stain for years and used black walnut many times huu need to pay more attention.
WE have on of these trees in our back yard. The stupid dog will eat them, hull and all and get super sick, I think twice now hes had to have his stomach pumped.
Kevin Kruse LOL!
Oh, you intend to run over once, only to remove the husk. Still not practical for me. Also, some of the shells will likely crack from uneven weight distribution. The following I only know by anecdotal evidence, but it makes sense: remove the green husks immediately to avoid spoiling flavor.
The compound in the black walnut rind is vicious, and I want it out of there as soon as possible. Also, microorganisms thrive on moisture. I want these to dry according to my schedule. Reproducibility.
walnuts are common where I live but I've never seen a black walnut thought before preparing they look like regular ones that aren't right and they make the same stain(which can be cleaned in under a week if you wash your hands with squeezed tomato juice and baking soda once a day for 15 minutes)and upright walnuts are really good if you peal them properly so every one has brown hands during the period when they are like that so if you get your hands stained try washing them like in I sed earlier trust me a speak from experience.
viktor lazareski ii
No, life is not easy. If you want something of quality, you have to work for it. There is no cheating ;(
Even IF you could find the remaining (smashed) pieces after either staining your driveway or picking them out of the gravel, they would only be the little pieces that the crows and squirrels didn't find. And they still wouldn't have been properly dried.
What a great video.. thanks for your post.
pocket83 you can actually make ink out of the spongy material since it's jam packed of tannins.
I had no idea how scientific cracking nuts could be.
Kenzie Chay My sister has several large walnut trees. We crack the nut for the meat also. If you don't place the nut correctly the meat splinters into small pieces and sometimes not all is worth the effort to remove from the shell.
I have a few of these trees near my house and I never knew what it was black walnut, I quickly realized that the nut in the middle was very hard so I tried breaking it with the side of a scooter, the scooter has a dent in it now, but yeah those things are gross
Man, I have'nt had black walnuts in ages!
I can't tell you. It's not much of a secret anymore, but if I spell it out too explicitly, it defeats the purpose. I'll give you an incentive towards solving this problem, though: based on the present numbers, only about 1 in 5 viewers figure it out (or care to). Don't you want to become a member of that exclusive 20%?
No wonder why these are so pricey from my nut guy, they require a hell of a lot of work!
What is involved in the boiling down process? Is it mostly about evaporation of the water?
I processed and dried 3600+ black walnuts. These were "non-floaters", so I assumed they would all be good. But after cracking about 1100 of them, I am finding that about 40% of them are no good, meaning the meat in them is dried up/shriveled and paper thin. This is kind of disappointing to me. This is my first time to process walnuts. Is this normal, or just a bad year for walnuts in southern Ohio?
If they are still in the shells from last year, that sounds about right. That is a slightly high percentage, so you may have cured them a bit quick, or stored them in a place with too low humidity or too high heat. If they are from this year, it's still too early to crack. I harvest around a week or two before Halloween, and then I cure them for around 1.5 months before I crack any. If you want to keep them for the entire year, dried ones are the price that you must pay, because if you shell them and store them (even in glass), they never taste quite as good.
As an aside, I can't imagine doing that many. I process about 3 or 4 hundred each year, which is two 5-gal buckets full of the green things.
+pocket83 400 walnuts will probably yield no more than 3.5 lbs. That is maybe an 8 week supply for me at best. I wanted a whole year supply.
you are being generous..when you start eating the black walnuts..they are addictive and do not last 8 weeks..maybe 8 days.
I'm not cynical! I just hate those guys. But I do love to tinker and experiment. btw, I was born a little before '83.
grandma had black walnut trees in her yard.
me too...she wupped my ass when I found a bucket of the unhulled nuts and I started tossing them in creek.
Lies! Lies I say! Life is indeed easy if you make it so. I'll quote Scrooge McDuck. Work smarter, not harder.
It takes far more force than a car running over them to crack the shells. And yes, left to age in the husks until blackened, the nuts inside would be dried, though further aging once the husks are off is recommended.
Don't worry the outside may look moldy and the inside looks even more so
Hola como se llama esta planta y donde se consigue?
Excuse my ignorance, but what is the end product for?
Hello!
From what I understand the Black walnut tinture is made of the Juglans nigra hulls?
In Bulgaria we have the Juglans regia growing in abundance. The question is - can I make tincture of it?
Don't. I would suggest for you to read the third paragraph down in the description- however, if you really are "new-age," I get the feeling that you won't want to hear it.
Black walnut tincture is likely dangerous; no amount of praying, voodoo, spirit/ancestor worship, or being "in touch with nature" will change that fact. The tree has evolved to produce a compound that is a natural herbicide. Plants don't grow around it, because *it is poisonous.*
Eat the nuts, instead.
pocket83 The stain is actually a quite strong acid, along with tannin and other dyes. Drinking that is like guzzling a glass of black food coloring + toilet acid (HCl)
Except that tincture ISN'T medicine. I won't waste time arguing against pseudoscience. You have zero evidence, so don't insult me by telling me that I don't "research." Drinking this concoction is likely dangerous, and thus, inadvisable by current medical science. Don't drink it.
I know, I know, doctors think it is poison. Here is a link that indicates 96% of us are iodine deficient and causing many problems. www.naturalnews.com/023107_iodine_body_thyroid.html AND here is the trend I see...in about 1948 a couple of scientists did a study and reported some misled and unsupported conclusions that sent iodine therapies for humans into oblivion. They sparked iodophobia within the world that may have caused the destruction to our health that is manifesting in many of our modern ailments and diseases.
Iodine deficiency IS a real problem, and it has a real solution: Iodized table salt. Avoid "sea salt," and other such marketing hype, and you can avoid developing a deficiency.
See the trend? Tinctures are produced by the same "natural" mindset that gave us "better" salt. So was snake oil.
I've heard that black walnuts are more of a delicacy than other walnuts but after foraging and tasting some, I don't find them very appealing.
It's an acquired taste. Much like hot peppers and strong whiskey, Black Walnuts are a developed, and admittedly harsh, taste. If you keep trying them, you're likely to come around. Start small. Perhaps mix one or two into a cornbread. Also note that they must be cured properly.
@@pocket83squared I just ate them out of the shell. Maybe I need to find out how to cure them.
@@AzimuthTao Oh my, no! That'd be gross. Curing them is easy. Maybe you could watch this video, since it EXPLAINS EXACTLY how to.
@@pocket83squared I did watch. If "curing" them is just hanging them to dry then I guess I just need to let them dry longer.
@@AzimuthTao Yes. It takes one or two months. They'll turn from a rubbery gunk into a nice solid nutmeat, similar to the more supermarket familiar English Walnut. Keep them at room temperature, medium-low humidity. "Curing" is just referencing the rapid change in moisture content, similar to how lumber gets cured. Curing doesn't require anything special; it's just the most immediate, and critical, phase of storage.
Personally, I think Black Walnuts have the best flavor between 1~2 years old.
Revision to this video: if properly cured & stored, they'll keep for about five years or so in their shell.
Was the easter bunny resurrected? If so would that make it a zombie bunny?
ugh.
Neat way to make stain
I feel like there should be more comments about how good black walnut smells while burning... maybe theres a reason there aren't, lol.
I think you're right, we would likely be friends in real life. We both like to tinker and experiment, we both share a cynical attitude for the youtube safety patrol, and I think if your user name is any indication we are also close in age (I'm 30).
Im making walnut Tincture . Any thoughts on that Subjec t ?
Sure. You're either trying to be funny, or you're just stupid. Read some of the description and commentary around here, and then if you still want to drink a dangerous organic compound for the sake of its magical properties, come back and get me.
Really only 1 in 5? I saw it too..
What's the subliminal Easter Egg Time thing about at 2:41?
Then I hope that you don't watch too many of my videos! Have you done anything slightly uncharacteristic recently? Who knows what twisted little schemes I might have planted in your brain? It's like inception... just a simple idea...
Let hulls blacken. Place in driveway. Drive over for a month. Pick up nuts.
Life is easy. ;)
weve always run them over with our cars in our driveway to get them out if the husks and stuff
Brown town
Now eat it
I used as hair dye.....no.problem
Aside from the fact that there are so many safe and cheap alternatives available, you've just decided to *willingly* risk itchiness, rash, and/or skin/hair damage for the sake of going 'natural' brunette.
No problem? Sure! And I'm also sure that swallowing some healing crystals would seem asymptomatic at first, too. One might try tight-lacing up a corset and putting on Lotus shoes if one were trying to surpass the silliness of such an unmitigated fashion _faux pas;_ hair dye is nasty-smelling stuff, but Black Walnut rind is simply noxious.
At bare minimum, you're going to suffer a stained bathtub and some ruined towels. Good luck. Heaven knows I've made my share of dumb DIY mistakes.
Those green outer hulls (before they turn black) contain a substance that has anti-parasitical properties. Input "walnut hull tincture" into your fave search engine, to learn more.
*No.* There is no evidence to support the claim that such a tincture has any medicinal value. Gasoline also has "anti-parasitical" properties. Don't drink either of them. Read some of the past comments and the description.
If you live in a first-world country and have decent hygiene, you shouldn't need "anti-parasitical" tinctures to be healthy. If you do get unlucky and end up with a parasite, a single round of real MEDICAL treatment will solve your problem.
home depot
thanks for the hidden video, great failures :)
subliminal messages are not nice!