Processing Black Walnuts
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- Опубліковано 18 сер 2023
- Join Future Generations University as we journey to W. T. Farm to learn from Bill Whipple how to process the hulls from black walnuts and store them for curing.
This film was created by Media Art Creations, LLC with support from the USDA's National Agroforestry Center.
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My uncle had several black walnut trees and we would collect them in gunny sacks and take them to my grandparents where there was a hand crank corn sheller which did great job removing the hulls. We'd take our share and spread them out on our driveway to dry for several days. Then split them in two with a hammer and them several evenings picking out the meats while watching TV. My Mom's chocolate chip cookies with black walnuts are one of my fondest food memories.
My ancestors made pecan pie with hickory nuts. I’d make your tongue slap your brains out. I bet your chocolate chip cookies were as good.
We had a walnut tree too. My swing hung from a limb.
Black walnuts have so much more flavor.
I remember hickory nuts too. They are good too!
That's what my Grandpa did too
Great processing tip. I have lots of black walnut trees. And, I purchased one of those old crank corn corn shellers off of Craig’s list more than 10 years ago,
Yes fond memories of the choc chip cookies with walnut or hickory meats taken right from the woods
I have a special nut cracker that uses enough leverage to crack a black walnut. What shocked me is that squirrels can chew through those hard shells. They have impressive teeth and jaws.
I would much rather spend the day with regular folk than ever thinking about meeting a celebrity. ❤❤
What?
Duh
My dad used to just put them in the cement mixer with some gravel and water then walk away. Change the water and walk away again. Until they were clean.
He would crack the walnuts and pick them and mom would make fudge. That stuff was so good. Walnuts have a unique taste.
Ah he loves the work
They're good in ice cream;and in cake with coconut,maybe some pineapple like North Carolina's Hummingbird cake.We used to buy pints of black walnut commercial icecream out of the freezer in Germantown/Memphis Tennessee at the gas station,before my exboyfriend and I moved away in 2017.The Exxon gas station is on Poplar and Forrest Hill Irene intersection.
Grandfather processed them, with one final result a black walnut syrup pored over ice cream. His father started a creamery, I could see them making this.
I suppose you have to cook the walnut meat down to get syrup. Never heard of walnut syrup.
I've got more respect for my black walnuts now than I ever did thank you
What a great video. I come from a family of 11 children. Growing we had huge Black Walnut trees. Each year our dad made us kids pick up all those walnuts to be placed at the end of the driveway to be run over to get those hauls off.
We’d later collect them up to be dried.
One of my fondest memories growing up was making homemade pulled taffy & homemade ice cream in the winter time. My mom added walnuts to both. It was a great childhood.
Years later after both my parent passed away our house was sold. The new buyer cut the big walnut trees down. I was crushed. Living only 3 miles away. To this day each time I drive by there I think of that one huge walnut tree in the front yard.
Your video was excellent!
I now have several huge walnut trees here on my property. Just yesterday I said we’ve gotta get those walnuts picked up.
This year the walnuts are bigger and plentiful!
My dad always could tell what our winters were gonna be like due to the size and the amount of walnuts the trees produced.
Looks as though this year is gonna be a hard one.
You’ve inspired me. I’m gonna try your techniques.
So interesting how you use simple ways to clean your walnuts.
Appreciate the time you’ve taken to make this video.
You’ve put a smile on my face! Brought back such good memories. ❤
Thank you.
Growing up in the foothills of Maryland.
We would gather them, drive over them with a car a few times to knock the husk off, then bag them in burlap and take them to my grandmother.
The nuts would come back to us in the form of black walnut pound cake. It was magic!
We should all be able to access such magic!
Ours was fudge but done same id give anythin2 go back👍
If you are willing to post the recipe for the pound cake, would you please do so? If not, no problem.
That particular grandmother has been gone for 30 years, and her recipes with her, but I’ll bet any good pound cake recipe with black walnuts added will be delicious!
That particular grandmother has been gone for 30 years, and her recipes with her, but I’ll bet any good pound cake recipe with black walnuts added will be delicious!
When I was a kid we had 3 huge black Walnut trees. The one is over 8 feet around. We used to pick them up, then take them to my grandparent's house and put them in their driveway. My grandfather ran a meat Turkey farm. We'd put the Walnuts on the gravel driveway and the tractor trailer trucks hauling 10,000+ turkeys would run over the walnuts. Then we'd have to go out and pick them back up for my grandmother.
I just let the chickens eat them crushed on the driveway.
An old washer and dryer work really well for this
The video has me very appreciative of the black walnuts I buy in the store.
After hand washing my black walnuts for a few years, I had already started exploring the idea of building a big "rock tumbler" out of a 55 gallon drum, but I never thought of simply using the concrete mixer. Good idea, and would save me some time building and maintaining something custom. Thanks for sharing!
several good walnut trees at the family farm. A good cracking base stone under each tree,sometime several. All the racks were large enough so you goodie would not fall on the ground.
Plan on harvesting some this year. The green hull is good for expelling worms is you need that. Also good for fungus like A. Foot and ringworm.
My dad used a cement mixer to wash them in after cracking the hulls under the 9N Ford tractor tire that was jacked up enough to have the walnuts go under as it spun. My sister and I had jersey gloves on to take off the hulls. Had brown stained hands and had to go to school that way. After the walnuts were clean and dry we stored them in 5 gallon buckets in the old house on the hill. My mom spotted 2 ladies carrying them off. She got her binoculars and saw they were women from church. Surprised my mom did not get her rifle, hah!
We had two walnut trees when I was a child. I remember we had black hands for weeks but we also wore flip flops and walked over the nuts on the grass to remove the hulls. When the shells were cleaned my dad collected them and drip cured them on a rack in the shade. Mom used the nuts in baking…
Nice little system you've set up there. Don't think there's a better nut than a black walnut with hickory coming up right behind them.
Remember well gathering walnuts and cleaning those messy things up growing up. Then mama sitting for hours cracking piles of nuts for her annual cake sale to raise money for her little church. None of mama's cakes ever made it to the sale table cause people came from miles around to get her cakes. God rest her soul what I wouldn't give for one of her walnut or coconut cakes today.
🥰 That's so sweet. Thanks for sharing about your mama. I can see her in my mind now.
My grandma baked black walnut cakes too. She raised me from a baby when my mother died. I had a college education in how to do things the old timey way and to make do, we were poor but I didn't know it.
Exactly. I know that income doesn't matter nearly as much as attitude. If you've a roof over your head, a hot meal and a little bed plus loads of true love from parents it's enough.@@bonniewilliams9171
My grandfather always had the whole driveway covered with fresh walnuts. After he drove the hills off and let them sit, he spent the entire winter in his free time sitting in the basement shelling them... he passed away 21 years ago and I believe we still have some of his walnuts in the freezer.... soooo yummy.
So labor intensive! I process some local nuts most years, stepping on them, wiping off the hulls, agitating them in a bucket with a long-handled nylon brush, rinsing, more agitation in a bucket with a wire brush, rinsing, curing, and then the cracking... ball peen hammer and a brick with a cloth under it... I make sure the kitchen floor is very clean for when I chase down all the flying nutmeat pieces!
As a kid back in the early 1960s, I used to pick up walnuts from around our little town and take them over to the Southern States co-op and get 50 cents for about a full grocery bag, then go get 4 candy bars and a coke and have green hands for week.
In the 1980s I was working as a painter in some of the areas historic homes.
An old timer told me that the original trim finish was black walnut hulls that had overwintered in a barrel of shellac.
It was gorgeous.
My grandpa used the hulls to make wood stain by mixing it with turpentine. There may have been other ingredients, but I don't remember his exact process.
@@UncleTriangleThe richest natural wood finish I have found is ground coffee, with linseed oil,& mineral spirits.
Imagine being able to afford an entire barrel of shellac today. It would cost about $2,500.
We use to boil our steel traps in the green hulls to take the shine off the new traps.
@@crawwwfishh3284 I use to boil my traps in black hulls , would keep them from rusting.
I read an article about how the people of Chernobyl used the black walnut hulls to make a natural iodine and would paint their knees with this tincture to heal them from nuclear poisoning.
That is so interesting! They are so rich in iodine and are also noted in old herbals as teeth enamel builders…
There a place in southeast Missouri that processes walnuts on a large scale. There would be 50 trucks full, waiting in line. I belive it was near Glenallen, on the way to Wapapello lake.
My Dad would use a antique corn shelter to get the husk off the walnuts. I would hand crank the sheller.
We save the hulls grind them to powder and use it for trap dye and stain for steel
Same thing with me. Excellent trap dye
I love how homemade the whole process is
Use to put them in the drive way and run over them with the car, done a pretty decent job! Plus a 10 year old loved to drive the car. Where do the 65 years go? Great memories!!!!
Video on acorns and hickory nuts please. Loved this video on walnuts. Would love to hear/see what you do with the other nuts.
I have been harvesting black walnuts for years, I use a similar process, but on a smaller scale. I use a 5 gal bucket and a stick to get them clean, hang the onion sacks full of then in my garage and crack them in the winter while sitting in my living room. I love the taste of them.
I like your way, for a smaller scale.
Any chance you could elaborate on the bucket and stick process?
This video made me think of my grandmother. She had us grandkids cleaning black walnuts for her every fall. Our fingers would be black until Thanksgiving.
I feed my uncles blk walnut tree cow manure around the stump 1 yr, the next yr, we had so many giant nuts, we never saw so many!
That’s a slick way of cleaning and drying the black walnuts and drying them
My dad uses the black gunk that comes off the shells for several things, he also uses the first rinse water for several projects.
Would be pleased to learn more about the different ways he uses them, if you’re able to find out & share…
dye
I use ALL of the walnut...the green and mature black hulls....I use these for dewormer for my dogs and cats...as well as myself.... "a little dab will do ya" the liquid is valuable.
We have tons of walnut trees on our property. I’ve been thinking about this for a few years, and I am officially inspired to start. While I don’t have all of the equipment you show, I have some ideas for doing some of this work in smaller batches. Thanks for the info!
Same here!
I think I've seen it done with a heavy duty drill and paint mixer in a bucket of water.
Yes! That’s what I ended up doing.
(I actually started by just walking on each walnut and all of the hill was left on the ground. I used a commercial broom handle with the little metal bracket to knock the nut into an old fish net. This way I only had to agitate the nuts and change the water a couple times each batch.)
can i buy some of your trees?
As a boy we were covered in black walnut trees but my uncle was lucky he had 4 mature American chestnut trees I remember buckets and buckets of chestnuts every year so many he couldn’t give them away, I remember throwing the pods at each other hoping they’d stick to coats and what not
Very informative! So much work! No wonder why they’re expensive. Great job! 🎉
What if you add sand to the cement mixer? That could help cleaning them better
Black walnuts have been a favorite of mine for close to 70 years. I know how much work they are. On a lark,, I planted Japanese heartnuts a few years ago. They are much easier to clean and shell than black walnuts, but the flavor is similar. The meat frequently comes out in one piece. This is the first year I've gotten a decent crop. They're curing now and are almost ready to crack. I should be finished before killing frost. That has never happened with black walnuts.
I have 2 walnut trees in my yard. One is massive. 11ft, 6 inches in circumstance. The other is not as big, but both have so many on them this year that several limbs have broken. They are dropping right now by the hundreds per day. I have thousands on ground right now. Never tried processing them, but going to try some this year. My dog guards them from the squirrels, which come from all my neighbors yards to steal them.
want to sell the tree
I live in Minnesota and planted Black Walnut bareroot trees I purchased from my extension office. That was 30 years ago. I planted them for the future. The trees have produced nuts, but the squirrels like them.
I love that he said ‘walnuts are the gateway nut.’ Yup. Truer words never spoken. I just scored a free pounds of white oak acorns from the forest floor. Free flour. Good vid. Thanks.
Haha, so true, I’ve been doing walnuts for several years now, and have been thinking about gathering acorns next!
Excellent video. So well-explained. It gives me new appreciation for all those ankle-breakers in my back yard.
What a setup! I have a number of young walnut trees that are just beginning to produce. This is valuable info.
Be patient. It takes a long time for walnut trees to grow.
I'm a big fan of hillbilly engineering, and your equipment is a fine example!
The hull makes a great tincture.
I make mine with the green ones.
Looks like my Uncle's place. Every single thing there is rigged up to do one thing, or another. Always looks like things could fall apart at any minute. He spends half his day fixing equipment. 😆 But, in the end, he gets things done.
As a kid my dad and I would go squirrel hunting so we would gather black wallnuts when we came across a wallnut tree then try to seperate the husks from the nut when we got home it was not easy but they had a maple flavor also I was a trapper and I would take new traps and boil the traps with the husks to give the traps a dark color and de sent . Thanks .
Growing up in the seventies my brother and I would boil our traps with walnut hulls to dye them before waxing. Didn't know you could eat them.
Yes, I may have about 4 dozen hulled walnuts in a 5 gal bucket and fill about half with water. Then I take a stick or old broom handle and stir and agitate the walnuts for several minutes, then dump them out on a 1/2" wire screen, repeat the process about 5 or 6 times until the water is pretty clean. I then let them sit on the screen until they mostly dry off. (usually over night) Place them in old onion sacks and I hang them in my garage until around January before cracking and taking the meat out.
I updated my process this year by using a battery powered drill with a large paint stir tool instead of a stick!
I did this exact same thing today, but I repeated it over a dozen times and was only just starting to get slightly clearer water. So I decided it was good enough and stopped 😂
We rendered dye from the hulls and used it for staining white oak split and other basket making materials that we would soak in it for different amounts of times. You can't buy black walnuts already shelled in my neck of the woods , it's gonna take some work if you want to eat them ...........not a better nut for cakes and fudge anywhere !
It’s like a walnut chicken plucker!!!!
I love your processing system, I can tell you value your time.
Growing up in S E Ohio, my dad told me of the process he used to get those messy hulls off walnuts when he was a youngster. The method required you jack up one rear wheel of the old model T, build an inclined trough just under the rotating tire. Feed the walnuts down the trough one at a time and the hulls would be removed by the friction as the nuts were rolled down the incline between the rotating tire and the trough. Never tried it but bet it would be easier than removing hulls by hand.
That is a method that I heard explained to me by several people in N.E. Ohio also. Positraction might mess that up. One of the most tedious methods was to drive the walnut through a hole drilled in a plank. What size hole? Not a job for a white shirt.
@@robertqueberg4612😅😅😅 i had a barbecue stain once😅
did it last week with riding mower jacked up with board under tire in high gear
1/4 inch clearance. toss em under wheel, spits em out hulled. used to use truck
but mower was easier.
they aint all the same size@@robertqueberg4612
I spent many a day of my childhood stomping on those, we never washed them and never needed to as they seemed to shed the hull just fine. We generally harvested about 2 bushels each year. I guess if you're doing this as a business you need faster throughput but that does not seem like a very efficient process. Interesting either way 😁
Dad grew up in West Virginia so knew something about Black Walnuts. As a 10yo kid and my brother had to. Pick them up off the ground, bring them home and hand dehull them. Let dry a couple weeks hoping mom and dad would forget about them. They mostly didn't so my brothers and I had to use hammers on a piece of wood to try to crack them. Of course with no adults showing us how to do it we just smashed them. Mom would get upset.
Don't remember curing them and right out of the shell they were bitter. Not a fond childhood memory. Explaining my purple stained hands to my teacher and friends was fun. Took 2 weeks for that to go away.
Interesting from the video y'all show round shells with ridges. Ours were really hard shells with big ridges on them. Hard to hold without waking our fingers.
Great Video ! Loved the Blooper, Nuts get aggressive, lol !
You are amazing! I drive over walnuts on the road all the time and wonder about walking the roads and collecting them. Thank you for sharing your gadgets to get this job done.
Man that is a lot of work. It is a wonder your hands aren't permanently stained. Thank you for sharing.
Believe it or nut, I mean not, it washes off easily. I work for Indiana DNR Forestry Division and we just finished hulling probably 300 or more bushels of these darn things.
My parents took us foraging for black walnuts as kids…their method of removing the outer hull: place walnuts in a gunny sack, drive back and forth over them in our car. 😂
A nice operation. When you get to the cracking part of the operation, I will offer a couple suggestions that may help. With my being a toolmaker and rifle ammunition hand loader, I adapted the press for the initial cracking, by means of a set of dies, or anvil and top die that fits the 7/8”-14 threads, and allows some vertical adjustment to open the shell without “smashing” them. The final step that I use is to cut the shells away from the nuts, with a pair of stout diagonal pliers. Also known in walnut country as “wor plorz”. I have retrofitted mine with thick walled rubber fuel line. This makes your hands last longer.
The details of the cracking dies, will be up to you to design, as it does get difficult to describe. Again, I thank you for the look-see at your unique and efficient methods. We used to hull the walnuts in a motor driven corn sheller.
When I was a kid I used the road to hull My walnuts ( it was a dirt road .. the walnuts didn't mind it , but , the Driver's probably did though ) !? LOL
@@johnhoward3271 I drive on them in my gravel driveway.
@@kennethheern4896That is how most people I know get the hulls off.
I enjoyed watching your process. I took a forestry class years ago and learned that the hulls can be somewhat toxic. The Indians took the hulls and swished them around in streams and the fish would come up stunned. Also tomato plants do not do so well next to Black Walnut trees. I was suprised with the compost pile, but I would imagine that the toxins would be eventually neurtalized. Thanks for the insight on Black Walnuts.
A Lot of Work so please keep up the Strong 💪 Efforts. 👍🙏
I built a chest of drawers with screening in the bottom of the drawers. I cut a hole in the side and put my dehumidifier in the basement up against the side, blowing the warm dry air up through the drawers and it dries them out very nicely.
Walnuts are great. I appreciate this guy doing this work. Now I know why they are so expensive.
I haven’t seen or touched one in 35 years but I could smell them just by watching this video.
We used to spread the walnuts in the driveway. After the car took the hulls off we gathered them up.
Great video showing the process and equipment!
Old Fashion Fudge with Walnuts is the BEST!!
I remember my mom taking me up the alley to the neighbors walnut tree and driving over them with the car. Hands as black as deep space. Bet the juice makes a great ebony stain. Thanks for the memories.❤️
I would think a pressure washer introduced at one of the steps would help get the cracks clean. Maybe mount a wand nozzle in the barrel cleaner and you could possibly skip the concrete mixer part if it works good enough. End up with a one or two step process.
I've planted three walnut trees on my property, two are producing nuts this year although in a small amount, maybe three dozen. Now is the time to start acquiring and making the processing equipment.
I used to work for Mr. Whipple on his farm in WV. Very eccentric individual. He looks a lot different without his beard.
We had trouble with this machine breaking shear pins on the pto shaft.
I'm glad you're doing well Bill. Please say hello to Don Young for me.
This is a great setup!
Great video, thanks for sharing!
Nice set up. Thanks for sharing your homesteading ideas.
what a valuable channel this is thank you
I've got 2 trees on my property and I like do the harvesting, I crack all mine with a small hammer and I have figured out a way to use a pair of wire cutters to get the big chunks of meat out.
awesome video, looking forward to more
Thank you. That is a lot of work in a beautiful setting. 😊
Fantastic and interesting video! Thank you!
That was thoroughly enjoyable, thank you. I've never seen such a dirty job be so delightful.
Brilliant! I especially appreciated the cement mixer method!
what a great video!
Great video, loved the gateway to nuts joke!
Very informative. Thanks for posting.
"You don't want to spend too much time with wet nuts". Yes sir, you are absolutely correct!
One thing to remember, wear rubber gloves. The black hulls will stain your hands bad. I've got trees here in my yard. They're a mess. Thank God the squirrels are eating them and carrying them out of the yard.
Wow there's a lot to these, learned a lot, been finding these on my property and been debating on doing something with them great video
Very interesting process, thanks for sharing.
Walnuts are the gateway nut. Love it. We have black walnuts on southern Manitoba. Should be sharing them with the squirrels.
Awesome video. Thank you 😊
Should pair your operation with a local leather tannery. There's profit to be had in black walnut tannens. Black walnuts are really dense in tannen and can be used to not only vegetable tan leather but makes a great stain. The process for rendering isn't any more mess than you're currently dealing with. It's mostly just collecting the black sludge your sending to the compost (03:30).
Have you had any experience with personally tanning small quantities? Have you been a part of the process in a large facility? I’d be pleased to learn more about how you’d use the ‘waste product’ for that tanning…
My fiancée is really into fountain pens and she tells me black walnut ink is highly regarded in that hobby as well.
Very interesting video where I happen to be an east Tennessee either everywhere! Thanks
Really good video :)
I always pick up the walnuts just when they fall off the tree and have the green outer husk. I just hit the husk with a hammer breaking it open then I just pick the nut of out the huck then lay the nuts to dry. I begin cracking the walnuts around Christmas to use in baking or candy making. I have part of an oak tree limb about 10 inches across to crack the walnuts on. I also pick up hickory nuts in the fall but I feed them to the squirrels in the winter when it is difficult for the squirrels to find something to eat.
We recently bought a property that has lots of very tall walnut trees. I’ll have to find out what kind of walnuts they are, and see if I can do what you’re doing. Thank you very much for the wonderful instruction. Subscribed.
awesome content
Looks like a nice job to have
Excellent vid. I knew as soon as i saw your pto rig it was a rotted seeder. Ive got 2 of them ive been wondering what to do with.
The tanic acid concentrate from the hulls should rust proof the steel they come in contact with. We trappers boil our traps in it . Rust proofs and de cents.
Yep, need that for fox traps
We wud pic em up as kids put in driveway every1 runin over em cupl weeks then pic em up bag in onion bags n put behind woodstove mom make choc walnut fudge fer xmas😔what id give2go back2 good ole days🙏🙏
Brilliant!