I use a pooper scooper to pick them up but ours are so big. I get 3 or 4 in it to dump in a bucket. Is there a better way to pick them up?
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I use a pooper scooper to pick them up but ours are so big. I get 3 or 4 in it to dump in a bucket. Is there a better way to pick them up?
Here's what we use. Works slick and makes short work of picking up nuts. Just keep the grass mowed short when the nuts start to fall.
http://www.nutwizard.com/
http://gardenharvesters.com/Category...FYk7aQodVp0D_w
We use the big one for walnuts and our hickory nuts. Smaller one for accorns.
Not much to pickup as the squirrel population is out of control. Can't shoot enough or trap enough to even make a dent in the population.
Got one in my front yard. Been picking up a 5 gal bucket of walnuts every day now for a week but got 10 gal this morning. Hope they all fall soon. If it weren't for it being the only tree in my front yard I'd take a saw to it. They do make good targets thrown into my lake and once made a potato gun for them. Durn thing will go thru a 1/2" plywood at 30' also crush up the green ones put them in a burlap sack toss into the lake, makes fishing a little bit more fun not that I'd ever do it.
Used to sell them when I was a kid and is my favorite of the various nuts ( peanut being second hazlenut third )
Can't help much on the easiest way to pick them up except if you don't eat them or sell them "free for the picking " add in Craigslist may work
Edit to add ...that nut wizard is related to our brass picker uppers lolz
5 trees around the house. Wife hates 'em. Pretty constant "thud thud thud" on the roof this time of year. I gather enough to put away a few bags cracked with my old Foley walnut cracker. They taste good but it's a LOT of work ! Always been curious to see how they're processed commercially.
Getting dressed this morning at 0430 and just about went outside to see what this hollow thwack sound was every couple minutes. It dawned on me it was walnuts ricocheting off the propane tank just outside the open window.
Black Walnuts sell all day long at the local farmer's market for $5 for a 5 gallon bucket. Yeah, it's not much $$$, but it's better than hauling them to the City's compost site (many people do that, that's where I'd get them to sell at the market :-P back when I was a vendor there, also, I had a couple locl townspeople who had trees, didn't want to pick up nuts, I'd offer my services to clean them up from under their tree for a small fee).
I prefer Butternuts. I 'had' a Butternut tree in my yard, those nuts bring more money...I think I got $20 per 5 gallon bucket last time I had some to sell (before the tree died).
It's funny, when that tree was alive and productive, I could never shoot all the squirrels in my yard...I'd shoot a few everyday, some others would always show up the next day ...Nut fed squirrels are good eatin' ...BUT, Now that tree is gone, and the squirrels are few and far between.
The squirrels around the house are very fat - between walnuts and stealing cat food they do very well .
bumper crop round here, I use the nut wheel for hickories, hull em with boot if didnt pop out when hit the ground. Alway used one of those long reach grabbers for the walnuts, then hull em with my blackhawk corn sheller. Worms bad this year in the hickories, some trees 50% loss when floating them. Finished a few hogs out on acorns, makes sum great meat. Would love to hear how other guys process walnuts as well
Pay a local kid a penny a nut to put them in a bucket, or pay by the bucket full? Another good trick for the hulls if you want to go fishing. Once they turn black, fill the bottom of a bucket a few inches full, then fill the rest of the bucket with water. Make a dark water "soup", which is then poured over a 3-4 foot section of the yard. Worms will come right to the top to get away from the acids from the walnut hulls. The only problem is you have to use the worms within a day or two, as they tend to die if not washed off really well.
The Walnut timber could be a good source of gunstocks if the Trees are cut down and allowed to season.
I have the kids help me pile them up in the yard, then we take turns running over them with the garden tractor. They love it and the reward is them getting to run the tractor. We usually put up about 2 5 gallon buckets each year. Then I spend countless hours In the woodshop cracking them. Kids are no where to be found then.
Any one here pick beech nuts? From the time I started hunting at 11 I always gathered up a bunch of these to take home when our Beagle was running a rabbit ( he would chase him down a long time before bringing them back ..so I had the time to pick) Interesting flavor especially if you roasted them in an iron fry pan
Used to eat the beech nuts as a kid, they were so many around the bigger trees. Loved them. This,
from http://www.eattheweeds.com/the-all-american-beech/Quote:
The sweet seeds are very edible and can be crushed into a butter. The nuts have a low amount of fagin which is slightly toxic and is found in the skin of the kernel (roasting allows that skin to be easily rubbed off.)
Never seemed to bother me, maybe it's hard to eat enough of them being so small?
Donate/sell to your local FORESTRY program with your state. ILLINOIS used to buy them for there programs. Every few years they want them form other trees to have different genetics. You can also pour them out with permission in some ones woods. We hulled them with a hand crank corn Sheller. Please supervise little hands and fingers. Those old Sheller's are dangerous, BUT FUN.
My method involves kids(grandkids, nieces, nephews, etc.) under 5 preferred(they aren't real sure of the value of a dollar yet). A penny a piece, it serves two purposes, it gets the walnuts cleaned up and gives me a break for at least an hour to recover from playing with the kids. And of course the kids are pretty happy to have a couple bucks.
Get some visqueen in rolls and lay it flat under the trees. All it is sheep plastic. when full roll them up in one corner and shovel into containers. Frank
Walnuts ,I love them,I could eat them till the Cows come home.I like a few sprinkled on my Porridge in the morning.
We are all going nuts , LOL !!!
Enjoy them while you can as walnut TCD.
Out of season, the NUT WHEELS can be used to PICK UP BRASS CASES.
you do know of course that black walnuts are a bit different than what is often termed the english walnut ? ( the walnut meat most often sold in stores ) black walnut has a slightly different taste that i can only term as more "earthy" , it also (as noted by a few above ) has a much much tougher hull ( ok ok so that's my understatement of the day )
Looks good. We love black walnut meat and carol cracks many. We have a nut cracker that does the job. This year is crazy with most 3" or larger.
Walnuts on pumpkin pie with whipped cream is heaven.
I don't know if the roller is any better then the pooper scooper.
3" and crazy ... ye olde saw is that the thicker the hull on the nuts the longer and colder the winter will be ...let's hope that they're wrong !!
mmm cream such as one of me fav 3 flavors ? black walnut ice cream ? ( dang that makes me hungry and i just had lunch [doh] )
Dad used to use the Black Walnut husks for fishing.
He put them in a tow sack and beat them up with a limb
and then weighted the bag and threw it into a small pond.
The fish floated up and he snagged them.
Mike
p.s. Why is it called a tow sack?
Probably because it is made of tow which are the waste fibers of flax or hemp that you don't use for making proper cloth.
He he he , I like youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M35erdt_r7E
I read somewhere that Abraham Lincoln could Crack walnuts between his forfinger and thumb.
Fryboy ,thanks for that info,I had no idea that it was a different species.i must confess I know nothing of Black Walnuts.We live and learn.Regards.
you're welcome ! i wasnt sure if you was aware or not but wanted to make sure , i'm also not sure if it's a good thing or not as you dont know what you're missing ( danged double edged sword lolz ) everyone doesnt care for them ( as noted above ) but those who do ...really do ! ( including me lolz ) in addition to the slightly earthier taste to me they also seem a wee bit richer and the flavor is actually kind of complex , the hulls as noted are harder/thicker but for those whom like them well worth the extra effort ! dont get me wrong the english walnuts are also good ( and way easier to crack open ) and usually have a slightly larger meat in the center
I grew up on a Wisconsin farm that was loaded with Black Walnut, Butternut and Hickory trees. We used to pick black walnuts by the pick up load. Pick up boxes were smaller then, with the fenders on the outside but still held 20-25 burlap bags full. We had a fairly long limestone gravel drive on the farm. We'd just pour the walnuts and butternuts out on the drive and run over them with the driveway traffic for about 10 days. They were completely hulled with very few smashed even when running wagon loads of corn pulled by tractors over them. Then we had to pick them up a second time. They'd go to the basement where we'd crack a couple of ice cream pails full at a time and take them to the kitchen table for picking. Quite a lengthy process. Cracking butternuts was the worst. More than one black thumb or finger resulted from a missed whack on a butter nut. RD
I think I love every type of nut there is EXCEPT black walnuts, yuck. Lol
Of course it might have something to do with my father who made me shell them so he could sell them and keep all the money.
Black walnuts are my absolute favorite tree nut. I make my wife put them in every cookie she makes.
My M-I-L now gone was into walnuts in a big way. She ran them thru the corn sheller to get to hulls off and then put them in an old wringer style washing machine to was the black goo off. After a couple rinses they went on her 4x8 drying trays for a couple months in the machine shed. Not uncommon for her to do 10-15 5 gal buckets of washed/dryed nuts a year. My wife might do 1 to 2 five gal buckets a year. The walnuts aren't bad but give me hickory nuts any day. The squirrels won't touch a walnut here until the hickorys are gone. My wife uses a big gear driven nut cracker thats probably as old if not older than she is. Makes quick work of the cracken business.
I watched deer eat hickory nuts. I don't know what they do with shells. Squirrels have been going crazy in the yard. We have only grays here, can't figure out why they are not stained from the husks.
My woods is full of walnut trees and paw paw trees. Everything loves the paw paw fruit.
I just had my first go with Black Walnuts and they are good. My MIL has a few trees and they never really did anything with them but pick up and toss them away.
I thought well might as well give it a try. I picked a bucket full and took them home and got on the google. I took a few that had loose skins and took that off. To clean them I used compressed air to blow the access skin material off. Then baked them at 300* for about 25 minutes.
That seemed to work good. Is it better to air dry them?
Coincidentally, yesterday, I was watching my elderly neighbor and his millennial son (who lives in the basement and who I've never seen do any yard work :shock: ) picking up Black Walnuts...looks like a bumper crop, 8 garbage bags full from their one tree...I could see the son was NOT happy.
Quick story, since I am diabetic and LOML is allergic to wheat and milk - I created my own diabetic, wheatless, milkless pancake mix. Because I need protein I grind up nuts to add to it. A few years ago Sam's started carrying black walnut meats, seasonally. I buy enough for the year in the fall - because the first year I ran out. Made the pancakes with European walnuts. "What is WRONG with these pancakes!?" was the first thing out of her mouth when tasting them. I now make sure I have enough for the year.
We used to reset the hand crank corn sheller to remove the husks from our black walnuts as long as they were still firm and solid it worked good if they were soft and greasy not as good. The husks when greasy would stain really bad also.
Jon I have a bumper crop of them too this year. Unfortunately I don't do anything with them. Now my wife loves nutroll and makes it often, but she won't use black walnuts. She liked them with English walnut.
As a kid we gathered em in tow sacks . Threw em under the porch or anywhere that stayed dry for a few months to dry . The husk comes off easy . Mom loved to put em in baked goods . Us kids used a claw hammer to crack and then pick the nuts out . A form of torture for children , like shelling peas .
I really like English walnuts, and each year, I order some directly from a farmer in CA.
I wish I liked the black walnuts, I just don't have a taste for them.
Black walnut trees are plentiful around my area and I have access to many...in fact, about 15 years ago, when I had a sideline selling excess garden produce at the farmers market, I'd help a few different neighbors cleanup their yard and haul the black walnuts away, and sell them whole/fresh at the farmers market for $5 for a 5 gallon bucketful. Back then others were selling hand "processed" black walnut meats for about $10 per lb. All I know is, I'd rather sell ten buckets full of whole/fresh nuts for $50, then process and sell 5 lbs of nut meats for $50 :coffee:
Amen to that Jonb. Lots o nuts again this year. We love hickory nut pies as well as black walnut pies. And ground walnuts on pan fried pork chops. ooooweeeeee. Whats others favorite way to eat em ?