Harvesting Black Walnuts

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skittles

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A couple years before I got married, I bought a Nut Wizard. Never used it except for tennis balls for the dog.

This year I said I need to use that nut wizard on some nuts, so found some black walnut trees and picked up all the walnuts I could find. Ended up with 3 pails of cleaned nuts so far and still got a couple pails worth in the trailer I haven't bothered with yet.

After I picked them up I left them to rot until they all turned black, husked them through a hole in a board, stuck them in a wringer washer for 30 minutes, left some of them outside to dry for a month, the rest got put on the basement floor with a dehumidifier for a month.

Now I go downstairs and bring up 20 nuts or so every now and then to crack with "The Texan Nut Sheller" which works pretty darn well on black walnuts if you know how to attack them and your hands are strong enough.

Sometimes I wonder if it was worth all the hassle but I just have some gas in the truck to go get the nuts and a little electricity to run the wringer washer for 30 minutes... and it's calming to crack nuts without doing anything else for awhile.
 
skittles said:
@Weedygarden thanks for sharing, it wasn't that easy to find the trees that I found, no one wanted the walnuts though. Someone in the next town over offered me 7 or 8 trees to clean up after.
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Knowing what I know now, I would run over to get it. If you have space to stack it up and save it until you can get it milled, it would be an incredible investment of your time and gas. Black walnut wood will bring a good price in just a few years. It won't be long and it will be impossible to find.

My daughter has a friend who has a black walnut log. They found a sawmill where they want to get it milled. She wants to make a live edge dining room table from it. She will because as this friend says about her, she is driven. Right now, they are almost finished sanding down a VW bus to get repainted and then they will rebuild it. She is hoping they have that finished by next summer, complete with a new motor. She will probably do the install on that motor herself. Then she will have more time for woodworking. They are building up their collection of tools for their woodworking shop so maybe they will be more able to do that kind of building by then.
 
The bad thing is my wife wants to spend her days (and nights) sleeping and when she's got money it's out to eat and shopping. Then she complains that we "don't do anything anymore". She doesn't necessarily spend all that much money shopping but when you're starting out with a $500 paycheck it disappears pretty quick.

Before we were married I didn't have a lot of money but I did buy and sell tools and do a lot of different stuff depending on what was going on at the time. Now I get in trouble for doing my stuff cuz my wife accuses me of "not wanting to spend time with her" even if I'm just in the kitchen doing dishes instead of sitting on the couch playing on my computer while she watches tv. Then I get accused of ignoring her because I'm on the computer instead of talking to her. Then I try talking to her about the news, politics, preparedness or something and she'll tell me she doesn't want to hear anything about it and that someday she'll just fall over dead when the country gets nuked. Sorry dear, it doesn't work that way.

Wish she'd take more of an interest in all the stuff I can/have/know how to do and actually do it. I don't suppose it helps that she's 230# @ 5'4" and she works 28-30 hours a week with mentally disabled people. I'm 6'1" and 50lbs more than I want to be at 250#, will go down fast once I start construction again in the spring though.

A woman like your daughter sounds like heaven compared to what I've got at the moment. I'd be building the sawmill myself... all it takes is welding a frame and a couple old car tires with ends off an axle plus a engine to drive the whole thing. Would probably cost about $500 or so for everything scavenged, the majority of that is the steel for the frame rails plus 100-200 for the 12-18HP engine.

I have milled my own wheat at home to bake my own breads but not much of a point to that when my wife doesn't care about eating at home since it's so much easier just to go out.

Something has to change because while we've got it made with this small house with very low bills there's so much more than can be done.

That's what I get for marrying a city girl instead of finding a country girl. Shucks. Tis life.
 
Skittles, Every woman is a heaven to the right angle. Example: I was married for about 22 years until wife got smart. Was engaged for about 12 years until I got smart , Knew my current wife about 12 years and we have been married for 5 years. There is only one common denominator in all these relationships, ME. Look to yourself first and then determine what you can do better in a relationship and then once you know yourself, decide what do you expect from the relationship. It is not your wife's fault you picked a "City Girl". Did you expect her to magically change to a "County Girl" and did she expect you magically change from a "Country Boy" to a "City Slicker". This reminds me of the old movie dialog "What we have here is a failure to communicate". Understand who and what you are and then determine where and how you want to there. Once you know this, then and only then can you have a productive discussion with you wife. JMHO
 
@TMT Tactical

Words of wisdom sir, words of wisdom. She married me because she was 300# and never thought she'd find a man who wanted her, and got tired of waiting for her childhood sweetheart to come to his senses (I think). I married her because I'm very hard of hearing and didn't think I'd find a hearing girl to marry, and I'm most definetley not "deaf" as in "deaf culture". She also had a cute face and was always very friendly- we'd worked together at a salvation army camp about 7 years before we got married. I was mainstreamed all through school and don't care for other deaf or hard of hearing people unless they were also mainstreamed. It's a very cultural thing.

I think she could be a country girl but being 230# overweight is still holding her back. She did lose 70# so far so I congratulate her on that.

I don't like the D word so I don't talk about it. On the other hand that's a fairly regular threat from my wife, can get extremely annoying at times, although I don't think she'd be the one to initiate it.

Of course there's things that I need to work on myself.

Being hard of hearing I didn't know anywhere near as much about the world as I do after nearly 7 years of being married. Heck, I didn't even realize when all the girls were flirting with me in high school and beyond because no one had ever bothered to tell me exactly what that meant. Don't think I figured that out until I was married a couple years.

On country girl/city slicker... her mother was pretty cool. She talked big as in her family canned every year and always had a big garden... so I thought I wouldn't have any trouble with her wanting to help can and garden. Then we got married and she couldn't be bothered to do any canning or gardening.

I ended up doing it all and most of what I do now is beans/beets/seeds, sauerkraut and some salad greens along with a few tomatoes. The beets go in sand in the basement for the winter. 2016 we did some jelly, still eating that jelly. Would have liked to get some applesauce canned this fall but the wife nixed that idea so it never got done. I still have enough for another year from 2014.
 
skittles said:
A couple years before I got married, I bought a Nut Wizard. Never used it except for tennis balls for the dog.

This year I said I need to use that nut wizard on some nuts, so found some black walnut trees and picked up all the walnuts I could find. Ended up with 3 pails of cleaned nuts so far and still got a couple pails worth in the trailer I haven't bothered with yet.

After I picked them up I left them to rot until they all turned black, husked them through a hole in a board, stuck them in a wringer washer for 30 minutes, left some of them outside to dry for a month, the rest got put on the basement floor with a dehumidifier for a month.

Now I go downstairs and bring up 20 nuts or so every now and then to crack with "The Texan Nut Sheller" which works pretty darn well on black walnuts if you know how to attack them and your hands are strong enough.

Sometimes I wonder if it was worth all the hassle but I just have some gas in the truck to go get the nuts and a little electricity to run the wringer washer for 30 minutes... and it's calming to crack nuts without doing anything else for awhile.
Click to expand...


I am almost afraid to ask because the potential for ribald humour is huge ... but ... what in the world is a nut wizard?
 
TMT Tactical said:
Skittles, Every woman is a heaven to the right angle. Example: I was married for about 22 years until wife got smart. Was engaged for about 12 years until I got smart , Knew my current wife about 12 years and we have been married for 5 years. There is only one common denominator in all these relationships, ME. Look to yourself first and then determine what you can do better in a relationship and then once you know yourself, decide what do you expect from the relationship. It is not your wife's fault you picked a "City Girl". Did you expect her to magically change to a "County Girl" and did she expect you magically change from a "Country Boy" to a "City Slicker". This reminds me of the old movie dialog "What we have here is a failure to communicate". Understand who and what you are and then determine where and how you want to there. Once you know this, then and only then can you have a productive discussion with you wife. JMHO
Click to expand...


Very good advice, too bad we don't learn this early in life. Some luck out and get the right one or grow into to each other.
My first one never should have married anyone. I like being married.
Another saying, "to bad youth is wasted on the young".
 
That's cool. I've planter three pecan trees that are self pollinating and five hazelnut bushes. My hope is that in three or four years I'll be harvesting some pecans on my property along with hazelnuts.
 
Nut wizard is handy.
Black walnuts...I hate them as bad as...I edited this. Yes, I hate them that bad. My taste buds confused them with...I edited again, therefore, and hence, I hate black walnuts. Never will I eat them.
Maybe it is the genetic thing, like eating cilantro. You either hate it or you love it. I love cilantro now but used to detest it. Used to taste like soap to me.
 
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Patchouli said:
Nut wizard is handy.
Black walnuts...I hate them as bad as...I edited this. Yes, I hate them that bad. My taste buds confused them with...I edited again, therefore, and hence, I hate black walnuts. Never will I eat them.
Maybe it is the genetic thing, like eating cilantro. You either hate it or you love it. I love cilantro now but used to detest it. Used to taste like soap to me.
Click to expand...
Oh good, someone else who doesn't like them. I thought something was wrong with me.

Hey! The cilantro thing changes over time? Sis says it tastes like soap too.
 
When I worked for the local school district there were about three black walnut trees on the high school property, I would bring the walnuts home from time to time and even had some start to grow to seedlings, I kept one in a coffee can for a few years before replanting it and now it's grown to around 40 feet and for the last couple of years produces walnuts. I love the flavor, but it takes a steel plate and a 5 pound hammer to crack them open, on the other hand, black walnut wood is valuable, furniture, gun stocks, etc., I may plant a few more, just for that reason.
 
viking said:
When I worked for the local school district there were about three black walnut trees on the high school property, I would bring the walnuts home from time to time and even had some start to grow to seedlings, I kept one in a coffee can for a few years before replanting it and now it's grown to around 40 feet and for the last couple of years produces walnuts. I love the flavor, but it takes a steel plate and a 5 pound hammer to crack them open, on the other hand, black walnut wood is valuable, furniture, gun stocks, etc., I may plant a few more, just for that reason.
Click to expand...
I have heard that they are hard. Don't you have to let them dry out before you try cracking them open? I think that also helps in your hands or gloves not turning black. My aunt spread hers out on newspaper on her basement floor to dry.

I think planting more black walnuts, if you have the nuts, is a great idea. How long did it take from sprouting to a tree that was producing walnuts?
 
Patchouli said:
Black walnut hulls are valuable in herbal medicine.
I knew someone who could sell the wood from any of his black walnut trees he'd cut down to the Amish and Mennonites.
Part of my inheritance was lumber from black walnut and cherry trees.
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I would have loved to inherit some of that lumber. Did you build or have someone else build something from it?
 
We still have almost all of it. I gave a little to someone who helped us move. NH has used it for a gun stock or something...
It was going for a high price per board foot the last time I checked. Our wood was from family-owned Virginia mountain land. My father made stuff with it too when it belonged to him. It is so beautiful.
 
No black walnuts here unless they are on the back of the property near the creek. We just bought property in GA and have discovered several nut trees on property; now we are trying to figure out what kind, because there are no leaves right now. The nuts look like hickory; the tree bark looks like butternut. At any rate, we have nuts, which pleases me, because harvesting acorns entails more work that just picking up and cracking. Right now we are at the 'redneck achaeology' stage where we are discovering remains of prior land owners. I think we found a well head, we have definitely found where the county piped in water on the property for an earlier house, a concrete block enclosure that could be several things, but no roof on it, and electrical lines buried in PVC pipe for ???, and a barn yard light on a tree that is not hooked up). We do like the place. Our friends here are lobbying for us to turn the concrete block enclosure into a smoke house - it would be an easy adaptation.
 
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skittles said:
The bad thing is my wife wants to spend her days (and nights) sleeping and when she's got money it's out to eat and shopping. Then she complains that we "don't do anything anymore". She doesn't necessarily spend all that much money shopping but when you're starting out with a $500 paycheck it disappears pretty quick.

Before we were married I didn't have a lot of money but I did buy and sell tools and do a lot of different stuff depending on what was going on at the time. Now I get in trouble for doing my stuff cuz my wife accuses me of "not wanting to spend time with her" even if I'm just in the kitchen doing dishes instead of sitting on the couch playing on my computer while she watches tv. Then I get accused of ignoring her because I'm on the computer instead of talking to her. Then I try talking to her about the news, politics, preparedness or something and she'll tell me she doesn't want to hear anything about it and that someday she'll just fall over dead when the country gets nuked. Sorry dear, it doesn't work that way.

Wish she'd take more of an interest in all the stuff I can/have/know how to do and actually do it. I don't suppose it helps that she's 230# @ 5'4" and she works 28-30 hours a week with mentally disabled people. I'm 6'1" and 50lbs more than I want to be at 250#, will go down fast once I start construction again in the spring though.

A woman like your daughter sounds like heaven compared to what I've got at the moment. I'd be building the sawmill myself... all it takes is welding a frame and a couple old car tires with ends off an axle plus a engine to drive the whole thing. Would probably cost about $500 or so for everything scavenged, the majority of that is the steel for the frame rails plus 100-200 for the 12-18HP engine.

I have milled my own wheat at home to bake my own breads but not much of a point to that when my wife doesn't care about eating at home since it's so much easier just to go out.

Something has to change because while we've got it made with this small house with very low bills there's so much more than can be done.

That's what I get for marrying a city girl instead of finding a country girl. Shucks. Tis life.
Click to expand...
Sounds like she has depression. My ex was the same way. I knew I could take it but when it started affecting our kids negatively, I got out. It was then I realized how his depression was affecting me. He wouldn't get help and wouldn't try to participate in our lives. Best of luck to you!
 
kappydell said:
remains of prior , a concrete block enclosure that could be several things, but no roof on it, and electrical lines buried in PVC pipe for
Click to expand...

Sounds like an old well house :dunno:

Weedygarden said:
This thread is about harvesting black walnuts, but I am interested in growing some. I found this information about how to grow them from seed. If you have access to the seeds and are wondering what you can plant on your property, I would consider adding some nuts of any sort. https://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/wn/wn_1_02.pdf
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I am wondering if anyone has black walnuts and would be willing to send me just a few to see if I can start growing a tree


PM me an address I can help you out with that :D
 
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