EDIT: Hey, everyone! More peple are finding this video which I'm really excited about. I wanted to mention that I was doing an experimental style here that I don't do any more in my videos. I'll probably try to recreate this one to be more concise. Check out my newer videos which are packed with way more info! Thank you all for being here and caring about black walnut. 🙏 Additional processing notes and ideas! One of my patreon members had a genius suggestion which is to just stack the various sizes of mesh filters on top of each other so you can sort them all in one go. Brilliant! Remember to use code feral24 at Grandpa’s Goody Getter to get $10 off your order of the best black walnut cracker in the world! I realized that I forgot to mention, after soaking your nuts, you want them to be dry on the exterior before cracking! For cracking, I have found that providing slight pressure along the two widest points of the black walnut shells allows the cracking to happen more uniformly, and the nut meat on the inside is damaged less frequently! The smaller pieces that you get from the 1/8-inch mesh can sometimes have a few shells sneak in there, so you have to be really diligent about removing them! These would work great for something like Forager Chef’s new black walnut milk recipe. You should check it out! I found that a deeper bowl works better when using the swirl method than a shallow one.
My Grandfather taught me to love black walnuts. He threw them in the driveway and drove his car over them until the shucks were off, and then he'd put them in bushel baskets and put them by the coal furnace in the basement to dry them out. When he worked for Michigan Dairy, years and years ago, he cooked down their first pan of condensed milk. He also invented two ice cream flavors. One was black walnut, and i don't remember the other one. Wish i'd have paid more attention to my Dad about it now.
Have had a "Goodie Getter" for two years now. Excellent machine. Also pop for one of those "nut gatherers". They resemble a wire ball that you roll over the nuts on the ground. The wires spreading the nut goes inside. SO FAST. Beats my 62 year old back bending over picking them up.😊
While we don't have any black walnut trees ourselves, we have friends who live very nearby who do. They and everyone on their street have loads of black walnut trees in their front yards and NO ONE does anything with the nuts! I have been told to come and get them all. 🤣 They all rake them to the curb to be collected with their leaves by the city. I know what I'll be doing this fall. 🙂
Here in northwest Arkansas black walnuts are super-abundant. If you are not familiar with this particular type of walnut, they have a strangely acrid odor and taste that requires getting accustomed to. Also the outer green husks contain a large amount of something that smells like iodine. The rock-hard inner shells can be ground to a powder and used as a polishing compound. There is a black walnut processing plant in Gravette Arkansas, not far from where I live that shells them. This video was really excellent with good information!
With regard to the taste, I processed some black walnuts a few years ago and was horrified to discover they tasted like machine oil. It wasn’t just bad, it was toxic tasting. I tried several different nuts thinking I had gotten a bad one, but they were all the same. However, if I left a half eaten one out for the squirrels, they didn’t hesitate to gobble them down. So it’s me? Have other people had this experience? I really wanted to like them.
@@aliannarodriguez1581 There is information available about them that indicates the tree somewhat toxifies the soil so that you can't successfully cultivate a garden within a black walnut tree's dripline. There is a lot of hydrojuglone in the green husks of the nut, and it smells very much like tincture of iodine. You can smell it quite strongly. There's a good description in Wikipedia.
@@notmyworld44 put the green hulls in a toe sack (burlap bag) put a large rock inside the sack and tie off the top. take the sack with you when you are going fishing and throw it in the lake where you think the fish might be. the fish will float to the surface so you can scoop them up with your dip net!
Your content is a real godsend. You are one of the few people really advancing the field of North American forage-ology so to speak, and doing so in an entertaining, well-researched and widely accessible way. I've read up on foraging before but I still learn something from your videos every time. Thank you again!
Did anyone mention that the black walnut is super uniquely delicious?? Well worth the effort to wildcraft, or it can be found pre-shelled in some stores. I've always preferred the taste over the regular walnut, especially in salad dressings, with fruit (pears!) & cheese, ice cream, AND PASTRIES....soooo yummy! 💛
I bought that same nut cracker last fall, works fantastic! I cracked all my pecans with it also. I also twist the nut a little and crack partially again.
Awesome! I just found your channel from a short suggested to me and subscribed. I love how thrilled and passionate you are about this.. i was too, learning your tricks! It's so good to learn to soak them before cracking, so they don't fly across the room, or explode into your hand. I just sat around cracking and eating hickory nuts for what seemed like an hour recently and knew there had to be a better way to do it all. When the nuts are fresh they're easy to get out, but when they dry a bit they want to stick in the shell. I learned that swirling technique on my own from separating seeds from pulp, but never thought to apply it to my cracked nuts! Thank youuuu!! I bought my father a GGG a couple of years back and we're still thrilled about it. My father loves the black walnuts and i love the hickory nuts. It used to take so long with a hammer! I still haven't learned the best method for turning nuts or how hard or not to crack them. Last season, we collected maybe 3000 black walnuts and several hundred hickory nuts (i also left huge piles behind for the squirrels.. all that's left now are the shells which I'll rake up for using in campfires). I lived in TX for a while and learned about pecan rollers to pick up nuts. I don't know if the east coast is aware of them yet (I grew up and live in PA). My father had never heard of them either until i told him. We bought a cheap basic nut roller and it picks up anything from acorn to black walnut (and golf balls). It's all really streamlined the process. Our property is so abundant in nut trees. Anyway, cannot wait to check out more of your content!
I've only gathered black walnuts once many years ago. I didn't know anything about processing them and made a terrible mess of the whole endeavor. By the way, did you know that the ink makes a really good dye? It does. Including skin. And everything else it touches. Lol. 😅 I will definitely be watching your video next year about how to deal with the first half of the processing. And then I'll come back and watch this one again. Thank you much for making so many wonderful videos for us! I appreciate you!
If your really that worried about wasting water, put a bucket under the sieve. When you swirl and pour, the water will go in the bucket. Then pour that water into the bowl to swirl and pour again.
Thank you! We had one shipped with our grandpa's goodie getter a couple of years back (it was 30$ to order extras) and i keep seeing people use them in crafting videos but never knew what it was called to find them (likely cheaper) at a hardware store.
This was fantastic! Thank you. My Grandparents had a regular walnut tree growing next to the irrigation ditch out in the country, and my Great Grandma would take bags of them and crack them in her chair, use them in her apple pie (the apples of which they also grew on a gentle slope not far from the ditch :)
This helped a lot honestly, this season is going to be so much more easy now lol. Thank you! Keep doing what you're doing, loving the informational videos.
My old neighbor would jack up the rearend of hos truck about an inch or two above the ground and he would toss the green ones under the spinning wheel and they would fly out the other side at a high rate of speed. Catching them in a bucket. He would age his a year in the shell and Crack them as he wanted them
Blast from the past, my Great Grandma use to do it this way. She would of loved that machine to crack them with, she just had us and hammers, lol my poor thumb remembers that part well 😆.
What if you dissolved something (salt, sugar, soda, etc..) into the water just until the density changes so the walnut meat floats, but the shells still sink. You might not need very much, as it looks like the meat almost floats in straight water anyway, and the solute (salt, sugar, etc.) might help with preservation or seasoning! Or you could always rinse them clean afterwards if you used something like bicarbonate.
I had this in mind, but didn't get a chance to test yet. As I was in the final stages of publishing the video I actually saw someone seemingly do this successfully. I will have to test myself! Would be a great alternative.
One thing I'd keep in mind when thinking of using salt is that freshwater salinization is a form of pollution. Once you put salt into water, it's energy intensive to get it back out again. We have that issue with things like road salt in states with a lot of snow and ice. If there's something other than salt that doesn't pollute the water, that's great. But since this method seems to still work great without the salt, I'd prefer to just spend a tiny bit more elbow grease than put more salt into the ecosystem.
Great info! I’ve used hulls to make ink and tinctures, but have never had the time or patience to harvest the meats. I got a jump on the squirrels this week (we have very healthy, very happy, very large squirrels!) and gathered a 5 gallon bucket full and time permitting, will gather a few more buckets. Can’t wait to get started. I’ll be using the driveway technique but look forward to seeing how you hull yours.
Thank you for this video, we have quite a few black walnut trees on our property that I have never attempted to harvest the nut meats from because of the tediousness of the process. The timing is good as there is a new crop on the ground, I am going to try it.
The sieve and swirl reminds me so much of gold panning, i reckon if you filled them in a gold pan and panned it, you could mass separate the meat and shells quicker
For the folks who are fussing about the water - have a bucket in place to pour the water into. Then go water the garden with it. I live in a building that has a significant distance from the water heater to the kitchen and bathroom. While the walls are insulated, it's not enough to keep the pipes hot. Rather than wasting the water down the drain as I wait for it to get to temperature, I have a pail or bowl under the tap. This collected water is then used for watering plants, both indoors and out.
Thank you for making a video about methods to crack black walnuts. I live in Oregon, usa which, has acorns and walnuts as a unused resource by most of the population even though these trees are everywhere. Ok. So basically I wanted to say thank but I also have a question: is there a method to forage inner bark from trees that is safer or safest for the trees? I will subscribe because I like the way you explain your reasoning and the small business you support. Thanks again.
Crazy to think 100 years ago there was an even bigger wild producer in the forests of the eastern us. The american chestnut, giving people calories for thousands of years.
You can stack all the sieves in a tower and dump it on top, shake them(rotate tower side to side) down into the bottom where there is a bucket Edit : saw the pin nvm lol
My parents property is loaded with giant black walnut trees. Every year my dad removes several TONS of walnuts from his well maintained lawn and dumps them in the woods. They've never eaten a single walnut. He's planning on having the trees cut down.
Last fall I picked up some black walnuts and they were curing all this time, but after watching the video and realizing how much special equipment and effort I would need, it's safe to say I'll drop them in my compost bin and hope they decompose one day.
Great video; thanks for sharing your methods! It's one thing to learn identification and know what's good to harvest, but it can be a much bigger hurdle to know how to process things step by step. And some things just don't feel worth the time, so your knowledge is much appreciated!
wow thank you this is incredible advice. I've got 2 big bags of cured black walnuts from last fall that I only use on rare special occasions because they're such a pain to crack. This advice is going to make it reasonable!
My friend, you've already used three gold panning classifiers in the process; I'd suggest just buying an average sized gold pan and use the water STRATIFICATION technique you are doing to do the finishing work (in gold panning just swirl shake with one or both hands). With the metals we are just going in reverse of you: washing out the light material to keep the heavy, and you're washing out to keep the light materials and consolidating the heavy. And in the long run you'll be using that gold pan to hold and gather tons of in the field goodies - I do. For those that have read up to this point I'd suggest the colors of the light green (like a sea foam), standard green, light blue, and standard blue colors so your eyes can can discern the features of the item you are classifying out. A black pan is great for gold bits and gemstone bits, but not good for looking at natural browns and tans of nuts, berries, mushrooms and plant bits. Pan types: Garrett, SAE, Sluice Fox, and the generic knock-offs are just fine, but look for the big riffles built into the pan to catch, in this case, nut meat. Most of the 5-gallon fitting classifiers will sit on top of a larger gold pan, and a fingers under the pan lip and thumb over the edge of the classifier wall will give a good grip to shake-classify out all the bits of each stage. There are a plethora of gold panning teachers out there in YT-University to teach panning techniques: Klesh & Dan Hurd to name two. There are mesh bags out there that will fit panning gear, or if you are in an extreme bush crafting mood you could follow Sally Pointer in one of her older videos and she can teach you to build a roman style mesh bag that can be custom fit to your gear load. Happy trails and much bounty to you. ....and one more thing (Jackie) [for those that catch the reference]: your suggested sifters and gold pans are great for hells, mineral, gardening, and pretty much any sort of activity that you go, "I need a way to sort these out and catch them while processing.
I wonder if you slightly salted the water at the swirl step if that would make the nut meats float even better, due to denser water, then leave lightly salted or wash afterward to remove the salt. Thanks for the video!
I came across your channel quite by accident but am thankful I did. I have enjoyed all of the videos I have watched so far. In this video, I could not help but notice a pretty severe rash of some sort on your right arm and hope you have been able to identify the source of it and have found some relief from it. It looks pretty bad.
After one miserable fall/winter deskinning and cracking BL walnuts I had learned a healthy respect for the difficulty of the task! Often requiring a hammer! But then I would see a squirrel cheerfully pick one up and with seemingly no effort at all he would crack the shell and get his dinner! Squirrels are instinctively wise! Like there is a secret code that they already know, right? Thx Jah!
Salt water is more dense than fresh water. Have you tried floating them in salt water so you don't have to stir the water? Then rinse the salt water off.
I'm a bit confused. 50 years ago, around Thanksgiving and Christmas, we would get bags of assorted nuts with the shell still on, including walnuts. They looked nothing like your fuzzy black walnuts. They were clean, dry and looked like hard, brown wood with a distinct seam all the way around the shell. We, as young children, were given a nutcracker - a tiny metal handheld lever that looked like 2 chopsticks connected at one end. We would crack the nut ourselves in the palm of our hand and pick out the walnut pieces (and other assorted nuts). Yum. I don't know why your walnuts look so different in the shell. Why don't you skip the cracking step and sell the nuts in the shell, clean, dry and brown?
Those are english walnuts! MUCH easier to crack open. Black walnuts are a totally different animal - one I have been learning about over the past year. They have a completely different taste from the English variety that many of us grew up with. It is a labor of love for sure, and I am one of those crazy individuals that embraces the challenge and relished the distinct flavor of these little gems!
Argh! This video was great but also heartbreaking. I have a big black walnut tree in my yard and was rubbing my hands together at the thought of successfully harvesting them. But then I found out it was a bit of a tease, in that you wouldn't be showing the curing step. 😭That's where my previous attempt fell apart. Wound up with moldy black walnuts. I could probably google around and find other places to tell me, but your videos are _so good._ 😁
I have two very good producing black walnut trees on my property. I don't care for nuts very much anymore because well, "reasons". But the animals love them so, they dont go to waste at all. I also have a very annoying, large patch of Japanese knotweed which i know jas uses, I wish I could find someone who wants it and would come harvest it each year so I dont have to 🤣 That is one truly pita species
Too bad.I didn't know this last suwhere.I used to live.There was so many of them all over the place in my neighborhood but who is gonna pick up all those walnuts😂😂😂
I don't have any black walnut to experiment with this myself, but I wonder: Salt water had a different weight than freshwater. I wonder if there is a reasonable amount you could add to water to float the meat?
Thanks for the tips! The video would be much more enjoyable if you didn't do the super close shots that make my eyes cross until the lens focuses. Or edit the video until the focus catches up. Eek!
So this was a 20 minute video that featured 2 minutes of actual info, 16 minutes of babbling to pad the run time, and another 2 minutes of commercials. Thanks for that.
I watch you on various projects. But, what you do not say is what I think is most important for the food needs of people then. How much actual protein is in the various nuts & goods you & we could find. Also, if we are searching for foods to have sustain our energy and nutrients. The other thing I wanted to ask you is where are the pockets of space people would want to walk to see how things are growing. On nuts, my Grandma use to have a black walnut in Alabama. The family also had pecan trees. There were these sets of picks, a nut clamp, and then I think some that were more for thinner walls of pecans and hazelnuts, then there where other kinds of nuts. It seems that nuts were a larger part of the diet. Do you find that down South nuts are more of the diet? Also, where do you search out paw paws? Are there one one kind or do different regions have other types than in Michigan, and other States in the Midwest and East Coast?
I heard one time that you can tap black walnut trees like sugar maples and make a black walnut syrup. Anyone know if this is true? Would LOVE a video on that if it is possible!
Nothing wrong with that! I have found personally that the black walnuts that I have processed myself to taste superior to the ones I have purchased from a 3rd party.
Wish I had seen your video before last winter when we were hand shelling 8 bushels by hand. We put them in water in the cement mixer for a few hours and it knocks all those green shells off. It gets to be a thick slurry eventually, so you have to change the water a few times. Thank you so much for the valuable and labor saving information.
I bought a 1 ton Arbor press from Harbor Freight for $79 that works great to crack nuts and has a hundred other uses. We process hundreds of pounds of black walnuts every year and I repurpose my honey extractor to swirl the larger pieces and scoop the meat out with the sieve.
Just allow your small bits to naturally and fully dry. This can even be done on a tray in the refrigerator. Once dry, the oils in the meat will still cause it to sink, but the fully dry Woody shells will easily float. Black walnuts are my absolute favorite nut! I like to pan roast the small bits and add it to homemade Maple ice cream, Maple black walnut ice cream again my favorite! 🤤🤤🤤
I may be mistaken But...do not put hulls in your compost! As another commenter said, there is a chemical in them that will kill any plant growing under a black walnut tree! I'd be afraid it would affect a good compost pile also. Great info and methods to try!
I started collecting black walnuts 2 years ago. We sold 90% of them to a Hammons collection ctr. We kept about a bushel and a half for us to crack and sort. The sorting technique you shared will be useful! We do it by hand and and takes about a day to separate a quart of nuts that way.
Well done video, but I think I could fill a jar quicker than you. I handle the nut once, get only quarters about 98% of the time, hardly ever use shears or a nut pick, straight from the cracker to the jar, no soaking, no water of any sort, no sorting. The cracker I use is a drill press vice and is readily available for as little as $20. Knowledge of the structure of the nut is critical. I use much smaller jars as my working jar and dump these into a bigger jar as I go. Less time on my feet per session which is important when you are over 72 years old! I should do a video but It would be a pain in the butt. You come visit me young feller and I'll show you how!
In the soaking process, we put the nuts in a cement mixer with the water. Let them tumble for an hour or so, drain and add clean water. let them soak for the remainder of time. It really cleans off the shells.
I find it hilarious how the intro to this video is set up extremely similar to those online guru scams. Like "I created this secret method, and once you learn it you'll never go back" but it's just about harvesting black walnuts
Fantastic video as always! I'll be purchasing those screens and trying this next season. This was my first season foraging them. I gathered 3 ice cream buckets (hulled). I wasn't sure if I'd like the taste. LOVED them! I'm aiming to get much more next season. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!😊
EDIT: Hey, everyone! More peple are finding this video which I'm really excited about. I wanted to mention that I was doing an experimental style here that I don't do any more in my videos. I'll probably try to recreate this one to be more concise. Check out my newer videos which are packed with way more info! Thank you all for being here and caring about black walnut. 🙏
Additional processing notes and ideas!
One of my patreon members had a genius suggestion which is to just stack the various sizes of mesh filters on top of each other so you can sort them all in one go. Brilliant!
Remember to use code feral24 at Grandpa’s Goody Getter to get $10 off your order of the best black walnut cracker in the world!
I realized that I forgot to mention, after soaking your nuts, you want them to be dry on the exterior before cracking!
For cracking, I have found that providing slight pressure along the two widest points of the black walnut shells allows the cracking to happen more uniformly, and the nut meat on the inside is damaged less frequently!
The smaller pieces that you get from the 1/8-inch mesh can sometimes have a few shells sneak in there, so you have to be really diligent about removing them! These would work great for something like Forager Chef’s new black walnut milk recipe. You should check it out!
I found that a deeper bowl works better when using the swirl method than a shallow one.
If I get my own walnuts shell them and wash them can I crack and eat them or do you let them dry for so long ?thanks
Watch putting black walnut in compost due to juglone which can harm some garden plants.
@@TAW64 The shells should be ok. The husks should NOT be put in compost for that reason.
My Grandfather taught me to love black walnuts. He threw them in the driveway and drove his car over them until the shucks were off, and then he'd put them in bushel baskets and put them by the coal furnace in the basement to dry them out. When he worked for Michigan Dairy, years and years ago, he cooked down their first pan of condensed milk. He also invented two ice cream flavors. One was black walnut, and i don't remember the other one. Wish i'd have paid more attention to my Dad about it now.
What beautiful memories. Thank you for sharing. ❤
Can you ask them to give you a summary of his work?
@@Maxim.Teleguz I recently found his street address when he was living in East Lansing and it is now I believe a Biggby's coffee.
"invented two ice cream flavors,"
That's just putting flavors together, wouldn't call that "inventing." Lol
@@codyrebelcb So, no one invented the PB & J?
No one invented chocolate milk?
No one invented any recipes at all?
You logic is flawed.
Have had a "Goodie Getter" for two years now. Excellent machine.
Also pop for one of those "nut gatherers". They resemble a wire ball that you roll over the nuts on the ground. The wires spreading the nut goes inside. SO FAST. Beats my 62 year old back bending over picking them up.😊
While we don't have any black walnut trees ourselves, we have friends who live very nearby who do. They and everyone on their street have loads of black walnut trees in their front yards and NO ONE does anything with the nuts! I have been told to come and get them all. 🤣 They all rake them to the curb to be collected with their leaves by the city. I know what I'll be doing this fall. 🙂
Here in northwest Arkansas black walnuts are super-abundant. If you are not familiar with this particular type of walnut, they have a strangely acrid odor and taste that requires getting accustomed to. Also the outer green husks contain a large amount of something that smells like iodine. The rock-hard inner shells can be ground to a powder and used as a polishing compound. There is a black walnut processing plant in Gravette Arkansas, not far from where I live that shells them. This video was really excellent with good information!
Glad you liked it!
With regard to the taste, I processed some black walnuts a few years ago and was horrified to discover they tasted like machine oil. It wasn’t just bad, it was toxic tasting. I tried several different nuts thinking I had gotten a bad one, but they were all the same. However, if I left a half eaten one out for the squirrels, they didn’t hesitate to gobble them down. So it’s me? Have other people had this experience? I really wanted to like them.
@@aliannarodriguez1581 There is information available about them that indicates the tree somewhat toxifies the soil so that you can't successfully cultivate a garden within a black walnut tree's dripline. There is a lot of hydrojuglone in the green husks of the nut, and it smells very much like tincture of iodine. You can smell it quite strongly. There's a good description in Wikipedia.
@@aliannarodriguez1581I always thought they were bitter, but i didn't notice a toxic taste.
@@notmyworld44 put the green hulls in a toe sack (burlap bag) put a large rock inside the sack and tie off the top. take the sack with you when you are going fishing and throw it in the lake where you think the fish might be. the fish will float to the surface so you can scoop them up with your dip net!
Your content is a real godsend. You are one of the few people really advancing the field of North American forage-ology so to speak, and doing so in an entertaining, well-researched and widely accessible way. I've read up on foraging before but I still learn something from your videos every time. Thank you again!
Did anyone mention that the black walnut is super uniquely delicious?? Well worth the effort to wildcraft, or it can be found pre-shelled in some stores.
I've always preferred the taste over the regular walnut, especially in salad dressings, with fruit (pears!) & cheese, ice cream, AND PASTRIES....soooo yummy! 💛
I bought that same nut cracker last fall, works fantastic! I cracked all my pecans with it also. I also twist the nut a little and crack partially again.
Yes, it's awesome! Works with hickory as well.
Love the water swirl separation technique! Great video man👌
Thank you!
Awesome! I just found your channel from a short suggested to me and subscribed.
I love how thrilled and passionate you are about this.. i was too, learning your tricks!
It's so good to learn to soak them before cracking, so they don't fly across the room, or explode into your hand. I just sat around cracking and eating hickory nuts for what seemed like an hour recently and knew there had to be a better way to do it all. When the nuts are fresh they're easy to get out, but when they dry a bit they want to stick in the shell.
I learned that swirling technique on my own from separating seeds from pulp, but never thought to apply it to my cracked nuts! Thank youuuu!!
I bought my father a GGG a couple of years back and we're still thrilled about it. My father loves the black walnuts and i love the hickory nuts. It used to take so long with a hammer! I still haven't learned the best method for turning nuts or how hard or not to crack them.
Last season, we collected maybe 3000 black walnuts and several hundred hickory nuts (i also left huge piles behind for the squirrels.. all that's left now are the shells which I'll rake up for using in campfires).
I lived in TX for a while and learned about pecan rollers to pick up nuts. I don't know if the east coast is aware of them yet (I grew up and live in PA). My father had never heard of them either until i told him. We bought a cheap basic nut roller and it picks up anything from acorn to black walnut (and golf balls). It's all really streamlined the process. Our property is so abundant in nut trees.
Anyway, cannot wait to check out more of your content!
That's how I first came up with the swirl method also!! Great minds think alike lol
I've only gathered black walnuts once many years ago. I didn't know anything about processing them and made a terrible mess of the whole endeavor. By the way, did you know that the ink makes a really good dye? It does. Including skin. And everything else it touches. Lol. 😅 I will definitely be watching your video next year about how to deal with the first half of the processing. And then I'll come back and watch this one again.
Thank you much for making so many wonderful videos for us! I appreciate you!
If your really that worried about wasting water, put a bucket under the sieve. When you swirl and pour, the water will go in the bucket. Then pour that water into the bowl to swirl and pour again.
Great point!
I came to the comments to make this exact suggestion. XD
I was going to suggest the same thing...lol
Then use it to water your garden.
Just be careful where you use the water when you dispose of it. Junglone will kill many plants.
Great video! Your enthusiasm is contagious and delightful! Thanks for sharing.
Very welcome!
Thank you so much! Black walnuts are such a common tree, yet almost universally ignored, or even reviled for hurting other trees.
Flush Cutter is the name of the shears you used for anyone looking for the same thing
Thank you!
We had one shipped with our grandpa's goodie getter a couple of years back (it was 30$ to order extras) and i keep seeing people use them in crafting videos but never knew what it was called to find them (likely cheaper) at a hardware store.
This was fantastic! Thank you. My Grandparents had a regular walnut tree growing next to the irrigation ditch out in the country, and my Great Grandma would take bags of them and crack them in her chair, use them in her apple pie (the apples of which they also grew on a gentle slope not far from the ditch :)
This helped a lot honestly, this season is going to be so much more easy now lol.
Thank you! Keep doing what you're doing, loving the informational videos.
Great! That's what I'm hoping for. :D
Wow! So many great tips here. Thank you!
Very welcome!
My old neighbor would jack up the rearend of hos truck about an inch or two above the ground and he would toss the green ones under the spinning wheel and they would fly out the other side at a high rate of speed. Catching them in a bucket. He would age his a year in the shell and Crack them as he wanted them
Good job brother! Excellent video!
Truly a helpful method, very much appreciated. Thanks for putting in the time for this video!
Blast from the past, my Great Grandma use to do it this way. She would of loved that machine to crack them with, she just had us and hammers, lol my poor thumb remembers that part well 😆.
Love this! I hope future generations will continue to have stories of their family's gathering and processing black walnut. 🙏
What if you dissolved something (salt, sugar, soda, etc..) into the water just until the density changes so the walnut meat floats, but the shells still sink. You might not need very much, as it looks like the meat almost floats in straight water anyway, and the solute (salt, sugar, etc.) might help with preservation or seasoning! Or you could always rinse them clean afterwards if you used something like bicarbonate.
I had this in mind, but didn't get a chance to test yet. As I was in the final stages of publishing the video I actually saw someone seemingly do this successfully. I will have to test myself! Would be a great alternative.
@@FeralForaging Let us know what you find out please.😊
I was thinking he was going to add salt to separate them but then he started swirling. I would be interested to know how well it works.
One thing I'd keep in mind when thinking of using salt is that freshwater salinization is a form of pollution. Once you put salt into water, it's energy intensive to get it back out again. We have that issue with things like road salt in states with a lot of snow and ice.
If there's something other than salt that doesn't pollute the water, that's great. But since this method seems to still work great without the salt, I'd prefer to just spend a tiny bit more elbow grease than put more salt into the ecosystem.
And now we can use the shell for more tannins
Tannis is great for stopping unwanted plant growth.
Although I tried it with the Japanese knotweed on my property and it didn't work 😞
Great info! I’ve used hulls to make ink and tinctures, but have never had the time or patience to harvest the meats. I got a jump on the squirrels this week (we have very healthy, very happy, very large squirrels!) and gathered a 5 gallon bucket full and time permitting, will gather a few more buckets. Can’t wait to get started. I’ll be using the driveway technique but look forward to seeing how you hull yours.
MY mom used to make a black walnut cake . My dad would run the nuts through a band saw then mom would pick them out
Thank you for this video, we have quite a few black walnut trees on our property that I have never attempted to harvest the nut meats from because of the tediousness of the process. The timing is good as there is a new crop on the ground, I am going to try it.
They are called Classifiers, used to separate finer rocks, crystals, etc from coarse.
great idea!
The sieve and swirl reminds me so much of gold panning, i reckon if you filled them in a gold pan and panned it, you could mass separate the meat and shells quicker
For the folks who are fussing about the water - have a bucket in place to pour the water into.
Then go water the garden with it.
I live in a building that has a significant distance from the water heater to the kitchen and bathroom. While the walls are insulated, it's not enough to keep the pipes hot.
Rather than wasting the water down the drain as I wait for it to get to temperature, I have a pail or bowl under the tap.
This collected water is then used for watering plants, both indoors and out.
Black walnut water shouldn't go anywhere near to where you want something to grow!
Thank you for making a video about methods to crack black walnuts. I live in Oregon, usa which, has acorns and walnuts as a unused resource by most of the population even though these trees are everywhere.
Ok. So basically I wanted to say thank but I also have a question: is there a method to forage inner bark from trees that is safer or safest for the trees?
I will subscribe because I like the way you explain your reasoning and the small business you support.
Thanks again.
Crazy to think 100 years ago there was an even bigger wild producer in the forests of the eastern us. The american chestnut, giving people calories for thousands of years.
You can stack all the sieves in a tower and dump it on top, shake them(rotate tower side to side) down into the bottom where there is a bucket
Edit : saw the pin nvm lol
Great minds think alike!
Türkiye den merhaba teşekkür ederim
That was awesome. Thanks buddy. I feel like my attitude towards using those guys is now changed!
Awesome, that's exactly what happened to me and what I hope for others too. 🙏
My parents property is loaded with giant black walnut trees. Every year my dad removes several TONS of walnuts from his well maintained lawn and dumps them in the woods. They've never eaten a single walnut. He's planning on having the trees cut down.
Last fall I picked up some black walnuts and they were curing all this time,
but after watching the video and realizing how much special equipment and effort I would need,
it's safe to say I'll drop them in my compost bin and hope they decompose one day.
Great video; thanks for sharing your methods! It's one thing to learn identification and know what's good to harvest, but it can be a much bigger hurdle to know how to process things step by step. And some things just don't feel worth the time, so your knowledge is much appreciated!
wow thank you this is incredible advice. I've got 2 big bags of cured black walnuts from last fall that I only use on rare special occasions because they're such a pain to crack. This advice is going to make it reasonable!
A small bench vice and a bucket is a great way to shell.
Nicely done
My friend, you've already used three gold panning classifiers in the process; I'd suggest just buying an average sized gold pan and use the water STRATIFICATION technique you are doing to do the finishing work (in gold panning just swirl shake with one or both hands). With the metals we are just going in reverse of you: washing out the light material to keep the heavy, and you're washing out to keep the light materials and consolidating the heavy.
And in the long run you'll be using that gold pan to hold and gather tons of in the field goodies - I do.
For those that have read up to this point I'd suggest the colors of the light green (like a sea foam), standard green, light blue, and standard blue colors so your eyes can can discern the features of the item you are classifying out. A black pan is great for gold bits and gemstone bits, but not good for looking at natural browns and tans of nuts, berries, mushrooms and plant bits.
Pan types: Garrett, SAE, Sluice Fox, and the generic knock-offs are just fine, but look for the big riffles built into the pan to catch, in this case, nut meat.
Most of the 5-gallon fitting classifiers will sit on top of a larger gold pan, and a fingers under the pan lip and thumb over the edge of the classifier wall will give a good grip to shake-classify out all the bits of each stage.
There are a plethora of gold panning teachers out there in YT-University to teach panning techniques: Klesh & Dan Hurd to name two.
There are mesh bags out there that will fit panning gear, or if you are in an extreme bush crafting mood you could follow Sally Pointer in one of her older videos and she can teach you to build a roman style mesh bag that can be custom fit to your gear load.
Happy trails and much bounty to you.
....and one more thing (Jackie) [for those that catch the reference]: your suggested sifters and gold pans are great for hells, mineral, gardening, and pretty much any sort of activity that you go, "I need a way to sort these out and catch them while processing.
Use filtered water for soaking so that the water plant treatment chemicals don’t get into the nuts.
I wonder if you slightly salted the water at the swirl step if that would make the nut meats float even better, due to denser water, then leave lightly salted or wash afterward to remove the salt. Thanks for the video!
This was so helpful.. black walnutt hual for parasites, you demos and suggestions are helpful .. thanks a bunch
Very welcome!
Awesome Video.. 5 thumb ups.
Thank you! Same to the Goody Getter! 😄
I came across your channel quite by accident but am thankful I did. I have enjoyed all of the videos I have watched so far. In this video, I could not help but notice a pretty severe rash of some sort on your right arm and hope you have been able to identify the source of it and have found some relief from it. It looks pretty bad.
From a little too thorough of a poison ivy experiment that I conducted in the video before this one... 😅
Salt the water to float the meat
Excited
I have sooooo many black walnuts that I truly don’t know what to do with them!
Seems a brine floatation system would work well separating the shells from the meat.
After one miserable fall/winter deskinning and cracking BL walnuts I had learned a healthy respect for the difficulty of the task! Often requiring a hammer! But then I would see a squirrel cheerfully pick one up and with seemingly no effort at all he would crack the shell and get his dinner! Squirrels are instinctively wise! Like there is a secret code that they already know, right? Thx Jah!
Thank YOU for this!!!
Could you do the swirl nethod with a water hose? The bucket overflowing might push the meat out leaving the hulls, would take some practice I'm sure.
Salt water is more dense than fresh water. Have you tried floating them in salt water so you don't have to stir the water? Then rinse the salt water off.
I'm a bit confused. 50 years ago, around Thanksgiving and Christmas, we would get bags of assorted nuts with the shell still on, including walnuts. They looked nothing like your fuzzy black walnuts. They were clean, dry and looked like hard, brown wood with a distinct seam all the way around the shell. We, as young children, were given a nutcracker - a tiny metal handheld lever that looked like 2 chopsticks connected at one end. We would crack the nut ourselves in the palm of our hand and pick out the walnut pieces (and other assorted nuts). Yum.
I don't know why your walnuts look so different in the shell. Why don't you skip the cracking step and sell the nuts in the shell, clean, dry and brown?
Those are english walnuts! MUCH easier to crack open. Black walnuts are a totally different animal - one I have been learning about over the past year. They have a completely different taste from the English variety that many of us grew up with. It is a labor of love for sure, and I am one of those crazy individuals that embraces the challenge and relished the distinct flavor of these little gems!
Wow, some great ideas here!
I’m sending this video to my next door neighbor’s that I share the black walnut tree with! If you see this, hi 👋 Legna!! 😂
Argh! This video was great but also heartbreaking. I have a big black walnut tree in my yard and was rubbing my hands together at the thought of successfully harvesting them. But then I found out it was a bit of a tease, in that you wouldn't be showing the curing step. 😭That's where my previous attempt fell apart. Wound up with moldy black walnuts. I could probably google around and find other places to tell me, but your videos are _so good._ 😁
I bet if you dried the broken pieces after you cracked them, it would make them easier to pick out of the shells AND help the meat to float better.
I have two very good producing black walnut trees on my property.
I don't care for nuts very much anymore because well, "reasons".
But the animals love them so, they dont go to waste at all.
I also have a very annoying, large patch of Japanese knotweed which i know jas uses,
I wish I could find someone who wants it and would come harvest it each year so I dont have to 🤣
That is one truly pita species
Panning for nuts. Maybe try a gold pan.
I would swirl then use small strainer and capture while water swirling.
or you could swirl and skim with a small strainer, saving water. ?
Too bad.I didn't know this last suwhere.I used to live.There was so many of them all over the place in my neighborhood but who is gonna pick up all those walnuts😂😂😂
I fractured a molar on pieces of shell left behind....
Daddy always threw the black walnut in the driveway to dehull them. lol
I can help you design a new adapter to maybe split them from the center and force the peels out as you split them
Tell me the internal diameter of the press ring and the space available to top of walnut in fully opened state.
I don't have any black walnut to experiment with this myself, but I wonder: Salt water had a different weight than freshwater. I wonder if there is a reasonable amount you could add to water to float the meat?
Do you have a hazelnut video?
Where did you get your black walnuts?
You did not need to word over fruit, nuts are a sub-type of fruit!
Thanks for the tips! The video would be much more enjoyable if you didn't do the super close shots that make my eyes cross until the lens focuses. Or edit the video until the focus catches up. Eek!
Still a tedious process. But if you love black walnut. Dedicate a day of doing it.
Is that poison ivy on your forearm?
So this was a 20 minute video that featured 2 minutes of actual info, 16 minutes of babbling to pad the run time, and another 2 minutes of commercials. Thanks for that.
Yes, extremely irritating video.
I watch you on various projects. But, what you do not say is what I think is most important for the food needs of people then.
How much actual protein is in the various nuts & goods you & we could find. Also, if we are searching for foods to have sustain our energy and nutrients.
The other thing I wanted to ask you is where are the pockets of space people would want to walk to see how things are growing.
On nuts, my Grandma use to have a black walnut in Alabama. The family also had pecan trees. There were these sets of picks, a nut clamp, and then I think some that were more for thinner walls of pecans and hazelnuts, then there where other kinds of nuts.
It seems that nuts were a larger part of the diet. Do you find that down South nuts are more of the diet?
Also, where do you search out paw paws? Are there one one kind or do different regions have other types than in Michigan, and other States in the Midwest and East Coast?
6 minutes in and the only thing you've said is "soak them first". My 2 cents: Talk MUCH less; say useful things right away.
I heard one time that you can tap black walnut trees like sugar maples and make a black walnut syrup. Anyone know if this is true? Would LOVE a video on that if it is possible!
Wasting water is relative. I mean you are putting them on a garden...
Who has $199 to crack nuts
sorting by size with sieves serves no function whatsoever. you're still picking through each shell piece, regardless of size.
I would recommend trying it without sorting them and you may find its use! Dealing with just larger shells is far easier than many tiny pieces.
They are to hard to do id rather buy them
Nothing wrong with that! I have found personally that the black walnuts that I have processed myself to taste superior to the ones I have purchased from a 3rd party.
This is an ad.
Everything on RUclips is an ad. You're the product.
Wish I had seen your video before last winter when we were hand shelling 8 bushels by hand. We put them in water in the cement mixer for a few hours and it knocks all those green shells off. It gets to be a thick slurry eventually, so you have to change the water a few times. Thank you so much for the valuable and labor saving information.
I bought a 1 ton Arbor press from Harbor Freight for $79 that works great to crack nuts and has a hundred other uses. We process hundreds of pounds of black walnuts every year and I repurpose my honey extractor to swirl the larger pieces and scoop the meat out with the sieve.
Just allow your small bits to naturally and fully dry. This can even be done on a tray in the refrigerator. Once dry, the oils in the meat will still cause it to sink, but the fully dry Woody shells will easily float.
Black walnuts are my absolute favorite nut! I like to pan roast the small bits and add it to homemade Maple ice cream, Maple black walnut ice cream again my favorite! 🤤🤤🤤
I may be mistaken But...do not put hulls in your compost! As another commenter said, there is a chemical in them that will kill any plant growing under a black walnut tree! I'd be afraid it would affect a good compost pile also.
Great info and methods to try!
I started collecting black walnuts 2 years ago. We sold 90% of them to a Hammons collection ctr. We kept about a bushel and a half for us to crack and sort. The sorting technique you shared will be useful! We do it by hand and and takes about a day to separate a quart of nuts that way.
Black walnut shells are also used in herbal medicine to make a lovely anti-parasitic tea 😊
What happened to your right forearm, Jesse, are you ok? It looks like a possible burn 😢
Would not advise putting shells or husks in mulch piles - chemical in them that will kill off your garden
I take cold showers and bathe in the ocean. I'm donating my unspent water quotas to the creator of this video as a special thanks.
Umm... did i miss the part about removing the hulls without getting completely stained black?🤔
Black walnuts are my favorite nuts.
Well done video, but I think I could fill a jar quicker than you. I handle the nut once, get only quarters about 98% of the time, hardly ever use shears or a nut pick, straight from the cracker to the jar, no soaking, no water of any sort, no sorting. The cracker I use is a drill press vice and is readily available for as little as $20. Knowledge of the structure of the nut is critical. I use much smaller jars as my working jar and dump these into a bigger jar as I go. Less time on my feet per session which is important when you are over 72 years old! I should do a video but It would be a pain in the butt. You come visit me young feller and I'll show you how!
So the drill press Vice is used in conjunction with or without a drill press?
video too long.Please stick to basic instructions.
I agree. I did this video in an experimental style for me. Check my newer videos that are way more concise!
In the soaking process, we put the nuts in a cement mixer with the water. Let them tumble for an hour or so, drain and add clean water. let them soak for the remainder of time.
It really cleans off the shells.
A contrstrike
I find it hilarious how the intro to this video is set up extremely similar to those online guru scams. Like "I created this secret method, and once you learn it you'll never go back" but it's just about harvesting black walnuts
Fantastic video as always! I'll be purchasing those screens and trying this next season. This was my first season foraging them. I gathered 3 ice cream buckets (hulled). I wasn't sure if I'd like the taste. LOVED them! I'm aiming to get much more next season. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!😊