Husking/Hulling Black Walnuts - Efficient and Fast
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- čas přidán 7. 10. 2019
- www.edibleacres.org
We've been collecting and processing Black Walnuts along with Butternut, Hickory, and other great nut crops since 2013 when our good friend Akiva at twisted-tree.net showed us some tricks to get the process moving along well.
Now we can collect and process somewhere near 500-1000 nuts per hour with some basic tools and elements. Most folks can get access to the ingredients in this process, and you can certainly improvise on this and adjust to your own needs.
Happy collecting!!!
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czcams.com/video/cTgvgqFfEvA/video.html - A lot of folks asked how we crack Black Walnuts, so I made a video showing this crazy wonderful tool we've used for years... masternutcracker.com is the site and I can't speak highly enough of how well made and effective it is for cracking super tough nuts...
My mom is also thinking of getting one of those now that she has a faster way of processing them and you know Sean her hands look just like your for a few days after too!!!😊
How long do you let them dry before eating? I heard 8 weeks minimum....how do you get the stain off your hands? My gloves had holes in them and hands have been Brown for four days...I heard it wears off in a couple of weeks
Now it's Oct. 22 and I'm willing to bet that that your hands are still brown.
@@joefrugoli4970 if you are referring to me you are correct...my hands are still brown 😀
I tried this today and it worked great! Thank you for the idea
It's always nice to see that there's still hippies out there kickin around.
I thought they were castrati.
I make a wood stain from the husks from our black walnut tree. It makes a wonderful natural stain for outdoor fencing and decking, keeps the bugs out.
Lisa Albarras Oh wow! Very cool!
@@mcd5478 Thank you, I was so tired of Lyme washing everything every six months and have an abundance of black walnuts so it is a perfect solution for me. The stain stores just fine in glass jars and all you have to do to make it is boil the husks for a day, strain it and then boil again until it has condensed a bit. I condensed my last batch down to a molasses consistency for storage and reconstitute as need for projects. Feels nice to not have to buy stain at a store, I may not have a variety of colors but it is nontoxic, homegrown and organic, oh and FREE!
BRILLIANT!
yes... it makes a great stain on your hands too..
@@stevexxx6078 well that's is were being careful and NOT getting it on ones hands comes in. 😃
Back in 57 when I was a child my family lived in a house that had at least three black walnut trees in our yard. We had our clothesline fastened in a triangle between them. When the walnuts started falling from the tree we pick them from the ground and threw them in the driveway so Daddy could drive over them. This cleaned them off very well. When they were clean we picked them up and put them in a bucket or gunny sack until we needed them. That same year we picked up apples from the ground at an old orchard. When I got home from school I would grab a handfull of nuts, crack them with a hammer on a brick or a large flat rock. Then I would take the nut meats and mix them with an apple that I had chopped and mixed some Miracle Whip with. You couldn't find a better after school snack. It has to be Miracle Whip for the tangy taste. I miss them here in Colorado.
Sweet memories. Thanks for sharing!
That's how we did it too.run over them with the auto.
They are so expensive in stores today...
@Ami Riegel I started doing that after I got older. Turns out that the simple salad I made when I was a kid is Waldorf Salad when you add celery.
@@normahogarth6695 an rasins
@@nogoglobal most commercial nuts are rancid because they are not refrigerated rancid oils cause cancer
alchemicalnursery.org - My friend Robbie helping in this video is involved in a rad project up in Syracuse, NY. Check out this urban permaculture collective!
As a McMack Indian, try this process. Grill them then toss them into an ice bath... The shells will fall off without overcooking the walnut inside...
Your kidding?
How long on the grill, and what temperature?
Not sure how I can become a McMack Indian.
t put in toaster oven at 150 - 200 for several hours take out and they crack open as they cool Ill try the ice bath see if it enhances the process
@@DavidDavida That's quite a temperature range.
Planted two black walnuts last year so we should need this info in about a decade or so. Thanks!
AMAZING! I have gazed upon them for decades all over the ground in PA and never knew the possibilities. THANK YOU FRIEND.
Thats the whole point this this video, get folks feeling like it makes real sense to collect and process!
@@edibleacres MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
I hope you have a automatic nutcracker and meat remover
We learned this technique from you two years ago. It was so efficient when we tried it back then that we still have plenty of walnuts from that time. Kudos again, Sean.
How long will the clean nuts be able to be stored?
I love how you value your time.
You’ve invested in developing a system to quickly (ish) process a large volume of walnuts quickly!! Thumbs up from me!
Now to checkout your other videos!
Hope you find some of them enjoyable and thanks for visiting :)
This might be the best shucking walnut video EVER!!!! The black hulls make a great natural trap dye too!! THANKS 😨....:>)>
It's hard to believe how many nuts come off one tree. Food is a full time job requiring a lot of people.
Omg this is SO useful! I have an ancient black walnut tree that I've been just... dumping nuts out into the forest for the squirrels. I finally want to start USING them, and your guide is so straightforward. Thank you! I look forward to having & storing some walnuts this year!
This is exactly what we'd dream to read :)
How lovely to meet one of your friends! Greetings Robbie!
This is a great method Sean. I grew up in California where there were loads of black walnut ( LOVE THEM!!) I never knew how they got cleaned en masse, but I do remember the dad's, uncles and grandpa would knock the nuts to the ground and all us kids would scramble to collect. It was super fun, got to hang with all my cousins at the same time and the reward of eating as many as you can stomach was well worth all the hard work. I looked forward to black walnut season every year growing up.
We just laid ours in the driveway and ran over them with the cars, then pick up denuded nuts and crack and moved on. yum. Thanks for another method you shared.
That's how we did it too.
burning fossil fuel to do this is not an earth-friendly way to do this
@@keyworthgraphics well, we didn't exactly start up the car just for that. It was a byproduct of coming and going from the farm. It took several trips to get the job done.
@@juanabaker758 IC i didn't think that sounded right, ha ha ha ha...many moons ago, i DID specifically start the car to squish things, but it was slugs i picked from my garden!
@@keyworthgraphics 😆 I liked to put the slugs in soapy water to drown. They scream. And they blow bubbles.
If you happen to use black walnut husk water... (only the walnut husks soaked in pure water) pour it on the ground.. . It will bring up earth worms... night crawlers by the dozens... useful tip I use for fishing.
They seem to love it.
Thanks man - I'm getting ready to harvest thousands. I have a cement mixer that I'm going to apply your method to. Might even throw in some limestone gravel for aggregate. Appreciate you taking the time to explain the process.
Great idea!
A cement mixer is also an efficient method of husking black walnuts. For small batches, I use a three prong cultivator to scrape off the husk, then wash the final bits off. I have a concrete pad with a corner that works good for the procedure. Thanks for the video.
That's a great idea! I have a cement mixer that's just sitting idle.
We own a Black Walnut in our NY backyard, and I've always been searching for the best way to harvest them with time management! Thank you so much! I missed this season, but surely next, I will be prepared to muck away! haha
Sean thank you so much this so much faster and more reliable than my mother's way you are awsome thank you for all that you do!!!
Let me guess your mom and mom did it by hand? I remember my hands getting the black dye on them and last for a week or so.
@@copperhousefarm4794 yep let them set and get all black and nasty
Blasphemy! Mother's way is ALWAYS the best! :)
@@user-hr2bi4oh5g in her own mind maybe even she thinks this is better!!!
To anybody who wants to do this wear rubber gloves. They will stain your hands for weeks.
I was thinking the same thing when he stuck his hand in and swirled it around
Non-acetone nail polish remover takes it off.
Its tru my grandkids messed with walnuts their hands looked horrific, does not come off
When I was a kid my dad used to take us "walnut hunting" in our old VW bug - same as you, trees beside the road dropping buckets of black walnuts we would gather. I don't remember how we cleaned them up - I think they just sat in the garage awhile and we manually removed the rotted husks and took them inside, cracked them open and ate them next to the fire in the fireplace. Nice video.
your videos are really great. I appreciate all you do.
Husk make great stain. We mix into paint form for art and house paint, hair tint, water colour and has medicinal uses too.
You might want to add a caution to make sure the used water is not disposed of where it can get back into the rivers and streams or storm sewers or anything. It's EXTREMELY toxic to fish and a lot of beneficial microbes and earthworms if it's not diluted enough. People used to use it to fish but it's been illegal to use for so long that people forget what the problem was.
Excellent process.. Thanks for sharing.
Love Black Walnuts!
Great video, thanks. BTW Milwaukee makes a 1/2" drill/mud mixer, 20 Amp., battery that'll do the mixing job. I use it to mix mortar and grout for tile work.
Best video I’ve found yet!! THANK YOU!!!!!
So glad it is useful to ya!
Great video!!! Thank you for the easy idea to clean walnuts
So smart! Love love your channel!!!
If you immerse steel wool in vinegar, the resulting brew can be used to stain many woods black. It’s a commonly used method to ebonize wood. Any recalcitrant wood that doesn’t want to turn black like you’d like can be slathered with that rich, tannic brew you just created. Without doubt, that would seal the deal. It’s a great way to imitate very rare, and quite dear ebony. Oak works well, and maple as well. Walnut naturally responds very well. I’ve had little luck with ipe (a perfect ebony substitute). The Ipe simply doesn’t seem to have the tannins required to do the deed. Your walnut husk water would be perfect to assist the process. Incidentally, all of the above can be performed in thinned out versions to produce a driftwood finish. Anybody can do it; it’s easy.
Thanks for this extra layer of info and use!
Anything practical.
Very well done.
Sooo jealous!
I built a "box" of 1"x2" fencing, and I use a pressure washer after the husks are pretty much black. It works quite well
That makes a lot of sense. We haven't tried letting them rot that far along but perhaps thats the approach.
I came back to revisit this one to see if you had any further commentary on the water disposal question, which I had missed on the first run through ;) Thanks for that important information ;)
Cool idea with the mortar mix paddle. That will make it easy.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing. 👍🌰
Interesting! Our family harvests black walnuts each year. What we do is wait until the husks turn dark and soften, hull them by hand, then dry the nuts on racks. It's less mess.
Sounds like a good system for smaller numbers of nuts to work with. For us, if we waited much at all we'd lose them all to squirrels. I also wonder if leaving them in the husk for very long would change the flavor of the nut quite a bit. Maybe in a good way?
@@edibleacres Understandable. We harvest thousands of pounds of walnuts every October and sell them to a professional huller in order to pay for our property taxes (Missouri), but the ones we keep for ourselves are definitely much smaller batches. Strangely enough, there are thousands of squirrels here in the Ozarks--in fact, I write about them in my book series--but they rarely visit our farm. We had one beautiful squirrel in our own walnut tree one year, but he quickly met his demise on the farm road passing in front of our house. 😕 In any event, thank you for making this video! And you're right, chickens love the maggots in the old husks.
Great video, learned a bunch.
awesome video very useful technique!
I did smaller amounts in a 5 gallon bucket with my battery powered hand drill & it worked great.
That is so good to know you are getting into it!
Thank you! I've just collected between 100-200 white walnuts from under a tree in the garden where I work and was about to par them with a knife, soak them in water and then brush off the residual husk with a metal brush one nut at a time... That would have taken me at least a whole day!
Cool operation guys
Fair warning. Black walnut stains like nothing else on this earth. Big dish gloves work nicely for handling them, and don't wear anything you don't want ruined. =)
Great video
Thanks, I’m going to try some out
We are overrun here in East TN with Black Walnuts. We shuck the hulls of the nuts by placing the nuts in the driveway, and then run them over with the golf cart that has a lift package on it, or the "Big Girl" Jeep with 37" tires. Most of the nut's husks just fall away cleanly. You can run them over with any vehicle. ;) Just make sure that you finish pulling way any loose husk the same day, or the husk will dry up and make it difficult to remove any tiny remnants of husks. This technique would be good for any black-shelled (dried on) husks.
Thank you for your video.
Very interesting! Like how u repurpose everything! Great video! Did what you did today! 7 pound Bag of walnuts r drying in my cellar already.
Thats awesome, enjoy!
black walnut husks make a great dye in lovely shades of brown.
Excellent. Got one of those trees in my yard & trying to figure out the best way to clean those husks.
I love it! I am so happy to see info about Black Walnuts that is not fear based! I would love tips on how to crack the nuts! We have a glorious Mother Tree Black Walnut in our yard and there are several plants growing beneath it that are supposed to not grow under Black Walnut.....Blackberries growing TOWARD the trunk of the Black Walnut when they are “supposed" to not grow under them. Lilacs, also supposed to not grow under them. It is very old....about 4 feet in diameter, in a place that used to be a dairy farm, so you know the cows used to hang there in Summer. I asked Elaine Ingham about it, saying that it seems that if the soil is good, the juglone is not such a problem, and she agreed. Blessings :)
czcams.com/video/lTMiq117o20/video.html - I show a tool we use called 'Master Nut Cracker' in this video. Using it on Hickory but works beautifully with Black Walnut. We'll highlight this tool again this winter. It's USA made, super well done and very very strong.
My dad had replanted some walnut trees that had come up as volunteers on a neighbor’s farm. 2 of the 3 didn’t do so well but one grew tall and stately and eventually produced nuts in great abundance. He too was looking for a means to separate hulls from nuts. He jacked up one back wheel on his truck and built a ramp in front of the tire. He adjusted the hydraulic jack so that tire was a little less than one walnut above the driveway. He started the truck and set the wheel spinning in second gear. He then rolled the nuts in the hull down the ramp and in the process of passing between the tire and the driveway, the hull was quickly and efficiently removed and the nut was spit out the rear. He placed a small backstop behind to stop the nuts. The jack he used was old and leaky so overtime it would lower the wheel closer to the driveway than was otherwise optimal. He knew it was time to stop and jack it up a pump or two when the he began launching nuts like bullets across the highway and straight down another family’s driveway. It was effective (and amusing) but highly dangerous and I can’t recommend this process these days.
Sounds insanely dangerous and fun! Probably very effective when working right!
Talk about express delivery, if the neighbors wanted walnuts lol 😂🤣
Hey bud! Thanks for all the dedication and knowledge you share. I have a bunch of walnuts from October harvest of last year that I haven’t been able to process. The hulls are dark and hard now and I’m wearing if this method will still work on them now.
Probably too late to process at this point, but you could give it a shot. Maybe crack a few to see if the nut meats are still OK in there.
We used to jack up one rear tire of my dad's 1950s pickup truck about 3 inches off the ground and roll walnuts down a ramp under the tire and it would south out the nut and the hull on the other side.
thats how we did it to ,no mess with water
Started watching this and instantly, the song Junk Food Junkie came to mind.
Excellent video my friend 👌🏽
Thank you 👍
Drill deffently beats hammer in this process. Thanks for the education!
That my friend was great!! Hope I can repeat this process up to my ankles in nuts!!
Walnut oil is used in oil painting. Not quite as good as linseed oil but Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa with walnut oil. We have a walnut tree with plenty of green walnuts hanging. Has not gotten cold yet in GA but I am going to use the info in this video for sure soon. Thanks!
Thank you!
How resourceful 👍
Finally found the paint stirrer at menards. Worked great with my cordless drill on low at and angle in the bucket. Sat down and held with my knees. Gotta be patient. Set a 3 minute timer helped me. First time I stopped after a minute & didn't do much. Also helped once they were turning mushy after lying on my lawn for a week. All of mine seemed to float. Well when husk was on lol
Letting them have a bit of time to soften is not a bad idea. You'll get a good system worked out for yourself I'm sure.
I've heard that the floaters are bad inside and need tossed.
great dye for wool
Thanks for sharing.
Hi, growing up in Ohio, we had a corn sheller. It is a very old tool that takes the kernels of corn off of the cob. Ours could either be driven by a belt, or hand cranked. Hand cranked was good enough...If you adjust the corn sheller plates out to the widest setting, you can dump black walnuts into the top and out the nuts come with no husks or hulls on them. Works like a charm. Other than that, put them in a rut in the driveway and in a couple of days the tires will husk em too. Your trick looks like it works, with alot of mucky stainy water. NIce video. Good job. smiling, George.
The corn sheller seems like it would be a nice upgrade some day
@@edibleacres It is a fun tool to use. sort of a stand up contraption with two wheels with bumps on the side facing each other ( inside the machine) that go in opposite directions next to each other about an ear of corns width apart...theres a big handle on the outside of the machine that is fun to crank around faster and faster...I bet if you look online you can find them... as i remember, the whole thing was about four feet tall, a foot wide and about three feet square, on legs and it had a sort of wooden throat that helped guide the cobs in, that is where the walnuts go in too...
I remember finding walnuts in my backyard as a kid and being like “wtf is this crazy thing?” Only to be told they’re just walnuts. Still amazing though
Hello from Syracuse!
This may be strange, but thank you for not using gloves. It means I'm not the only one with stained hands every fall.
I live in Wisconsin. I see so many Walnuts and Hickory nuts everywhere.
Hope you are finding a nice selection of nuts. Good vidio thanks.
Some are real nice, but mostly they are all average, but still VERY worth the effort.
Sean, for the buts you plant in air prune beds, do you just set those aside and not let them dry out in the sun and plant after cold storage? What is the process for that versus storage for eating?
used to process seeds for a nursery in AZ - not a lot of walnuts around.. my boss hands me a sack to peel. used a knife, took a couple of hours, juice running down my hand. ate the skin off, hand was black for weeks, parts of it were crunchy.
I live in Arkansas and we have some black walnut trees on our property and when I was a child my grandfather showed me how he removed the outer hull and it was to get some tin and put it down on the ground and put them on the tin and walk over them and the outer hull would come off. After getting the hulls off we would collect them and put the shelled nuts and dry them out in a storage building so the squirrels could not get to them and later crack them when they are all dry and get the nut meat out for storage.
txs for sharing...
I Sean! I watched your original video on this years ago and made mental note. Just got a chance to try it out myself and thought I would share my findings from refining the system for myself:
1) must be a 4" paint stiring paddle. The smaller ones that fit in a 3/8" chuck won't do much.
2) you can grind down the end of the shaft on a 4" paddle so it fits in a 3/8" drill if that's what you've got. Mine is a 5.something amp 220Vdrill and it took about 6 minutes per batch.
3) Plastic garbage can works if that's what you've got. You can do it on a 5 gallon bucket scale if you don't mind getting splashed, but it still has to be a 4" paddle.
4) Chicken wire is also a good screen for letting hulls through and catching black walnuts.
...And one question... Any reason not to pour out the processing water under a walnut tree? Or in a walnut guild... maybe with a paw paw? I'm thinking maybe I'll plant such a guild at the back corner of my property and might dump the hulls there too in preparation.
Thank you! Great Video! I just noticed a tree near me that has dropped a bunch. I'm thinking of trying this!
Good luck, hoping you get a mountain of beautiful nuts for the winter!
Looks like you have a pretty good process there.
My dad has a very large walnut tree in his yard, if it ever fell it would take down the house. When we where kids we used to let the hulls turn black then we would use a board with bottle caps nailed to it and use our shoes to roll them back and forth on the board. That worked pretty good.
Nice low tech approach!
1:34 oh he only missed o... oh it just bounced in... nice. 100% accuracy!
I got lucky and bought a property with 7 walnut trees. I love them in sept. when the shell is green. I peel with a knife, crack open and eat them while they are still wirh the white flesh. Very addictive activity as well. But for my mom, i wait until the nut falls to the ground without the green shell. My goats love the green shell . I let they dry and store in a burlap bag
The chortling from whoever is behind the camera really makes this
These now grow all over the UK and are planted as ornamental trees near me in London. They have also naturalised. They are the first trees to turn yellow and lose their leaves here in October, about 4 weeks before others, so easy to find. For the first year I have collected them and about to start work!
However. They are an immense amount of work compared to the English walnut. Anyone can use nutcrackers to open English ones. Also, the flesh is about twice the size. English Walnut husk fruit is thin and the nut shell is thinner too, as the fellow American squirrels, also introduced here have discovered. It is pretty pointless to grow English walnuts where we have American grey squirrels. They take all of them before they are even ripe! Not sure why, Grey squirrels do not tend to hibernate in the UK, as it does not get cold enough. However, the US nut is supposed to have a superior flavour. I hope to find out in time.
Thank you for all this information. I will give it a go!
Sean, wonderfully timed for us. We have about 50 black walnut trees on our property. Just last week I collected 45 gallons of nuts. We've tried a lot of methods to separate the husks; this is a terrific method we are going to try. QUESTION: how do YOU crack the nuts? Future video?
BTW, local artists may love to purchase the used water, makes great ink and dye. (Ha, I see everyone else below mentioned the same thing! I use it to stain my wood carvings, dye paper pulp, drawing ink...)
He had answered this question before... this is his response:
czcams.com/video/lTMiq117o20/video.html - I show a tool we use called 'Master Nut Cracker' in this video. Using it on Hickory but works beautifully with Black Walnut. We'll highlight this tool again this winter. It's USA made, super well done and very very strong.
thank you...good info!!
I always learn soo much from Jordan Peterson. Thanks for this
My dad‘s way of de hulling Black walnuts he gathers them from the ground spreads the nuts out on barnyard cement and walks over them with rubbers on his shoes which pushes the nut out of it's hull then lets them dry and picks the nuts up later stores them in 5 gallon buckets to crack inside over winter.
I am such a fan of tree nuts and you say that you glean the streets for them? That looks like a job well done. They must be high quality nuts as well judging by how stained your hands seem from handling them. One day I hope to grow my favorite, hazel nut. I think in my zone 3-is area it only grows to a bush but I could cope with that. I just like the fact that they store so well in dry storage. What is it for most nuts about one year it can be stored?
Thanks as always for giving us all a glimpse into your lifestyle and introducing us to your friend.
Good video
Gosh, this is awmazing!!!!!
Any suggesting for shelling (not husking) the nuts quickly in great numbers? I have tons of beautiful tasty black walnuts stored up but it takes so long to shell them that I rarely do. I was thinking maybe a hand tamper against the black top. But then how can I separate the nuts from the bits of shell? I think they both float in water. I wonder if one or the other will rise to the top if vibrated or shaken up?
I'm in central California and there are lots of them around here . Buddy's dog loves them . Had about 80 removed from his stomach. Not even dog stomach acid gets through that shell .
That’s cool! My husbands been trying to get rid f our husk flies for a while. He has been using Diatomaceous earth it seems to work. We only have 5 trees.
They don't seem to affect the nut at all so we haven't been concerned with them
Didn't realize there was such a process to cleaning and storing walnuts! We have a tree farm in KY and thought it might be "fun" to harvest the walnuts. Let me rethink this.....
Bumper crop here in Southern Michigan this year! Got the tanned hands!
This is my first year picking up walnuts. Some are smaller than I anticipated, are they still good to eat?
I LOVE BLACK WALNUTS. Gimme gimme!
This is clever! I wonder, I've heard that black walnut hulls are an excellent dewormer for livestock. I'll have to see if there is a good way to process the hulls as well to use them too.
Also a poison be careful with dosage
black walnut is also used for dewormer for humans. but the other commenter is right, you have to be extremely careful with dosing and doing it right don't try it at home unless you research really well from a credible source and know 100% what you are doing. like a lot of plants, it can be very beneficial or it can be dangerous.
Great video! Very helpful. We're on our second batch. How long do the walnuts need to dry out for after the first initial day in the sun? @EdibleAcres
I've read about 2 weeks. Hang up in netting so they can air out. Protect them from squirrels.