Monday in shades of brown

Processing Black Walnuts.

This was Mrs ERJ's tub.  She does very clean work.  I would show you Kubota's and mine except they have a bunch of sticks, stems....  Mrs ERJ's is much more photogenic.  I soaked them over night to soften the hulls.

Mrs ERJ suggested that we pick up the Black Walnuts littering the ground between our house and the dog kennel.  She objects to skating on ball bearings when walking out to the kennel.

We got over sixty gallons (three tubs) of nuts off of our Emma Kay tree.

A good double handful or two.  This is about twenty nuts.

High tech methods are used to crush the husk.

This is what one nut looks like after getting danced upon.

The nuts are picked out and tossed into a five gallon bucket of water for a rinse.  The strong taste that most associate with Black Walnuts is due to juices from the husk leaching through the shell and flavoring the nut meats.  The key to milder tasting kernels is to quickly separate the hulls, rinse aggressively and then dry them.

I don't normally herd them into a pile before tossing them in the rinse bucket but I did to document how clean they are...or are not.

The rinse bucket.  Things are sure looking brown around here.

Sweep away the husks.

And when the windrow of husks gets too high, rake them.

This is what forty gallons of nuts look like after de-husking.  They are drying.  The process should speed up once the sun is in the west and is hitting the pavement.