Michigan has a bumper crop of black walnuts this year with walnuts piling up on lawns and driveways. Homeowners with a black walnut tree are wondering what to do with the generous harvest. Black walnut nut meats sell for more than $15 a pound and homeowners wonder if they could cash in on those profits. Black walnuts have a distinctive taste that many people enjoy in baked goods and are a rather gourmet food item.
Unfortunately there’s a good reason for those high prices and getting a nut harvest won’t be easy. That’s why black walnut meats aren’t seen on most grocery shelves. But if you want to try and harvest some nut meats here’s some information to get you started.
When black walnuts fall from the tree they look like a small green apple. There is a green fibrous husk over the walnut shell. When the black walnut first falls from the tree the nutmeat inside is still soft and milky, and while edible, won’t store well or taste the same as cured nutmeats. It will take a couple months until the nut meat has cured enough to store or be used in recipes.
Black walnut husks contains a pigment that will stain anything that touches it, your hands, the driveway, the container you place them in. Wear gloves when picking the nuts up. A small rolling device that picks up golf balls can also be used to harvest fallen nuts. Black walnuts begin falling off the tree in September and you should wait until they fall rather than pick them off the tree to collect them.
Once you have gathered the nuts set them somewhere to dry. You could remove the fibrous hull now but it will be easier when the hulls have turned black and dried. That may take 2 months. Collected black walnuts should be stored where squirrels and rodents won’t be able to get to them. You can store them indoors in a warm, dry place and the nut meat will be ready to harvest in a shorter time. You can also store them in a dry unheated place like the garage or a shed where the curing time will be slightly longer.
It probably works best to remove the hulls as soon as they darken, while the weather is still mild enough to keep the mess outside. People have devised various methods of removing hulls. One is to put the black walnuts in an old washing machine with a bucket of sand and just enough water to let the machine agitate the nuts. When the husk has blackened it can be rubbed off with gloved hands and a scrub brush. Some people place the nuts on a cement driveway and drive over them. This also starts the process of cracking the shell.
After a month of storage start checking out the nutmeat inside. If the nutmeat looks firm, with a dark brown skin and white interior and has shrunk away from the walls of the shell a little it is ready to harvest. Now the hard work begins.
First if you haven’t removed the husks do so. Now you should be down to the black, hard shell. Unlike some other nuts black walnuts do not break cleanly at the shell joint and aren’t easily cracked with a nut cracker. You can smash them with a hammer and pick out the meats. Or you can place them in a vice grip secured to a table and turn the vice handle to tighten it and crack the shells. After you have a pile of cracked shells use a nut cracker and nut picks to finish removing the meats.
You’ll find that black walnut meats are small in comparison to the shell and husk size. They are also harder to extricate from the shell than other nuts. Commercial machines do exist that remove the shells but they are hard to find and beyond the price that most home owners would want to spend. Hand processing is at least as effective with black walnuts as machine processing.
Once the nut meats have been removed store them in dry jars with tight lids. There is no need to roast or heat treat them. They will store at room temperature for at least a year. When substituting black walnuts for English walnuts or other nuts go a little lighter on black walnuts as the taste is rich and stronger than other nuts.
You’ll have a waste product - or two waste products to dispose of after harvesting black walnuts. The husks contain a chemical that retards the growth of other plants and shouldn’t be placed in the compost pile or near any desirable plants. The shells also discourage the growth of other plants and are extremely sharp and very slow to break down. Walnut shells have been used commercially as a polishing and abrasive agent.
There are a few places that actually buy black walnuts for processing. The prices are extremely low for the raw nuts and none are in Michigan. The closest place would probably be Hammond products processor in Ohio - you can call 330-698-0340 for one processor or go to www.black-walnuts.com. You can also purchase machines for walnut collecting and cracking from this location.
Prices are usually based on the weight of the nuts after the husks are removed. The average price usually runs about the same for 100 pounds of hulled nuts as for a pound of black walnut nutmeats sold retail - about $15. It would probably take 3-4 hundred pounds of nuts with hulls to produce that. A homeowner would have to collect a lot of walnuts to make wholesale remotely profitable. However a person might be able hand process and sell black walnut meats for some small profit at farm markets and other local venues.
The real value of black walnuts nuts probably lies in them being a free gift from nature that you could use in home baking for a distinct, gourmet taste. Certainly it does do a little to make up for the walnut trees many shortfalls as a landscape tree.
