Harvesting Walnuts - Need Expert Advice

[Shepherd]

We have tons of walnut and oak trees - and I've often wondered what we could do to gather them from under the trees - like is there a piece of machinery you could attach to a riding mower to collect them instead of the backbreaking work of hand picking them off the ground.

We know nothing about this, and are not even all that fond of black walnuts, but I realize there's a big market out there and would like to figure a way of tapping into it. We literally have hundreds upon hundreds of walnut trees, so we're talking a LOT of walnuts. I'd like to know how we might be able to get our land and trees to help us financially, besides just growing alfalfa and having firewood to use.

And just for the record, we do not allow anyone to come in and cut down our trees, even tho I know we could make some decent money from that. We personally cut only trees that have come down naturally for our firewood.

Any and all advice would be appreciated.

[LMonty]

I used the leaf bagger that runs behind the riding lawn mower to clean up the yard this spring right after we moved in-first pass got about 80-90% of them, second pass got most of the stragglers. There is a company that buys them from tree owners, google black walnut processors and it should come up

[donsgal]

Originally Posted by Shepherd

We have tons of walnut and oak trees - and I've often wondered what we could do to gather them from under the trees - like is there a piece of machinery you could attach to a riding mower to collect them instead of the backbreaking work of hand picking them off the ground.

We know nothing about this, and are not even all that fond of black walnuts, but I realize there's a big market out there and would like to figure a way of tapping into it. We literally have hundreds upon hundreds of walnut trees, so we're talking a LOT of walnuts. I'd like to know how we might be able to get our land and trees to help us financially, besides just growing alfalfa and having firewood to use.

And just for the record, we do not allow anyone to come in and cut down our trees, even tho I know we could make some decent money from that. We personally cut only trees that have come down naturally for our firewood.

Any and all advice would be appreciated.

This will work with walnuts but not acorns.

[fudge, they won't let me hot link the picture!] Well I googled "Black Walnut Picker" and the photo came up.

I'm sure your local hardware store can get one for you or most probably you can find one online somewhere. They work good from what I have heard. I have one but have never used it.

donsgal

[wyld thang]

You know, if you have an old ganormous walnut tree, you might have a wood appraiser type guy come look at them. If it's the right variety, the gnarled boles of the old trees can be very valuable for fine furniture, gun stocks. A friend had her tree looked at, and though it was the right size and had been grafted(that does something to the grain which adds value), it was the wrong type of walnut(don't remember which)--but if it would have been the right kind it would have been worth like $10,000 buckeroos. She would have cut that tree so fast!! Anyways, I'm not an expert, but you never know!

Around here walnuts are harvested october-november

[Beeman]

I don't know how far back the history goes but if you do a search you might find something. There was someone on here that had a walnut huller at his place and bought walnuts. He had come up with a method for harvest but i can't remember what he used.

[seedspreader]

Mike in Ohio.

He has the huller and cracker.

[Micahn]

Check out this site for a place near you that could help you out.
http://www.hammonsproducts.com/hulli...071E352A901D12
They have place all over where black walnuts grow.
As far as picking them up one of these work great.
http://www.thenutwizard.com/

[fantasymaker]

portable vacuum?
I can also envision a plastic pipe with some hinged "burrs" at the end walk along with it like walking stick put it over a fruit and when you have collected a few tip them out the other end.

[big rockpile]

Might put a couple Tarps under the trees and climb a shake the limbs.

big rockpile

[Junkman]

We have several Black Walnut trees but not as many as you have. We gather ours by hand with a garden rake turned upside down. They just roll along. We grind Black Walnuts along with English Walnut meats, fine and add to cookies. Seems to soften the taste. In our area we like Black Walnuts in our dark chocolate fudge. Once you get your hands stained by walnuts, you are stained for a while.Jklady

[js2743]

one of the old hand crank corn shellers works really good to remove the hulls. might wanna try searching for something like a golf ball picker upper maybe something of that nature would work.

[Shepherd]

Here's a small view of just some of our forrest:





That's why I was thinking something to pull behind a rider mower would be handy, rather than having to pick nuts up by hand. Even with one of those nutwizards, it would be a huge amount of work. Even then, there are still places we'd have no choice because we couldn't get a rider thru some of it.

We have mostly hardwood, walnut & oak.

[rambler]

Sucker or broom is going to pick up all the leaves & junk too. Walnut & acorn alike.

Processor won't want that.

There is no free lunch. No easy ride in life.....

If you just want to get rid of the nuts, sure. But if you want to sell them, going to be a lot of sorting & work, no matter how you do it.

--->Paul

They make a hand held wire basket that you roll along the ground and it will pick up walnuts for you. Saving your back. I"ll search on the net and see if I can find a site for you. A couple of years ago our tree were just loaded so much that some of the branches were breaking. My middle daughter started collecting them to sell so she could buy herself a Halloween costume. Out of 3 trees here she got something like 75 dollars for her hard work. All 3 kids got to buy a costume and she ended up with a little bit of money left over.


Here it is:

www.nutwizard.com

[chicky momma]

The nut wizard works great. A friend has one and he has 1500 walnut trees! He hulls walnuts all winter and sells them at the market in the summer. Lisa

[big rockpile]

We always find there is more Walnuts on the trees where their not so thick.Its easier if cattle have ate down everything around them.

Around here we just load them up take them to the Buyer don't have to hull them.They are very heavy so don't over load your Truck.

We always just pick on shares.At one time I had 600 acres to pick.

big rockpile

[PineRidge]

this is from the site that Micahn posted

Spread the nuts onto pavement after gathering them and run over them with your car ‘till the hull is pulled off. The nuts are covered with a greenish outer hull that should be removed so the nutmeat isn’t spoiled. While in your vehicle, make sure to rev the engine and pretend you’re in a monster truck crushing cars and not black walnuts. This doesn’t help in any way but can be entertaining for kids and confuses the squirrels.

:baby04:

Sounds like my kind of people, lol!

I always think about getting to the walnuts, butwas never really sure just what to do with them, guess I will experiment this year. I know there is a better use than the kids using tham for baseballs

[Shepherd]

Boy I appreciate the advice. I don't mind the work involved sorting, etc. I just want an easier way to gather the nuts from under the trees if it's possible, to get them back to the house area.

There are several walnut trees we'd be able to get to with a rider mower (which is why I was hoping there was some equipment that might help us gather the nuts), but many we'd have to get to on foot only.

There are several areas on our land that we can only get to on foot (so far) because of deep creekbeds that go through our property. Here's a distant picture of part of our NW40 property:

[bqz]

like is there a piece of machinery you could attach to a riding mower to collect them

Yes I believe there is .I was reading an article in some farm magazine or something ( can't remember)and this guy had a bagger on the back of his riding lawn mower that picked them up ,might be just a leaf bagger like "LMonty" was talking about,anyway I'll try to dig around for that magazine tonight and repost tomorrow.If you find something in the meanwhile post it for us to see.

[cayenne47]

We only have a couple english walnuts. They seem to go in 2 year cycles. First year--very few nuts, the next we are overrun.
My question is--how to get the hulls off without ripping out fingernails, getting sore fingers and without turning colors for weeks?