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Originally Posted by Shepherd
We have tons of walnuts but don't know anything about the equipment we'd need to harvest them from the shells yet. And I'm not sure if there's anything we could do with all the acorns.
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Harvesting Black Walnuts
In Minnesota, black walnut trees are usually ready for nut harvest from August through September. Follow the tips in this message to learn how to harvest them.
Allow nuts to ripen on the tree. The husk changes from solid green to yellowish green when ripe. Press on the skin of the walnut with your thumb. Ripe nuts show an indentation.
Walnuts discolor when stored with husks attached and their flavor is ruined. Wear gloves when removing husks because dye from the husks stains. Remove husks by applying pressure to the nut's ends. Pound side to side with a hammer while wearing safety glasses. Husks also can be softened in a container of water, then peeled. A third alternative is to place nuts in a hand-operated corn sheller.
After hulling, rinse the nuts, preferably outdoors since nuts stain. Next, check for insect feeding by placing the nuts in water. Nuts without injury will sink.
Do not compost walnut husks. Juglone, a chemical released by walnut trees, is toxic to some vegetables and plants, such as tomatoes.
Curing--The nuts must be cured. This prepares them for storage and allows flavor to develop. Stack the clean, hulled nuts in layers two or three nuts deep. Place them in a cool, dry, well-ventilated area, out of direct sunlight for two weeks. When nuts are dry enough to store, kernels break with a sharp snap. If cured improperly, mold forms.
Storage--After curing, store unshelled nuts in a well-ventilated area at 60 degrees Fahrenheit or less. Cloth bags or wire baskets discourage mold. Keep the relative humidity fairly high, about 70 percent.
To shell nuts, soak them in hot water for 24 hours. Drain and soak again for two more hours. Cover the nuts with moist cloths until you're ready to crack the shells. Bake nuts at 215 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes. If stored at room temperature, use within a few weeks. Shelled nuts can be refrigerated up to nine months. They can be frozen for up to two years.
HERE'S ANOTHER:
How to Harvest and Store Walnuts
Walnuts come in two types: the familiar English walnut and the native American black walnut. While the English walnut gives up its hull fairly easily, removing a black walnut's hull takes some doing - so much so that some hardy souls have been known to drive over the hulls with a car.
Steps:
1. Harvest walnuts in early fall, from September to October.
2. Knock or shake hulls from the tree once the shells are full but while the hulls are still intact, or gather them off the ground as soon as they fall.
3. Remove the hulls, protecting your hands from stains using rubber gloves. Rinse with water to remove the tannin.
4. Spread the shells in the sun to dry and cure for two to three weeks. Kernels will break cleanly when bent if completely dry.
5. Keep nuts in the shell in a cool, dry area for several months. You can also shell nuts and refrigerate them for several months, or freeze them for longer storage.
Tips:
Walnuts are delicious when eaten raw, tossed into salads, added to prepared dishes or used in baking.
English walnuts are milder; black walnuts have a stronger, distinctive flavor.
AND FOR ACORNS:
Here is some information about eating acorns or rather acorn meal. The tannins have to be removed to avoid the bitterness. I don't know what your grandfather might have done to remove the tannins in whole acorns unless the type of acorn had less tannins to begin with and could have been removed by soaking the whole acorn.
ACORN PANCAKES from Sharon Hendricks
Break an egg into a bowl. Add:
1 teaspoon salad oil
1 teaspoon of honey or sugar
1/2 cup of ground and leached acorns
1/2 cup of corn meal
1/2 cup of whole wheat or white flour
2 teaspoons of double action baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of milk
Beak all together. If the batter is too thick to pour, thin it with milk. Pour pancakes into a hot, greased griddle and cook slowly until brown on both sides.
Serve with butter and syrup or wild blackberry jam. Delicious!!
PREPARATION OF GROUND ACORN MEAL
Pick up several cupfuls of acorns. All kinds of oaks have edible acorns. Some have more tannin than others, but leaching will remove the tannin from all of them.
Shell the acorns with a nutcracker, a hammer, or a rock.
Grind them. If you are in the woods, smash them, a few at a time on a hard boulder with a smaller stone, Indian style. Do this until all the acorns are ground into a crumbly paste. If you are at home, it's faster and easier to use your mom's blender. Put the shelled acorns in the blender, fill it up with water, and grind at high speed for a minute or two. You will get a thick, cream-colored goo. It looks yummy, but tastes terrible.
Leach (wash) them. Line a big sieve with a dish towel and pour in the ground acorns. Hold the sieve under a faucet and slowly pour water through, stirring with one hand, for about five minutes. A lot of creamy stuff will come out. This is the tannin. When the water runs clear, stop and taste a little. When the meal is not bitter, you have washed it enough.
Or, in camp, tie the meal up in a towel and swish it in several bucketfuls of clean drinking water, until it passes the taste test.
Squeeze out as much water as you can, with your hands.
Use the ground acorn mash right away, because it turns dark when it is left around. Or store in plastic for freezing if you want to make the pancakes later.
JUST SOME IDEAS
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