we're in the second week of October here
in central New York State and right now
it's absolutely peak black walnut season
so maybe you live in a northern state
where there are black walnuts raining
down like crazy I keep my eyes peeled
whatever we're driving and periodically
there'll be a tree right along the road
where there's just carpets of nuts
friend of mine Andy and I were able to
collect ten gallons 15 gallons per
minute of walnuts the other day in the
husk the challenge though is once you
have all those nuts how do you clean
them and get them to a place where you
can actually dry them and store them
it's one of the most flavorful nuts on
earth but until you get the husk off
they're not really great for storage so
I'm going to show you the steps that we
use it's super mucky and grimy and
wonderful and very quick so let's talk
about it so we found that works really
nicely as we start with a metal garbage
can and I want to say a side note here I
made a video about this two years ago
and I rewatched it recently and it took
so long before I started explaining the
process that I'm doing this again so
hopefully I get to the point in a timely
manner we start with a metal garbage can
ideally it doesn't have holes if it has
a little leak it's not a big deal into
it we dump 5 to 10 ish gallons worth of
black walnuts in husk they don't have to
all be perfectly green they can have
maggots and worms in between the husk
and the shell that doesn't mean it's
rotten and bad the chickens will love
this later on we'll talk about that but
so we dump these in this is a few
hundred nuts
[Music]
and what we've found works incredibly
well is we'll cover this with rainwater
and we use a sturdy drill in this case
it's a half-inch chuck drill you might
be able to find one used I bought this
new for $70 it's useful in other ways
and this is a paddle whip or a paint
mixing tool five four five gallon bucket
vats this cost nine dollars from our
local hardware store this works
incredibly well if you get a sturdy one
of these but don't have a big drill you
can use a file and file this down so it
fits a smaller drill so we'll pause here
and get this covered this can be with
rainwater pond water does not have to be
clean water you can see we actually use
the same water over and over again for
this process of agitating and cleaning
the husk off does not have to be clean
water will cover it with some murky
water
you want enough water you'll get a feel
as you do it but you want enough water
to cover them that once you start
agitating the nuts can move around
pretty freely in there so now we'll do
the agitation part which will abrade the
nuts against each other and use each
other's shape to knock the husk loose so
my friend Robbie here has been helping
tremendously and he is the drill master
on this event so he'll get going with
that part
[Music]
so once it feels like this is something
you'll get a feel for as you do it we
have a sense now that you run this drill
for about 3 minutes 5 minutes on full
bore you keep adding water if needed so
that it moves around and then nuts hit
each other over and over and over again
and they knock the husk off of one
another what we'll do now is start
scooping off manageable amounts it's a
mix of nuts and husk and we use you
could use rainwater for this we're not
trying to get them perfectly clean at
this stage we're just trying to get a
lot of the muck away so that we can see
what we're dealing with what you can see
is that so some of them need another go
so we'll set these aside and you could
have run the drill longer or you could
also just pinch that off sometimes but
some of them that need a whole other
round we throw off to the side and we'll
give them another go the ones that are
relatively clean of the husk are now
ready for the next phase which is where
they'll go into a crate this can be
whatever sort of device you want you can
get the idea of what this is and it will
go into a tub of water and we'll fill
this up a bit with rainwater so we'll
continue that process we'll dump out the
bucket by bucket from the tub they'll be
about three hundred two to three hundred
nuts in this group and by filling this
with water we'll look for the nuts that
are clearly floating nuts that float on
top of the water are almost certainly
duds they're empty or there's some sort
of problem you can skim those off and
either send them to your chickens throw
them out into the woods for the
squirrels to enjoy or put into the
compost the people in the past have been
concerned Oh what about all the walnut
muck alone it'd kill all your plants we
find if we put it into a compost system
bulk it out with
chips and give it time we've not had any
problems with juglone fishing and
authorities will take this and skim it
off and give it to our chickens mixed
with sawdust in about a month or so
anyway we'll continue on with that
process
and then we'll then come to here and
agitate once more
[Music]
[Laughter]
that helps do a little more cleaning now
we'll just do one last blast of water on
these
now we're not trying to sell these or
have some very fancy cosmetic situation
if most of the husk is off and a lot of
the discoloration is off you should be
good for storage at this point so now
we'll get them onto racks so they've
been agitated with the whisk and the
drill
they've been agitated again in a little
change of water washed off it could be
with rainwater if that's what you've got
or a garden hose or the jet stream is
great and now they're on racks ideally
in the Sun it's a little cloudy today
but it will mark and we turn them a few
times throughout the day keep a little
live for squirrels and the light
although it's nice to share a bunch with
them so always plan to collect more than
you'd enjoy eating yourself so we'll let
these dry in the Sun for the whole day
and then we have these simple boxes made
out of scrap lumber and half-inch
hardware cloth but you could use door
screens or window screens set on bricks
you can improvise with what you've got
we've made these where we can dry stack
them in the garage up on bricks and have
a fan facing down through them if it's
rainy or overnight and that helps dry
them out this was this represents about
maybe three to four hours of processing
so it's doable to get a huge amount
without without a lot of time so
hopefully this is useful for you
probably thank you so much for your help
thank you and there you go thanks for
watching
