Shelling Walnuts

We didn't know for sometime that we had a walnut tree at the back of our garden. It has been growing for sometime and I don't remember planting it but somehow it has arrived. It certainly wasn't there when we first bought the section in 1989.

Walnuts, like a lot of nuts trees take a long time to produce, hence the saying:

If you want to provide for your children, plant fruit trees; and if you want to provide for your grandchildren, plant nuts.


And it would appear that for us, that is true as it has only been the last few years that we have found the walnuts and it is the grandchildren who happily gather them. Quite a bonus as they  see it as a fun activity we do together rather than a chore.

A couple of years ago we had noticed the tree in amongst an area we had never cleared and as it was over grown we chopped out most of the dead or weedy plants leaving the tree and the big Rimu. It may have been the clearing out around it that helped it to produce, but it was then that we noticed its early fruit. I picked some and cut them open trying to find what kind of "fruit" it was even wondering if it was a quince.

Then one late summer we noticed the hens having a good old scratch around the base of the trees and saw the walnuts. So for the last two years we have been gathering and drying our crop.
It's been great having our own supply as I use them in a lot of my recipes, but it can be a long drawn out time cracking and storing the inside nut.

A walnut first grows as a green 'fruit' as it ripens the outer green skin splits and draws back over the shell and turns black. At this stage the nuts fall from the trees either by 'escaping' the dried up black covering or just coming off completely in tact.

It's best to gather these in the Autumn as soon as possible so they don't get too wet and succumb to rot or diseases, then we dry them in little plant pots in the hot water cupboard.

Then its time to shell them. We've found if you leave them in the shell for too long they still deteriorate.

Today I wanted to bake some of my Jam Muffins which have walnuts in so I decided to crack open the last nuts, so also clearing out the spot in the laundry where they had been stored.

With a cup tea and a few bowls for collecting nuts and then shells I sat out in the warm winter air. With the crack, crack sound, it didn't take long for the hens to come checking out what I was doing.
I had noticed in the past they would rummage around below the deck finding grubs etc and thought they also enjoyed the shells. Little did I know that it was actually the walnuts they wanted. (well of course - they were having a great time under the walnut tree before we knew what they were doing!)

I had already given them a few old crusts but they wanted more. To the extent that they would grab anything near enough. Then just when I was on the last few and Harry had come to crack the hard shells, they decided they had to get in or miss out!

Leave Them at the Altar

In the garden at the bottom of our section we have a sort of native part. There are native trees and plants, a stepping stone path to the letter box and bark chips as a covering so you can just walk amongst it.

Hidden at the back is a pile of different sizes stones – a small stone altar I made many years ago after I had a break down.

Exodus 20:25 If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it.

It is built of stones from around the section and each stone was a representative of people in my life that I was worried about and God had told me I needed to leave them there as an altar, trusting Him to be in control.

Over the years there have been times when I have laid another stone on it as a symbol of letting things go and trusting God in it.

I have been reading the first few chapters of the Old Testament in the Bible and there is often reference to building an altar especially as a reminder of God.

In Genesis 8:20 after the flood… Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. This was a form of thanks to God for bringing Noah and his family safely through the flood.

When God appear to Abram and showed him the land he was going to possess he built an altar as a place of remembrance

Genesis 12:8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD. 

Genesis 26:25 Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the LORD. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.

Genesis 35:1-3  Then God said to Jacob, “Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.” 2 So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. 3 Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.”

Exodus 17:15 Moses built an altar and called it The LORD is my Banner.

If you do a search on Bible Gateway.com for ‘an altar’ you will come up with over 300 to 400 references (depending on which Bible you base the search on). That’s a lot of talk on altars.
The building of the altar is laid out in detail in Exodus being God’s instructions to Moses and the building of the first tent or tabernacle and altar to God. It is carried on with references in the first seven chapters in Leviticus of what these offerings and sacrifices are to be. The more you read the more you see that God sees the altar as a place of coming and bringing our sacrifices to Him whatever they were for
Burnt Offering 
Grain Offering - also called Meal or Tribute Offering 
Sin Offering 
Guilt Offering 
Peace Offering - also called Fellowship Offering: includes: (1) Thank Offering, (2) Vow Offering, (3) Freewill Offering
These offerings were of animals
Oxen – service and strength (Proverbs 14:4 ) 
Sheep – meekness and purity (Isaiah 53:7 ) 
Goats – sin and judgment (Christ became sin for us) 
Pigeon – poverty (Leviticus 12:8 ) 
Turtledoves – innocence (Psalm 74:19 ) 
with different types of bread. Whatever the response was for, it was a physical coming to a place of significance to God and a giving over of an offering to Him.

An altar always represented a place of dedicating something in this case to God. They were often built to commemorate an encounter with God that had a profound impact upon someone. When we surrender areas of our lives to the control of the Holy Spirit, we are in effect laying that area on the altar before God. We can symbolically lay that on the altar and let go.

I found that as part of my prayers, if I am really struggling with prayer for someone or something there comes a time when I have to physically hand it over as a reminder of doing so. When it comes again into my head or heart I can claim that I have handed it over to God in faith knowing He will take control with the best outcome for the issue.

1 Chronicles 21:26 David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. He called on the Lord, and the Lord answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering. 

God honoured David’s desire to be right and to fellowship with God by answering with consuming fire from heaven on the altar he had built on a simple, unadorned place.  As it always is when we draw near to God for cleansing and fellowship.


So I found four stones (don’t ask me where they come from but they keep turning up around our place!) one each for my husband, my youngest, my parents and my job and naming them with the prayer I am praying, I placed each one on the altar.

While I sat and pondered this the birds above me were feeding on the berries in the tree I was sitting on Cotoneaster 'Cornubia' . I picked them and scattered them as the berries for me were a symbol of the blood of Jesus who is the living sacrificial lamb.

To walk away from this act means for me I am truly leaving the things I have named there for God.
I’m not to ‘pick them up again’.
This in itself can be hard but then its only with God’s help that I can do so.

“Do not believe for a moment that visible grandeur is necessary to the place where God will meet with you. Go to your threshing floor and pray; aye, while the unmuzzled oxen take their rest, bow your knee and cry to the Lord of the harvest, and you shall meet with God there amongst the straw and the grain. Fear not to draw nigh to God in these streets, but consecrate all space to the Lord your God.” (Spurgeon)