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!