Harvesting Black Walnuts

[The Lazy L]

... Now I get in trouble for doing my stuff cuz my wife accuses me of "not wanting to spend time with her" even if I'm just in the kitchen doing dishes instead of sitting on the couch playing on my computer while she watches tv. Then I get accused of ignoring her because I'm on the computer instead of talking to her. Then I try talking to her about the news, politics, preparedness or something and she'll tell me she doesn't want to hear anything about it...

Buy and read the book "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. Explains a lot about relationships. Plus women are ...

1. Words of affirmation
2. Quality Time (mine)
3. Receiving gifts
4. Acts of service
5. Physical touch

 

[Patchouli]

wouldn't it be nice if women tried harder to understand men?

 

[Weedygarden]

Buy and read the book "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. Explains a lot about relationships. Plus women are ...

1. Words of affirmation
2. Quality Time (mine)
3. Receiving gifts
4. Acts of service
5. Physical touch

You are a wise man! I had forgotten about our friend who had so many difficulties with his wife and marriage.

 

[Bacpacker]

Black Walnut ios my aboslute fsvorite wood to work for furniture on anything really. It is a hardwood and typically grows slowly. But its is dark and fine grained. It works well and is beautiful finished with a tung oil naturally. Turned on a lathe can give amazing results.
The walnuts themselves tend to bear heavy for 2-3 consecutive years then will drop off for 1-2 years before going heavy again. I have yet to pinpoint a correlation to anything in particular. I have yet to try and sprout anything from the nuts. With Hickory, oak's, or buckeyes either.

 

[Weedygarden]

Black Walnut ios my aboslute fsvorite wood to work for furniture on anything really. It is a hardwood and typically grows slowly. But its is dark and fine grained. It works well and is beautiful finished with a tung oil naturally. Turned on a lathe can give amazing results.
The walnuts themselves tend to bear heavy for 2-3 consecutive years then will drop off for 1-2 years before going heavy again. I have yet to pinpoint a correlation to anything in particular. I have yet to try and sprout anything from the nuts. With Hickory, oak's, or buckeyes either.

My daughter has a friend who is a carpenter. He was wise and grabbed up some walnut that was being given away over the last 20 years as walnut trees were dying and being taken down. One year, he took a walnut log, trimmed and cut a piece that is about two feet tall to make her a beautiful plant stand.

I remember seeing so many walnut trees being offered for free on Craigslist and wishing I had the ability to pick them up and process them into usable lumber. I would have made kitchen cabinets out of them, as well as other furniture.

I took a few woodworking classes in my younger days. We processed rough cut wood by planing, surfacing, and all the steps to finished and usable furniture. I took the class with a colleague of mine. The instructor told us as the class ended that a few of the men in the class were put off by two women working in the shop, often making fun of us as we were working, but when it was said and done, she finished her cherry bookshelf and I finished my butternut coffee table and we were the only ones who had completed projects.

 

[Caribou]

I took a few woodworking classes in my younger days. We processed rough cut wood by planing, surfacing, and all the steps to finished and usable furniture. I took the class with a colleague of mine. The instructor told us as the class ended that a few of the men in the class were put off by two women working in the shop, often making fun of us as we were working, but when it was said and done, she finished her cherry bookshelf and I finished my butternut coffee table and we were the only ones who had completed projects.

I hired a gal as a carpenter. Later she ran a cabinet shop. She could handle the tools. She couldn't pack as many 2X4's as I did but my back says that is because she was smarter.

 

[Patchouli]

I'm sure there are places that would help you with your wood. I'd call around to see. And I'd stay with my wood until the job is done, I'm pretty sure you would anyway, @Weedygarden !!

 

[Bacpacker]

Check craigslist for someone running a portable bandsaw mill. Around here a lot of folks have WoodMizers and will come to your house and saw your logs. Plus their blades are so thin you don't lose a lot of wood to sawdust. And not as much planing, sanding to finish projects out either.

 

[joel]

Black walnut tree, the gift that keeps giving.
A tree can live to 200-250 years & get 48 inches in diameter.

 

[Bacpacker]

And some of the most beautiful lumber of any

 

[joel]

And some of the most beautiful lumber of any

And some of the most $$$$$$$ lumber of any

 

[viking]

I love my black walnut trees ... We have about 25 mature trees with others coming along.
I spend a little time each day shelling and packing them away ... well, what I don't eat.

Years ago when I was still working for the local school district they had about three black walnut trees and I would bring home some of the nuts, I planted one that was sending a root out of the shell in a coffee can and set it at the base of an elderberry tree, a couple of years later it was growing pretty good and I decided to plant it on the bank in front of our home in an area we now have a deck, that tree is now around 30 feet or more in hight and gives us about an average of 100 or so walnuts per year. It take about a two pound hammer to crack them open but I love the flavor they have. As long as they are kept dry, they keep well in their shells.

 

[viking]

And some of the most $$$$$$$ lumber of any

They make beautiful furniture and some people make great looking rifle stocks as well.

 

[Tootsie]

I am blessed that black walnuts grow like weeds around here. Every spring I pull young trees out of the flower beds, thanks to the squirrels. Last fall I dumped a wheelbarrow full of leaves and nuts out in the woods just to get them out of the way. Now there are dozens of little trees. Will make a nice gift to an ambitious young man just starting out who bought some land and mentioned wanting some walnut to plant for his retirement income.
It makes my day to see a young guy who thinks like that. There’s hope.
Joel, I have some massive black walnut now that’s only 40 years ol. Not sure that I can see them going too many more years. Sometimes it’s better to harvest them and let new ones develop.

 

[Bacpacker]

I've got 2 or 3 young walnuts growing (3-4yo) and this year one is loaded with nuts. Back of the property I have 2 old one, one thats probably around 30" diameter. If I can find someone with a wood mixer to come out I may take it down and get it sawn into some furniture grade lumber for future projects. Sticker the wood in a stack to let it dry and cure

 

[BBLife]

I have dozens of Black Walnut trees on the property. I'm actually interested in harvesting them while still green when the shell isn't hard yet. I'm seen a number of recipes using them at that stage but the one I'm wanting to try is soaking them cut in half in moonshine or some other clear liquor. It turns black and is supposedly a very fine drink. Can't remember what is is called though.

 

[viking]

I have 5 black walnut trees and can't give the things away except to the squirrels,but I do have lots of big fat healthy squirrels around here

It's funny that you mention this because we have a young black walnut tree I planted just below our front deck, planted it there before I build our front bedroom, den or the deck, I started the tree in a coffee can and sat that can at the base of an elderberry tree for a couple of years. It's amazing how well it grew, it's close to 30 feet now and for the last three or four years it's had a goodly amount of walnut on it, but this year a silver squirrel decided to pick the walnuts that hadn't fallen and he'd clean the husks off on the deck rails and haul them away, sometimes in my wanderings around the property I find were he has dropped them, probably due to birds attacking him to steal the nuts. I love the flavor of the nuts, but it takes a fair sized hammer and a steel plate to split them open.

 

[Weedygarden]

Andi sent me a few black walnuts that I planted in pots, to see if I could start a couple trees. No luck. If you have black walnut trees that survived whatever it was that killed so many, consider yourself lucky. I do know that if you have a bunch of them on your property, they kind of take over and become a pain.
I wonder if there is a place where someone could buy or sell black walnuts that have not been cracked open?
Has anyone ever tried to crack open some green ones and ended up with black hands for a few days? I would imagine that soaking the shells in linseed oil or something could help make a wood stain.

 

[viking]

Many years back I piled a bunch of black walnuts on the ground, a lot of them started growing and I pulled them apart and planted three down in the lower field, two are still alive but have not grown to any amount, a foot ore two, probably due to the spring water coming up and the soil being too saturated for long periods of time. I presently have another pile of walnuts on the ground waiting for the hulls to rot off, but I need to get them cleaned up and cure them before they go to making seedlings.

 

[The Lazy L]

As a child I was tasked with removing the hulls from the nut. I laid them out on dad’s gravel shop driveway and drove over them with the garden tractor. Dad wasn’t too pleased until he saw how well it worked.

Mom lay the nuts on newspaper on the basement floor. Bad winter days dad would spend the day cracking walnuts in the basement.

Memories.