the Walnut Diary

Just in from another serene two-hour session picking walnuts.  Third day in a row.  I like it as well as fishing. It’s harmless, good exercise, non-capital-intensive*, and it’s fun as long as I don’t think about the laughable dollar value of the crop.  Maybe the Canadian way will be to get a grant to do the actual paying <grin>.

Update:  October 15,  2008

I’m still picking walnuts.  After taking a trailer-load to Neil for hulling I planned to get on with other work, but I keep drifting back to the woodlot, and before long another oil drum is full.  The fitness aspect cannot be ignored:  I can now fill an oil drum with nuts picked from the ground as easily as I could a tub when the season began.  It’s nice back there in the woods, and the work is anything but stressful.

This morning I spent a couple of hours developing a new process for separating the shells from cracked nuts.  I’ll write more on this after I’ve consulted my stakeholders, but I’m quite pleased with myself at the moment.

*Update: October 1, 2008

I may have spoken too soon about the lack of capital intensity required for walnut picking. Somehow in the last few days I have obtained a new Polaris Ranger TM, presumably the better to enable me to haul walnuts back to the house.

Update:  Sept 28th, 2008

I must be getting into better condition.  I picked an oil drum full of nuts today without undue strain.

Production was helped by a series of heavy drops from four isolated trees.  The only thing the trees had in common was a pool of guano underneath the heavily-bearing branch on each.  I guess Zeke the red tailed hawk hasn’t gotten any better at his landings:  he’s shaking the nuts off the trees when he stops.  There are no, repeat no, squirrels in evidence.  Zeke’s rule is law.

Toads and tree frogs abound on the forest floor.

With about three oil-drums of nuts ready for hulling, it’s really time to think about finding a market for the product.  There will be lots of seed walnuts ready for December planting from this harvest.

I also have a couple of bushel of last year’s nuts all ready for cracking, and will consider offers for the whole nuts from gourmet cooks and pastry chefs.  Black walnuts impart an exquisite flavour to cookies and other baked goods.

Update:  Sept 18th, 2008

For the second day I have run across a good walnut log felled by the crew who did the improvement cut in the winter of 2007.  This makes two clear logs over 16′ which I have found in remote parts of the stand.  Neither is very large at the top, maybe 9″ versus 12″ at the butt, but I should be able to get enough material to build a good bannister for the stone house out of them.  It actually only takes one long two by four, but I’m confident I’ll want many oversized pieces from which to make my selection on something as central as a bannister.  The Massey Harris 35 doesn’t usually get treated as roughly as this, but I muscled it over a few logs and brush piles, then dragged the logs backwards up a slight rise by lifting the butt end by a chain attached to the hook on the loader.  At the worst possible location today the transmission locked in reverse, but it wiggled into first without much trouble.

The logging costs nothing but time and wear on the old Massey Ferguson, but it produces valuable lumber.  Of course I wouldn’t have found the logs without going into the grove looking for walnuts, so perhaps I should revise my position on the uneconomic nature of the nut harvest.  The incidental catch of lumber is quite good.