While M was mowing the lawn today, he also grabbed me some 50 or so walnuts (black) from the trees in the yard. They've been dropping for at least a week now and we've missed the majority of them. We haven't tried to do anything with them in the previous three years we've been here, but this year we're going to give it a go.

Step one was hulling them. Many places recommend running them over with the car, but as we don't even have a level concrete pad, that wasn't much of an option. I decided to hull them by hand, and went through 2 pairs of gloves before I had to break for the local farm supply store for better gloves.

I got through the hulling portion, and on with the rinsing and checking for floaters. I'm happy to report none floated, which would be a sign of insects getting at them.
Next I needed to wash the remaining hull residue off, which is much harder than I was expecting. I turns out I could really use a good wire brush, but am making do with the wire brush we use to clean the metal grill and a metal skewer. Dusk came before I was able to get too many of them cleaned, so I've spread them on newspaper in the house overnight so I can deal with them in the morning.

The next step will be drying, which I'm planning on using the wire shelving in the laundry room and maybe a low set fan. Once dried, I need to crack them, get the meat and freeze that. The cracking sound very tricky, and I shouldn't be able to use a standard nut cracker, but maybe a hammer.

Happy Saturday!