Here’s a new fall time adventure we went on. Harvesting from our black walnut tree!

Could start off with this beautiful owl heart looking thing! A black walnut! (I nibbled out alot of the actual nutmeat) Now, I am nowhere near as good at explaining all the ins and outs of this nutty conversation, but over at practicalselfreliance.com, she has got you covered! We have a MASSIVE tree, and getting to most of the walnuts is actually quite difficult, but I did just wonder to myself if my chickens might benefit from eating them. Haven’t looked that one up yet, don’t quote me.

We picked these off the tree back in September and tried to get to husking them right away, which was a pretty easy task when given a pair of gloves and a butterknife. Don’t forget the gloves or your hands will turn black! That’s why this tree would probably more likely be used for it’s ability to dye things than it’s nutmeats, at least from my experience of chatting with people. But as I’ve read, that is because the outside is not peeled off right away and the bitterness from the outside seeps into the inside where all that nutty goodness is. Yes, they were small, but mighty! And happily not in a bitter gross kind of way. They had flavor that made me think of going up in the woods and laying in the moss, kind of how the smell of Devil’s club salve makes me feel, but that’s a different story!

We had an electrician over to look at the garden kitchen and my husband said the guy picked up one of these and was about to start peeling it when my husband said “Er…man…you probably wanna wear gloves if you’re gonna do that…It’ll turn your hands black.”

You can see how after not very much time, the outer bits, which are almost spongy, turn darker with time. I have gifted a few boxes of the husks (husks? outer bits?) away to friends who enjoy using them as a dye for clothing. Pretty cool!

Here’s the link that goes into so so much more about black walnuts, I love this blog: