The lone walnut tree out among the vines is starting to drop this year's crop. I think it's the only walnut tree in or around our hamlet. It most likely belongs to one of the growers, but nobody tends the tree or harvests the walnuts. With one exception: for a couple of years, I would see one of our neighbors walk out and gather up a bag-full of nuts. It's been a few years, though, because he became ill and passed away about a year ago.
The green outer shell peels back to reveal the familiar hard-shelled nut inside before it falls to the ground.
The walnuts from this tree are pretty small and not really worth messing with. Besides, we have generous friends who share their bounty with us, and their walnuts are always a good size and delicious!
No, I am not keen on small or poorly formed nuts. Big and low hanging, ready to pluck, is better. Nice that your friends share their nuts with you.
ReplyDeleteI love walnuts. Jerry hates them. W had an investment a long time ago — a grape grower with walnut trees in Southern California— that didn’t make us much money but they did send us a tin of walnuts every Christmas. I was ecstatic.
ReplyDeleteYears ago I had a hundred-year-old black walnut tree on my property. It was beautiful but very messy. Well, duh. And the nuts were really, really hard to crack. Even running a car over the masses of nuts that fell onto the street didn't do the job.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that the outer shell peeled back before the nuts dropped off the trees. The things you learn on the intertubes.
ReplyDeletePecans are similar, I think, in being messy and then hard to get at the nut meat once they're in hand.
My mother had a pecan tree in her back yard that produced big, fat nuts called "paper shells" — they were so easy to crack open it was amazing. And they were delicious... still are. The people who bought the house don't live there year-round, but mostly in summer. So the nuts would go to waste, except that my cousin, who lives two houses down, goes over and picks them up off the ground after they fall. A few years ago he gave my mother enough to fill two or three big buckets. She spent months cracking them as she watched old movies on TV. She stored them in the freezer, and when she gave up the ghost I brought back to France several gallon-size bags of the nut meats.
DeleteBut it is true that a lot of pecans are almost as hard to crack open as black walnuts are. You pretty much need a hammer to break the shells.
andrew, hehe...
ReplyDeletemitch, owning part of a vineyard! And walnuts! Were the grapes for wine or raisins? Or just grapes?
whimsy, wow!
emm, sometimes the nut drops before the husk peels, I've noticed. This year the husks are mostly coming off while the nuts are still on the tree. At least the tree I walk by.