OVER MY SHOULDER

Over the past few weeks, Christine and I have ‘picked up’ several pounds of walnuts. Last week, we took them to the ‘huller’ to have them hulled and cleaned. As I spread the walnuts in my shop to dry, I could not help but think----how things have changed. I was spreading 350 pounds of nuts to ‘work up’, and if we worked up 50 or 60 pounds when I was a kid it had been a big chore.

Our family has ‘gathered’ walnuts for as many years as I can remember--- however things are different now than they were when I was a kid----particularly relative to the hulling and cracking part.

I remember many occasions when we would ‘go to the timber’ and pick up walnuts or pecans. Often, we would take a picnic lunch with us, and spend the better part of the day. I can recall that some of those days, it was pretty cool---or even cold. In as much as we did not have pecans on our place we would have to go to the Mound City or LaCygne area to find them. We would give one-half to the land owner, and we would keep one-half for our use. Rarely did we sell any part of our share of nuts. Usually, we would place the pecans in a gunny sack, until we were ready to crack them.

There were walnuts in our area that we would gather in sacks and carry back home. Those of you who have gathered walnuts, know that unlike pecan, they usually still have the hulls attached. It is necessary to remove the hulls, so that the walnuts will dry rather than souring. If dried properly, the nut meats are a light golden brown and are very delicious to eat---particularly in fudge, divinity, cookies, and cakes or sprinkled over Ice cream.

The hulling process is easy today, all that is required, is to dump the nuts into a hopper, and they go through the huller, with the nuts coming out one place, and the hulls going out another place. Although the nuts are usually still wet, they are reasonably clean.

When I was a youngster, it was a much more complicated process. There were several methods available, and I have used all of them. The first and ‘messiest’ method is to remove the hulls by hand---with or without gloves, this is a messy process, and you end up with hands stained a beautiful brown color. This stain is very difficult to remove, thus you have to live with it for a week or so until it gradually wears off. Mom’s homemade ‘lye soap’ helped, but it did not remove it entirely.

A second method was to run the walnuts through the old hand corn sheller---this was a machine into which one fed corn on the cob, turned the crank, and the corn came out below, and the cobs came out at the other side of the machine. One would want to have the sheller turning at a pretty good speed before they started, as when the corn was fed in, it could become a load to turn.

All of the corn at that time was harvested as ear corn, and was either run through the hammer mill, or shelled to feed unless it was fed as ear corn. We fed ear corn to the horses, and sometimes to the hogs and chickens, but the corn was usually ground for the cows, and often for the hogs or chickens. Usually, we would run the ear corn through the hammer mill---but would sometimes run shelled corn through it for the chickens. I always enjoyed shelling corn, as it was fun to watch the bucket fill up with those bright yellow kernels of corn.

The corn cobs were usually used as ‘kindling’ to start the fire in the cook stove or heating stove. I can recall that a part of my chores when I was small, was to gather dry corn cobs for the stove. As we boys got a little older, we found that the corn cobs were great fun to use for ‘corn cob fights’.

The cobs would be gathered, divided, sides would be chosen---often it was Jim and Frank against L. D.--- and the fight would be on. Supposedly if you were hit with a cob, you were out of the fight-----quite often it would take a pretty ‘large red mark’ for one to recognize --- or admit that they had been hit. The best position was in the hay mow, as you were harder to hit, and it was less access for the opposition. The fight might start in the barn and end up in the garage---or behind Mom if the battle got too tough ----believe it or not, we all three as do all of my cousins still have eye sight in both eyes.

Any way, to hull the walnuts, they would be run through the corn sheller just as the ear corn would go through. The nuts---and sometimes some of the hulls---- would exit where the cobs usually came out, and some of the hulls would exit where the corn usually came out. We would then lay the nuts out to dry, after which we would separate the nuts from the hulls.

Other ways to hull the walnuts was to lay them where vehicles would run over them, and gradually, over time, the traffic would hull the nuts. This was similar to the process of simply ‘walking the hulls off ‘ under foot one or two at a time. Sometimes if one wanted to be inventive, they would drill a hole in a board large enough for a nut to go through, place it over the unhulled nut and force the nut through the hole to hull it. By now you are about to understand why just not everyone harvests walnuts-----and we have not even got to cracking and picking them out.

Once the nuts have been hulled and dried, we would crack them --- usually with a hammer on an old piece of railroad rail. One would be fortunate indeed if they could crack a gallon of these nuts and not have at least one sore thumb or finger. The cracked nuts often were in varying degrees of splinters and ‘smashed’ meats. Usually, the one large piece of meat would be the ‘heart’ of the nut. (today, I have a ‘gear’ cracker that not only is faster, it damages the meats less, and rarely does it damage the fingers) After all of this the nut meats would be ready for the fudge, cakes and cookies that Mom would make for the holidays----lots of work?----yes but worth it---you bet if you like walnuts as much as I do. Guess I will go crack a few walnuts---fudge would be good on this cool evening. LDC