What did you do in the garden today?

[Minanora]

I remember the one time we harvested black walnuts. The effort, aggravation, and frustration of getting the meat out of the shell ended up being a worse torture than I suspect having my fingernails pulled out would be. Much, much better option: buy several bags of black walnuts at Sam’s and freeze.

It is a lot of work. Harder than doing pecans that's for sure.

If you still have walnut trees, I do hope that you are still harvesting the walnuts and selling them to at least help pay for the bags of prepared walnuts.

 

[Rick589]

It is a lot of work. Harder than doing pecans that's for sure.

If you still have walnut trees, I do hope that you are still harvesting the walnuts and selling them to at least help pay for the bags of prepared walnuts.

We do not have the trees but were given black walnuts from a friend several years ago. They no longer have the trees so there’s that. But, having our own trees would be sweet.

 

[CatInTheHenHouse]

Just for personal education I cut open the less-developed melons:



I admit I was surprised the seeds were so developed, even in the little bitty melons. I scooped them out to check for sinkers yesterday but left them soaking to break down the goop overnight and I think some of them sprouted in the water in the mean time. I put a few of those in with some damp paper towel to check for sure. I don’t know if I should hope that it works or not.

 

[Molpet]

It is a lot of work. Harder than doing pecans that's for sure.

If you still have walnut trees, I do hope that you are still harvesting the walnuts and selling them to at least help pay for the bags of prepared walnuts.

depends on how far away the buyer is... for me it was the next state over. I could fill the bed of my pickup and break even on the gas .

 

[jxp]

Hammons has collection sites in a number of states

 

[Molpet]

Hammons has collection sites in a number of states

Yes this is the only place/company I have found.
The closest is a 5 HR round trip for me.

I tried to give away locally and no one was interested

 

[Rick589]

depends on how far away the buyer is... for me it was the next state over. I could fill the bed of my pickup and break even on the gas .

Pick up bed full, that would be a lot of nuts……..or, am I wrong?

 

[jerryse]

I remember the one time we harvested black walnuts. The effort, aggravation, and frustration of getting the meat out of the shell ended up being a worse torture than I suspect having my fingernails pulled out would be. Much, much better option: buy several bags of black walnuts at Sam’s and freeze.

I grew up doing black walnuts. A hammer and concrete. Later I cracked them in a vise. I moved on to nut crackers like Master nut cracker. Then I discovered people using diagonal wire cutter to crack out the hard to get meat. I posted because this tree is the easiest to crack I have found. I crack the nut and just pull the shell off with my fingers. There are named varieties out there but I have only cracked nuts from one. Better than average. I need to do video of me peeling the shell off. Named varieties are hard to find grafted trees to buy. Very few people can graft walnuts. I have failed at grafting walnuts for 40 + years.

 

[Molpet]

Pick up bed full, that would be a lot of nuts……..or, am I wrong?

You are correct

 

[cj2024]

Next Time I will gather all the eggs before placing them in my incubator, instead of putting them in when I find them.

Two more chicks just hatched, and it is kind of working out for me, since the older 7-day old chicks don't sleep or hang out directly under the heat lamp anymore, so the newly hatched chicks aren't getting trampled on. I got three more eggs to go with different hatch dates. I have been working with two incubators and been moving eggs between them for different lock down cycles. I am still at 100% hatch rate.

A brown chick hatched last night, and I finally got an unfertile egg. I have one egg left on lock down. I feel sorry for the little brown guy because I see the bigger yellow chicks bulling him. I am not sure if it's part of the pecking order process or because of his color, but I couldn't take it. I hit the guy who pecked him with a chop stick and kept hitting whoever else that bit him. I think it's working. Nope it's not, I think it's the pecking order thing. Oh well, now I feel like a terrorist.