kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mbqXqcqiq8yppnU.html - A lot of folks asked how we crack Black Walnuts, so I made a video showing this crazy wonderful tool we've used for years... masternutcracker.com is the site and I can't speak highly enough of how well made and effective it is for cracking super tough nuts...

I make a wood stain from the husks from our black walnut tree. It makes a wonderful natural stain for outdoor fencing and decking, keeps the bugs out.

I love how you value your time. You’ve invested in developing a system to quickly (ish) process a large volume of walnuts quickly!! Thumbs up from me! Now to checkout your other videos!

It's always nice to see that there's still hippies out there kickin around.

Back in 57 when I was a child my family lived in a house that had at least three black walnut trees in our yard. We had our clothesline fastened in a triangle between them. When the walnuts started falling from the tree we pick them from the ground and threw them in the driveway so Daddy could drive over them. This cleaned them off very well. When they were clean we picked them up and put them in a bucket or gunny sack until we needed them. That same year we picked up apples from the ground at an old orchard. When I got home from school I would grab a handfull of nuts, crack them with a hammer on a brick or a large flat rock. Then I would take the nut meats and mix them with an apple that I had chopped and mixed some Miracle Whip with. You couldn't find a better after school snack. It has to be Miracle Whip for the tangy taste. I miss them here in Colorado.

Planted two black walnuts last year so we should need this info in about a decade or so. Thanks!

alchemicalnursery.org - My friend Robbie helping in this video is involved in a rad project up in Syracuse, NY. Check out this urban permaculture collective!

As a McMack Indian, try this process. Grill them then toss them into an ice bath... The shells will fall off without overcooking the walnut inside...

AMAZING! I have gazed upon them for decades all over the ground in PA and never knew the possibilities. THANK YOU FRIEND.

We learned this technique from you two years ago. It was so efficient when we tried it back then that we still have plenty of walnuts from that time. Kudos again, Sean.

Omg this is SO useful! I have an ancient black walnut tree that I've been just... dumping nuts out into the forest for the squirrels. I finally want to start USING them, and your guide is so straightforward. Thank you! I look forward to having & storing some walnuts this year!

This might be the best shucking walnut video EVER!!!! The black hulls make a great natural trap dye too!! THANKS 😨....:>)>

How lovely to meet one of your friends! Greetings Robbie! This is a great method Sean. I grew up in California where there were loads of black walnut ( LOVE THEM!!) I never knew how they got cleaned en masse, but I do remember the dad's, uncles and grandpa would knock the nuts to the ground and all us kids would scramble to collect. It was super fun, got to hang with all my cousins at the same time and the reward of eating as many as you can stomach was well worth all the hard work. I looked forward to black walnut season every year growing up.

A cement mixer is also an efficient method of husking black walnuts. For small batches, I use a three prong cultivator to scrape off the husk, then wash the final bits off. I have a concrete pad with a corner that works good for the procedure. Thanks for the video.

We just laid ours in the driveway and ran over them with the cars, then pick up denuded nuts and crack and moved on. yum. Thanks for another method you shared.

It's hard to believe how many nuts come off one tree. Food is a full time job requiring a lot of people.

Thanks man - I'm getting ready to harvest thousands. I have a cement mixer that I'm going to apply your method to. Might even throw in some limestone gravel for aggregate. Appreciate you taking the time to explain the process.

If you happen to use black walnut husk water... (only the walnut husks soaked in pure water) pour it on the ground.. . It will bring up earth worms... night crawlers by the dozens... useful tip I use for fishing.

When I was a kid my dad used to take us "walnut hunting" in our old VW bug - same as you, trees beside the road dropping buckets of black walnuts we would gather. I don't remember how we cleaned them up - I think they just sat in the garage awhile and we manually removed the rotted husks and took them inside, cracked them open and ate them next to the fire in the fireplace. Nice video.

Sean thank you so much this so much faster and more reliable than my mother's way you are awsome thank you for all that you do!!!

Husk make great stain. We mix into paint form for art and house paint, hair tint, water colour and has medicinal uses too.

If you immerse steel wool in vinegar, the resulting brew can be used to stain many woods black. It’s a commonly used method to ebonize wood. Any recalcitrant wood that doesn’t want to turn black like you’d like can be slathered with that rich, tannic brew you just created. Without doubt, that would seal the deal. It’s a great way to imitate very rare, and quite dear ebony. Oak works well, and maple as well. Walnut naturally responds very well. I’ve had little luck with ipe (a perfect ebony substitute). The Ipe simply doesn’t seem to have the tannins required to do the deed. Your walnut husk water would be perfect to assist the process. Incidentally, all of the above can be performed in thinned out versions to produce a driftwood finish. Anybody can do it; it’s easy.

We own a Black Walnut in our NY backyard, and I've always been searching for the best way to harvest them with time management! Thank you so much! I missed this season, but surely next, I will be prepared to muck away! haha

To anybody who wants to do this wear rubber gloves. They will stain your hands for weeks.

Hi, growing up in Ohio, we had a corn sheller. It is a very old tool that takes the kernels of corn off of the cob. Ours could either be driven by a belt, or hand cranked. Hand cranked was good enough...If you adjust the corn sheller plates out to the widest setting, you can dump black walnuts into the top and out the nuts come with no husks or hulls on them. Works like a charm. Other than that, put them in a rut in the driveway and in a couple of days the tires will husk em too. Your trick looks like it works, with alot of mucky stainy water. NIce video. Good job. smiling, George.

I did smaller amounts in a 5 gallon bucket with my battery powered hand drill & it worked great.

I built a "box" of 1"x2" fencing, and I use a pressure washer after the husks are pretty much black. It works quite well

We are overrun here in East TN with Black Walnuts. We shuck the hulls of the nuts by placing the nuts in the driveway, and then run them over with the golf cart that has a lift package on it, or the "Big Girl" Jeep with 37" tires. Most of the nut's husks just fall away cleanly. You can run them over with any vehicle. ;) Just make sure that you finish pulling way any loose husk the same day, or the husk will dry up and make it difficult to remove any tiny remnants of husks. This technique would be good for any black-shelled (dried on) husks.

Thank you! I've just collected between 100-200 white walnuts from under a tree in the garden where I work and was about to par them with a knife, soak them in water and then brush off the residual husk with a metal brush one nut at a time... That would have taken me at least a whole day!

Great video, thanks. BTW Milwaukee makes a 1/2" drill/mud mixer, 20 Amp., battery that'll do the mixing job. I use it to mix mortar and grout for tile work.

Fair warning. Black walnut stains like nothing else on this earth. Big dish gloves work nicely for handling them, and don't wear anything you don't want ruined. =)

You might want to add a caution to make sure the used water is not disposed of where it can get back into the rivers and streams or storm sewers or anything. It's EXTREMELY toxic to fish and a lot of beneficial microbes and earthworms if it's not diluted enough. People used to use it to fish but it's been illegal to use for so long that people forget what the problem was.

Interesting! Our family harvests black walnuts each year. What we do is wait until the husks turn dark and soften, hull them by hand, then dry the nuts on racks. It's less mess.

Cool operation guys

Great video

I always learn soo much from Jordan Peterson. Thanks for this

Very interesting! Like how u repurpose everything! Great video! Did what you did today! 7 pound Bag of walnuts r drying in my cellar already.

Walnut oil is used in oil painting. Not quite as good as linseed oil but Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa with walnut oil. We have a walnut tree with plenty of green walnuts hanging. Has not gotten cold yet in GA but I am going to use the info in this video for sure soon. Thanks!

Love Black Walnuts!

Looks like you have a pretty good process there.

cool , thanks. I just discovered 3 large walnut trees on my property.

Great video, learned a bunch.

Thank you for sharing your developed and excellent process. I would like to know more about how to handle wormy walnuts. By the way, I am aware of a man who husked 38 bushels of walnuts himself for consumption one winter. He lived well into his 90s in good health (long life span and long health span).

We used to jack up one rear tire of my dad's 1950s pickup truck about 3 inches off the ground and roll walnuts down a ramp under the tire and it would south out the nut and the hull on the other side.

My dad had replanted some walnut trees that had come up as volunteers on a neighbor’s farm. 2 of the 3 didn’t do so well but one grew tall and stately and eventually produced nuts in great abundance. He too was looking for a means to separate hulls from nuts. He jacked up one back wheel on his truck and built a ramp in front of the tire. He adjusted the hydraulic jack so that tire was a little less than one walnut above the driveway. He started the truck and set the wheel spinning in second gear. He then rolled the nuts in the hull down the ramp and in the process of passing between the tire and the driveway, the hull was quickly and efficiently removed and the nut was spit out the rear. He placed a small backstop behind to stop the nuts. The jack he used was old and leaky so overtime it would lower the wheel closer to the driveway than was otherwise optimal. He knew it was time to stop and jack it up a pump or two when the he began launching nuts like bullets across the highway and straight down another family’s driveway. It was effective (and amusing) but highly dangerous and I can’t recommend this process these days.

This may be strange, but thank you for not using gloves. It means I'm not the only one with stained hands every fall.

Best video I’ve found yet!! THANK YOU!!!!!

I'm in central California and there are lots of them around here . Buddy's dog loves them . Had about 80 removed from his stomach. Not even dog stomach acid gets through that shell .

Anything practical. Very well done.

Great video!!! Thank you for the easy idea to clean walnuts

That’s cool! My husbands been trying to get rid f our husk flies for a while. He has been using Diatomaceous earth it seems to work. We only have 5 trees.

black walnut husks make a great dye in lovely shades of brown.

I love it! I am so happy to see info about Black Walnuts that is not fear based! I would love tips on how to crack the nuts! We have a glorious Mother Tree Black Walnut in our yard and there are several plants growing beneath it that are supposed to not grow under Black Walnut.....Blackberries growing TOWARD the trunk of the Black Walnut when they are “supposed" to not grow under them. Lilacs, also supposed to not grow under them. It is very old....about 4 feet in diameter, in a place that used to be a dairy farm, so you know the cows used to hang there in Summer. I asked Elaine Ingham about it, saying that it seems that if the soil is good, the juglone is not such a problem, and she agreed. Blessings :)

Hello from Syracuse!

your videos are really great. I appreciate all you do.

Excellent video my friend 👌🏽

No need to apologize for the cars driving past your place. Too many people apologize today for any little thing. Great video by the way 👍🏾

Hey bud! Thanks for all the dedication and knowledge you share. I have a bunch of walnuts from October harvest of last year that I haven’t been able to process. The hulls are dark and hard now and I’m wearing if this method will still work on them now.

I came back to revisit this one to see if you had any further commentary on the water disposal question, which I had missed on the first run through ;) Thanks for that important information ;)

great dye for wool

These now grow all over the UK and are planted as ornamental trees near me in London. They have also naturalised. They are the first trees to turn yellow and lose their leaves here in October, about 4 weeks before others, so easy to find. For the first year I have collected them and about to start work! However. They are an immense amount of work compared to the English walnut. Anyone can use nutcrackers to open English ones. Also, the flesh is about twice the size. English Walnut husk fruit is thin and the nut shell is thinner too, as the fellow American squirrels, also introduced here have discovered. It is pretty pointless to grow English walnuts where we have American grey squirrels. They take all of them before they are even ripe! Not sure why, Grey squirrels do not tend to hibernate in the UK, as it does not get cold enough. However, the US nut is supposed to have a superior flavour. I hope to find out in time. Thank you for all this information. I will give it a go!

That my friend was great!! Hope I can repeat this process up to my ankles in nuts!!

So smart! Love love your channel!!!

I stopped picking black walnuts because it just took too long to get the husks off. But they are so delicious!!!!! You've just shown me that I can start harvesting them again in the fall and enjoy them dried during the holidays. Thanks for the excellent video.

I remember finding walnuts in my backyard as a kid and being like “wtf is this crazy thing?” Only to be told they’re just walnuts. Still amazing though

My dad has a very large walnut tree in his yard, if it ever fell it would take down the house. When we where kids we used to let the hulls turn black then we would use a board with bottle caps nailed to it and use our shoes to roll them back and forth on the board. That worked pretty good.

Excellent process.. Thanks for sharing.

I live in Wisconsin. I see so many Walnuts and Hickory nuts everywhere.

Great video ❤ I recently bought a home in southern NJ that was built in 1786, there are atleast 6 walnut trees on the property and I’ve been wondering how I could harvest them for myself and family. It’s June 29th and I am already having some walnuts falling down. These are obviously ‘not ready’ but, I’m excited to see if I can actually have a few that will be edible. 😊

Excellent. Got one of those trees in my yard & trying to figure out the best way to clean those husks.

Started watching this and instantly, the song Junk Food Junkie came to mind.

Sean, wonderfully timed for us. We have about 50 black walnut trees on our property. Just last week I collected 45 gallons of nuts. We've tried a lot of methods to separate the husks; this is a terrific method we are going to try. QUESTION: how do YOU crack the nuts? Future video? BTW, local artists may love to purchase the used water, makes great ink and dye. (Ha, I see everyone else below mentioned the same thing! I use it to stain my wood carvings, dye paper pulp, drawing ink...)

Finally found the paint stirrer at menards. Worked great with my cordless drill on low at and angle in the bucket. Sat down and held with my knees. Gotta be patient. Set a 3 minute timer helped me. First time I stopped after a minute & didn't do much. Also helped once they were turning mushy after lying on my lawn for a week. All of mine seemed to float. Well when husk was on lol

That looks like such a messy process. I just lay them on the concrete sidewalk and step on them to squish the nut out of the hull. Then pick up the nuts, rinse them off and let them dry. The hulls can then be scooped up and disposed of.

Didn't realize there was such a process to cleaning and storing walnuts! We have a tree farm in KY and thought it might be "fun" to harvest the walnuts. Let me rethink this.....

The chortling from whoever is behind the camera really makes this

I’m husking here in England. It is MUCH easier you soak the nuts them leave the husks to rot off. The cleaned nuts then float to the surface.

I got lucky and bought a property with 7 walnut trees. I love them in sept. when the shell is green. I peel with a knife, crack open and eat them while they are still wirh the white flesh. Very addictive activity as well. But for my mom, i wait until the nut falls to the ground without the green shell. My goats love the green shell . I let they dry and store in a burlap bag

Cool idea with the mortar mix paddle. That will make it easy.

txs for sharing...

I Sean! I watched your original video on this years ago and made mental note. Just got a chance to try it out myself and thought I would share my findings from refining the system for myself: 1) must be a 4" paint stiring paddle. The smaller ones that fit in a 3/8" chuck won't do much. 2) you can grind down the end of the shaft on a 4" paddle so it fits in a 3/8" drill if that's what you've got. Mine is a 5.something amp 220Vdrill and it took about 6 minutes per batch. 3) Plastic garbage can works if that's what you've got. You can do it on a 5 gallon bucket scale if you don't mind getting splashed, but it still has to be a 4" paddle. 4) Chicken wire is also a good screen for letting hulls through and catching black walnuts. ...And one question... Any reason not to pour out the processing water under a walnut tree? Or in a walnut guild... maybe with a paw paw? I'm thinking maybe I'll plant such a guild at the back corner of my property and might dump the hulls there too in preparation.

used to process seeds for a nursery in AZ - not a lot of walnuts around.. my boss hands me a sack to peel. used a knife, took a couple of hours, juice running down my hand. ate the skin off, hand was black for weeks, parts of it were crunchy.

My dad‘s way of de hulling Black walnuts he gathers them from the ground spreads the nuts out on barnyard cement and walks over them with rubbers on his shoes which pushes the nut out of it's hull then lets them dry and picks the nuts up later stores them in 5 gallon buckets to crack inside over winter.

When I was weaving baskets, I'd use the water as a stain.

Thanks, I’m going to try some out

1:34 oh he only missed o... oh it just bounced in... nice. 100% accuracy!

I live in Arkansas and we have some black walnut trees on our property and when I was a child my grandfather showed me how he removed the outer hull and it was to get some tin and put it down on the ground and put them on the tin and walk over them and the outer hull would come off. After getting the hulls off we would collect them and put the shelled nuts and dry them out in a storage building so the squirrels could not get to them and later crack them when they are all dry and get the nut meat out for storage.

Brilliant. I have dozens of black walnut trees raining down on our new property. So thankful for your instruction and advise. Looking forward to implementing what you presented in this video. Oh, has Sasha used black walnut to do any natural dying? If so, I would love to see a video on that Grace and peace to you both.

I LOVE BLACK WALNUTS. Gimme gimme!

Sooo jealous!

awesome video very useful technique!

This is clever! I wonder, I've heard that black walnut hulls are an excellent dewormer for livestock. I'll have to see if there is a good way to process the hulls as well to use them too.

Before anyone works with walnuts in the hull I'd recommend they seal the pores in their hands first with a coat of petroleum jelly .This will prevent the stain from penetrating as much .Then when you Wash your hands with a degreaser(dawn,etc) it'll remove most of the gunk leaving only traces of stain and Vinegar should remove the stain.Repeat until clean or it wears off.Lol

I pick them up at the Silver Comet Trail in Hiram, Georgia, US. I think the dirty water can dye fabric or wool.

Bumper crop here in Southern Michigan this year! Got the tanned hands!

If you are around south central PA, I have thousands of black walnuts laying here you can gather up and take with you for free. I have 2 huge Black Walnut trees and a smaller one. The big trees each dropped thousands of walnuts.

Hope you are finding a nice selection of nuts. Good vidio thanks.

If you sit the duds aside, you can use them in the winter to help your wood burner last through the nite.

thank you...good info!!

Hey Everyone, it looks like Harbor Freight has a few different similar mixers for under 5 bucks!!! YIPPEE. :>)>