walnuts dehulling and curing.

Walnut trees don't set fruit if there is frost in late march, which goes some way to explaining why most the places I have live I haven't come across many wild walnuts. It was only in London where I lived as a child there was anything resembling a yearly walnut crop. Well now I live by the coast of south wales, this spring was mild enough for plums to set fruit, but we were still happily surprised it find the masses of the smooth green tennis ball sized fruit in large numbers littering the path near the river.

Don't bother with the black fruit the nut is bitter.

We filled the rucksacks and bike paniers and got this lovely haul. The hulls have n amazing tea tree like scent, and this large pile in the smelt gorgeous.

Now I not one for wearing personal protection clobbler. I don't bother wearing it making soap, I am just careful that the lye doesn't get on the skin. The husks on walnuts contain phenol dyes, and like henna and will stain skin for weeks. We wore normal kitchen gloves, the dye leaked through the rubber. I also got some of washing solution in my eye, it stung dreadfully. So correct PPE for walnuts is agricultural thick black rubber gloves, eye protection and black clothes. You are going to get messy.

We decided to remove the outer husks sitting in the polytunnel. Of all the videos that are on youtube none of them remove the husks in the house. Trust me they stain everything. There is a array of methods that remove the bulk of the husk, you can lay them out on the road and drive over them, you can walk on them, both these methods squash the husk off leaving the nut in the shell.
You can also get the cement mixer out of the kitchen cupboard and add the walnuts to the cement mixer at 2 parts walnut to part gravel and bucket of water. We are right out kitchen cement mixers so we simply sat there cutting them off. I used a blunt hand axe and tapped the husks off, Woodstock cut them around equator and twisted

Removing walnut husks with a knife. 

Some the husks are softer then others, we also found quite a bit of husk was left on the nut. These need to be removed as the black husk seeps through the shell and makes the nut inedibly bitter Any black husked fruit needs to discarded for the same reason.black husked fruit needs to discarded for the same reason. So I reverted the making cement method to totally clean the nut of the husk. 

The nuts were put in a wheel barrow with stones and roughed around with my hands. This is the point I got splashed in the eye, and it is really painful. I didn't particularly want my eyes getting dyed either so started wearing the safety specs which I don't wear while sanding wood or making soap. It sort of worked ok, but I found it cleaner and quicker it put them in a bucket with some water and vigorously slosh them about with a thick bent stick. 

It goes with out saying the slurry water dyes everything, so if have something you want dyed brown use the slurry as a dye bath. It doesn't need a mordant, what ever you do, DO NOT POUR IT ON PLANTS. One the chemicals in the husks supresses germination of seeds, so it needs to be poured down the drain or what I did was down the paths in some hope it would reduce the weeds. 

The husks can also be cleaned with a pressure washer, but like cement mixers I am right out of pressure washers and my normal domestic water supply and the hose didn't quite have enough whack behind it. 

You should now have some nice clean nuts. [no dirty jokes] They need drying before eating as the meat inside the shell has to contract away from the shell and harden. I laid them out in box and put them in a warm room, for six weeks. They shouldn't be piled on top of each other as this breeds mould.