So early last week, as D and I were headed out to the grocery store, I noticed his older niece picking up/peeling walnuts from the walnut tree in the yard. Going over there I jokingly asked, "So you gonna eat all those?" You may ask why it was jokingly that I asked that question, but after all, who eats walnuts that fall out of a tree? You buy them at the store, right? *smack upside the head*
She wasn't going to but was picking them for her family. To which I replied, "You can eat these things?" *shrugs* I say again, who eats walnuts that fall out of a tree? You buy them at the store, right?
I guess it never really occured to me where those prettily packaged walnuts at the store come from. I asked D's mom and she said they taste heavenly and they're the same you'd buy at Food City or Kroger. Huh, go figure.
So, a couple days later I decided to do the same thing. At first I was peeling them barehanded (very messy by the way), but my hands very quickly turned a puky shade of yellow/black. After putting gloves on I went about walking around the tree, peeling as I went, and dropping them in a small garbage can. The tree was all about mocking me as it kept dropping fresh walnuts every few minutes. Finally my back could no longer take the constant bending over so I brought the can back to the bottom of the deck stairs and proceeded to fill two plastic grocery bags with the rest of the unpeeled walnuts.
I've just finished peeling them all and now I've been told they need to sit and germinate and dry out a little bit before cracking them open. Ya see, freshly peeled walnuts have an enormous amount of black/yellow goopy stuff on the outside of the hard shell. Not to mention there are little greenish white worms that apparently eat that goopy stuff. There's a lot of scraping to get all the wormies off, which is quite difficult when wearing latex gloves.
Anyway, I've gotten about 1 1/2 plastic grocery bags full of peeled walnuts. Probably in another week or so here I'll try cracking a few of them to see how they taste. *crosses fingers*
2 comments:
Dad says, "Now you know firsthand why we pay (so much) for them, so someone else can do all that messing around." Also, "Does this make you a walnut farmer?"
Sorry, but Dad made me type that. Not directly, but at the time he was waving a spoon around in a semi-menacing fashion and I didn't like the look in his eye. Or maybe that was just gas. Anyhoo, hope it'll be worth all the trouble.
Walnut farmer? Heh, not hardly. See farming is a multiple times kinda deal. This was definitely a one-time thing. Unless they turn out great and then maybe I'll do it next season. But definitely not a walnut farmer. :-p
Post a Comment