Competing with Squirrels

Just over a year ago, I posted these pictures without explanation and never returned to the topic.

Perhaps it was because we were too busy dealing with this particular topic in the material realm. An overflowing topic, claiming space in boxes and pails, presenting itself as a chore that could be assigned to wayward children. They took turns--short turns--crushing nuts and sorting bits of shell from nutmeat before rebelling, quick to point out that they don't even like walnuts. Why do we collect them, anyway?

Yes, why: I don't know why. It has something to do with not wanting to waste nature's offerings. Our yard is surrounded by gorgeous black walnut trees that annually drop fruit at our feet. It also feels right to enact a ritual from earlier times. My paternal grandmother would have known what to do with all these nuts. My father (operating on genetic memory?) advised wearing gloves when peeling the green outer hull to avoid staining our hands black. So far, we haven't made our own dye, but that's an idea, too.

For my husband, who does 99% of the collecting and crushing, this extraordinarily labour-intensive activity is a race against his enemies. Every nut collected is one denied to the squirrels. He lives to defeat them, whether it's defending the bird feeders from rodent raids or, more recently, live-trapping and moving to friendlier territory the squatters nesting inside the ceiling of our mudroom (in the old summer kitchen, not inside the house proper, but still, ick...we could hear them up there, having a raucous party...they can't live with us, amIright?).  

So, here we are, one year later, sorting shells again. (And happy blog anniversary to me: 48 posts, not bad for the first year of an experiment, if I do say so myself.)

eldest daughter fails to employ walnut-avoidance tactics of her siblings

You, too, can harvest black walnuts and get free food. This tutorial will help. Thank you, friendly YouTube guy teaching us from Hamilton, Ontario. (Note: if the clip does not appear below, find it here.)

Somewhere online I read that people drive over the nuts to crush them, but that seems extreme, and our driveway isn't paved. The hammer method works. Tim wraps the nuts in cloth and demolishes a bunch all at once, but before the hammer, he tried crushing them with his vice, which broke. The shells are really, really hard.

I use the nuts in baking. Last year, we even had a few jars to give to relatives, to whom I offer a sincere and belated apology for any tooth-breaking shell fragments we might have missed.