My dad collects black walnuts. Why?
He has a thing for trees.
All trees really, but to him, the best tree is the black walnut. It is an amazing tree for sure, but according to my father, the finest part about this tree besides the quality of the hardwood, is the nut.
I can not remember a time in my life when my dad hasn't collected and shelled black walnuts. And if you know anything at all about this nut, you know it is one tough nut...very hard to open, in fact almost impossible to open. As children, my siblings and I remember going down into my dad's workshop and using a vice to crack them open.
Last fall my father felt like he won the lottery when he discovered some prolific black walnut trees near my sister's home. We all helped him fill bag after bag with these large nuts with their green husks. He counted them...all of them. And he stuffed his car with over 1300 hundred nuts. He then spent the next month getting the husks off, building a drying rack, and drying them over his woodstove. In January they were ready to be shelled. My dad has arthritic hands and neuropthy in his fingers, yet he managed to crack open and take out these delicious walnuts one at a time. He did this down in is basement using a hatchet and some wire cutting tools.
Amazing really - I mean talk about a hobby.
He did save some to plant in the Spring, so this will be his next project. He is a renegade tree lover and has anonymously planted thousands of trees, most of them black walnuts.
In fact, right now there are about a dozen small black walnut trees growing along the entrance to my sisters condo unit. Each time he visits, he checks them, prunes them, and clears the weeds around them so they have the space needed to grow.
I have one cool dad, don't you think?
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