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Post by spence on Nov 4, 2021 17:55:32 GMT -7
Fall is here in Kentucky. Color is coming on in a rush, the temperatures are brisk and invigorating, and there is occasionally the scent of wood smoke in the air. No fool I, I soaked some of it up this afternoon. I harvest black walnuts from the yard every few years, an easy job because there are thirty-eight trees. I had collected a few gallons of nuts, and for the last couple of afternoons have been sitting in the yard removing hulls. I put the walnuts on my wood-splitting stump and use my little belt axe to knock/cut them off. Slow work, but relaxing and curative, and I look forward to it, a pleasant interlude by myself in a chaotic world. My grandparents always collected wild black walnuts for Grandmother’s cooking, and working the walnuts always brings back good childhood memories of them. A different world, and a better one, in one old man’s opinion. I have references in my files of walnut gunstocks, walnut planks for gunstocks, walnut furniture such as tables, chairs, cupboards, walnut dyed clothing, but only one to the nuts being used for food. That is pickled walnuts, most likely imported and made of English walnuts not our black ones. Does anyone have evidence of other uses as food? Speaking of walnut dye, Townsend’s video today is of dying cloth with walnuts at his primitive cabin, very interesting. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR4GDrBz8VMSpence |
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walnuts
Nov 4, 2021 18:12:55 GMT -7
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Post by brokennock on Nov 4, 2021 18:12:55 GMT -7
Sorry, can't even vaguely remember any period references to using specifically black walnuts as food. But, if I could, it probably would have been a hazy memory of some little primary source tidbit that you shared with us.
Thanks for sharing your memories with us.
I can't recall my mom's people mentioning local/native walnuts. This is more hickory country, with butternut (pronounced bud-ah-nuh with the h end being a hard stop) being the big prize. Used to be some chestnut around. The blight got all but some if the horse chestnut. A lot of the nice woodworking in grammie's old house was chestnut.
Funeral coming up soon on that side of the family it seems. I'll ask a couple of the elder family historians if they remember reference to walnuts, if yes, I'll try to work back from there.
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Post by hawkeyes on Nov 5, 2021 4:55:40 GMT -7
My favorite tree, wood and dye. My grandfather also favored the tree. Personally I enjoy black walnuts, locally every second weekend in October we have the black walnut festival to celebrate the coming of fall and the tree given it's plentiful in the area. A favorite of mine is the black walnut ice cream...
An acquired taste I feel, much more bitter than the English counterpart most, well if not all are familiar with. Grandpa had a contraption he used to crack the nuts he then would soak them in a bucket of cold water. I never asked but I'd assume to leech some bitterness from them. We always collected them I remember when they'd start to fall. Child labor at it's finest, a nickel per nut! Grandma would then make a fine black walnut pie.
However, I cannot say I've came across much period documentation as a food...
Worth mentioning... I love the smell of fresh green hulls... haha.
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Post by brokennock on Nov 5, 2021 6:32:50 GMT -7
Sometimes I think one of the best parts of this forum, and these topics, is the memories shared of our interactions with previous generations regarding things that were relevant in our period of interest and are still relevant today.
It's no surprise to me either that this often is regarding food or things food related, lol.
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Post by spence on Nov 5, 2021 7:36:24 GMT -7
Sometimes I think one of the best parts of this forum, and these topics, is the memories shared of our interactions with previous generations regarding things that were relevant in our period of interest and are still relevant today. I agree, brokennock, and have had the same thought. My father's family was from the hills of eastern Kentucky and it's remarkable how those rural communities had retained practices from literally hundreds of years ago. I frequently run across examples of that in doing my research. My father and I talked extensively about how his family did things, and a lot of them hadn't changed from the methods of a much earlier time. For example, they kept an ash hopper, ashes in a wooden V-shaped box with a drain at the bottom covered with grass as a filter. Rain on the ashes leached out the lye and collected in a container below. The lye was used to boil corn to make hominy. It was my father's job to take the boiled corn to the nearby creek, rinse and rub the hulls off. A few years ago I read _Indian Captivity: A true narrative of the capture of Rev. O. M. Spencer by the Indians, in the neighborhood of Cincinnati_ , in 1792. The teenage Spencer was the servant of an old Indian woman. Imagine my delight when I came to this passage: "On a very cold day, about the middle of January, she had risen before day, and intending to make some hommony, had boiled the corn for some time with the ashes to remove its hulls. It was my duty to cleanse it from the ashes, and as it had been long enough in them, I was ordered to get up and perform that duty..... The Maumee had for some time been frozen over, and through the ice, about six inches thick, we had cut and kept open a hole for the convenience of getting water. Placing the large sieve by the side of the opening, and emptying the corn in it, I proceeded to dip up water, pouring it on the hommony, which I rubbed well to take off the hulls." Spence |
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Post by Black Hand on Nov 11, 2021 17:07:57 GMT -7
The nuts I remember from my childhood are Almonds (tasty when yet unharvested - white and crisp) and a Walnut tree behind the barracks in my old housing area in Germany. Ate many of both...no black walnuts though.
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