Our butternut tree produced it's first crop this year. here is the first bushel. I harvested them this morning and only got conked on the head once when shaking the limbs.
Butternuts are very similar to walnuts, but the hulls have a sticky, sort of resinous, feel to them. I am not sure what the evolutionary advantage of this is, I find it hard to imagine a butternut falling off of a tree and sticking to the coat of a passing mastodon. But, they have it anyway. So when you are picking butternuts, I advise gloves. They also stain just like walnuts do.
I got just about half of the butternuts hulled using the old corn sheller you can see in the picture. I borrowed it from my grandma, thanks grandma! I hulled 219 of them, to be precise. At that point I was already feeling a little strain in my shoulders and forearms, so I put the rest of them off until tomorrow. The black walnuts will be falling from the trees soon. I ran a few of them through the sheller today, too. They clean off a lot faster and easier than the butternuts do, that ovoid shape makes the butternuts difficult.
I also harvested some grapes today, we really got some giants this year. There were a few that were bigger than a quarter! I put some pictures up at the picture link.
All of the animals are still doing great. The turkeys are starting to create a little bit of stink, I suppose we should have realized that as they got bigger so would the mess. Somehow I conveniently forgot about that concept. Still not as bad as the ducks were though!
4 comments:
If you save the hulls, you can package them for sale or barter with natural dyers, locally or online. Or to people who make their own homeopathic medicines (the black walnut hulls specfically).
A thought anyway, I don't know if you had anything planned for them.
The only thought I had was to spread the hulls along the fence line in the pasture, since they contain juglone, which stunts the growth of many plants. I was thinking it might keep some of the weeds from growing.
Interesting to know that people use them for dying, they do stain clothes really well. I will keep that in mind, thanks!
are you going to sell any of your butternuts? they are the best in fudge !! let me know.
farmer jones, (this may not be true because it is from my memory of over 50 years ago), but on the farm where i grew up, my dad always said the hulls and leaves of the black walnut (maybe the butternut, too?? we did not have butternut trees)had minimal to effect on plant control because the juglone level was so low in the hulls and leaves. dad said it was the "ground root" that was the rich source of juglone for plant control. he also never allowed black walnut anything in his mulch.
as i'm a tennessee native and i believe you're farm is up north somewhere, there may, or may not be truth or correlation here and my comment is from a memory of long, long time ago and i claim no validity. i just thought you might find the memory interesting. please keep us posted on your success with the juglone and plant control. my interest is piqued.
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