Posted on 10/27/2004 10:49:48 AM PDT by Willie Green
MARYSVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- Don Cullman counted out the hard-earned cash with his black-stained fingers and placed it in the boy's open hand.
Six-year-old Morgan Kessler smiled proudly at his reward for picking up the mess that had fallen from the black-walnut trees in his parents' pastures.
"You have 58 pounds at 11 cents a pound," Cullman said. "That's $6.38 in walnuts."
~~~SNIP~~~
"Most people bring them from their yards," Cullman said. "I got into this mainly to give people an outlet for the nuts."
Most of the year, Cullman tends to hundreds of trees on his 60 acres near the Delaware-Union county line, where he grows black and English walnuts, hazelnuts, Japanese heart nuts and pecans.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Black walnuts has very good medicinal herbal potential.
A former neighbor had several black walnut trees on a vacaton property. He helped his kids gather and clean up the 'mess'.
The black hands probably wouldn't have been an issue except for his clientele, he's a dentist.
Luckily, most of his patients are good country folk and know about black walnuts, besides, he wears gloves.
BTW, if anyone hears of an outlet for acorns, I'm good for mega-bushels.
There was a walnut tree in the neighbor's yard where I grew up. We used to pick them up, and crack them in a vice grip. I had black stained hands many days as a kid. It didn't matter much when I was a kid. Last year I took my kids back to my ol' stomping grounds & of course stopped by the walnut tree. Unfortunately, I forgot the lessons I learned a a child. I went back to work and everyone wondered what in the world happened to my hands.
Must.....resist....will...get.....banned!
this is why honda built a 1.3 million sq foot car factory in marysville. the people there are creative and are willing to work!
So when is the first Grinch lawyer going to come along and shut it down as a violation of the Child Labor laws?
"BTW, if anyone hears of an outlet for acorns, I'm good for mega-bushels."
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=acorns+as+food&btnG=Search
What do you do with them?
Black Walnuts make the absolutely BEST nut rolls! It's just hard getting all of the little bits of shell out of them. I used to clean and dry them every year. Great for Christmas baking!
I could get into the 'other white meat'. Even a blind pig would get fat in my yard.
The oak trees here in Arizona I am familiar with produce acorns with very little tannin. We were recently up on the Mongollon Rim (7600 foot elevation) squirrel hunting. You could split the hull easily and the white acorn meat eaten raw was very sweet and crunchy.
I was amazed at the amount of mast on the ground, was literally an acorn carpet beneath the oak trees. The deer, squirrels, turkeys and such will feast for quite a while on the abundance of food the oak trees furnished.
The California Indians were very dependent upon acorns for subsistence and some of them still gather acorns and hold acorn festivals each autumn.
We have roasted coarse acorn meal (ran through a Vita-Mix food processor) and used as breakfast cereal mush with cinnamon, maple syrup and milk. It was actually quite tasty.
On the first link I gave, there are several sites with info for acorns as a food source.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.