So, if you find yourself leisurely strolling through the woods in early fall, listen carefully to the cacophony (that is a $5 word for a bunch – took me three tries to spell it correctly) of sounds as the forest prepares for a winter slumber and the various woodland creatures scramble to stockpile food either in their dens or in their bellies. I love to hear the grey squirrels scamper through the dried leaves. Sometimes they sound like a herd of elk coming through the woods. How does such a small critter make so much noise? Just the other day a squirrel and I accidentally met on a trail deep in our valley. The encounter happened at a spot where the trail crested this small knoll. He was more startled than I as he quickly jumped upon a fallen log and began to scold me in squirrel expletives.

As the evening sun slips down over the back end of our valley, the bard owls start their nightly chorus of hoots and howls. They remind me of two kids trying to out do one another singing their own versions of a song. They get louder and louder and make up their own lyrics as they careen further out of control.

There is one noise, however,  that is frequent it the woods but often over looked as some random sound or totally ignored all together. When this sound happens the person with you can say, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That thud just over their behind us.”

“Nope. I didn’t hear a thing.”

Normally, the stroll through the woods continues with no second thought given to the unidentified sound. So, what is it? Is it some sinister creature throwing rocks at you to get you to leave their sanctuary? Is it a tree groaning as it starts to shake off its leaves in preparation for the winter’s nap? Actually, it is something quite simple but very exciting to me. It is the Black Walnut tree offering its delicious bounty to me, the woodland wayfarer.

So, you may be asking, “Walnuts, Troy? Really? You get excited by that?”

To that I would reply, “Yes, absolutely!” (I never claimed I was fun to hang around…)

Walnut trees are common in our area but not so common that you can find them just anywhere. Not every year finds the walnuts being productive with their nut production, either. This year, however, has been a great year for walnuts. We have several walnut trees throughout the property that stand alone in a forest of other tree varieties. They each produced a great number of walnuts this year. There is, however, this one area where the walnut trees are the dominant species. In this walnut sanctuary, there are about 15 mature walnut trees each dropping a plethora of walnuts with some being the size of tennis balls.

The other evening, the four of us took our side-by-side to that spot to harvest as many walnuts as we could before darkness descended. There were so many walnuts under these trees that we could be extremely picky and choose only the ones that were not black or busted open. We decided we would leave those for the squirrels. After an hour of scavenging the walnuts from the ground, we had a majority of the side-by-side’s bed full and headed back to the barn to spread them out for drying before we remove the hulls.

In the past, we would always feed the walnuts to the pigs as they enjoy crunching through the hard shells in order to get to the tasty nut meat. This time I want to harvest them of our own personal consumption. Sure the work will be dirty and tedious and it would be much easier to buy a bag of walnuts at the store, but where is the fun in that? The reward will be the sweet tasting nut which grew on my farm and was harvested by my family in a fun evening activity. It may cost more time and money than the store bought nuts, but I wouldn’t trade that evening for anything.

So, if you find an opportunity to be in the woods this month, listen carefully for the subtle thud of the walnut hitting the ground. Take a handful with you if you can and enjoy the great flavor they have to offer. You won’t regret the experience.

 

 

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