Stalking the wild walnut

After buying their land many years ago, the people I band with planted several black walnut trees. Now the trees bear nuts every year, and every year the woman of the couple (I'll call her Dragonfly Chaser) harvests them for eating. Her husband will help if asked nicely, but he doesn't like their taste.

Black walnuts are surrounded by a shell, which is enclosed in a fleshy rind. Processing many nuts can be long endeavor, with several schools of thought on how to go about it. Dragonfly Chaser gathers the fruit from the ground under their trees, piles them in old crates, then ages them in their garage where the resident red squirrel lightens her load by stealing a few. The remaining green balls soften until she's ready for the next step.

One day between banding duties we liberated the shells from their green (or by now black) flesh. Dragonfly Chaser had tried processing some by driving over them (it's very unnerving to drive up someone's driveway and encounter what appears to be green baseballs piled in the ruts), but the weight of the car can also crush the shell. So we did it the old fashioned way, by stomping on them and then pulling out the little brain-shaped cores. Squirrels also remove the flesh before storing the nuts. The juice stains their chins and paws brown this time of year, while we opt for staining gloves instead.

A half-hour and a net check later, we had two buckets of pulp and one bucket of nuts in their shell. Most of the nuts would be left to dry before eating, but Dragonfly Chaser grabbed a handful as our reward. She brought them over to a flat stone with a shallow depression kept by the garage. She set one of the little brains in the middle and cracked it with a smaller rock.

The meat was similar to common walnuts, but paler and more shriveled. Supposedly people either love or hate the taste, which one website described as, "a strong, rich, smoky flavor with a hint of wine." I ate one of the chewy pieces she gave me.

"Do you like it?"

The taste was very familiar. "I don't know. I have to figure out what it tastes like first."

She cracked another one and we both sat chewing on the pieces.

"Bubblegum! It tastes like bubblegum!"

"That's not what I expected at all."

Maybe the nuts change after they age, but they really did taste like "original flavor" bubblegum to me. I know we have at least one black walnut tree near where our driveway meets the road. It was probably planted along with the lilac and daffodils that bloom nearby. I think I'll leave its nuts for the squirrels.