My back is giving me gyp again, and on top of that, we had horrendously bad weather over the weekend – raining all day and night, and extremely high winds during the day. Yesterday, I could at least hobble out and look under the walnut tree.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Pain or not, those had to be collected and put to dry. Luckily, I am actually in less pain standing and walking than I am sitting, so it was not that big of a problem. We called a family friend to come by and take some for herself, too.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Mostly, I work alone in the garden. Yesterday, my mom insisted on collecting the walnuts with me, and who is going to argue with old mom? She said she had fun and enjoyed the exercise, despite having undergone carpal tunnel surgery just two weeks prior.  She did give me permission to post this picture.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

At this time of the year, one room in the house is reserved for drying and ripening produce. It is the smallest room, and it usually serves as my leatherworking workshop. I built a drying rack in there – on the shelves I can put nuts, and around it I can hang bean pods that are not fully dry. A fan circulates the air, and an air dehumidifier runs in it 24/7, drawing 2-4 liters of moisture every day. It costs some money, but the alternative is composting it all – both beans and nuts are unlikely to fully dry outdoors in my climate, and trying to let them dry naturally indoors results in mold and rot.

The first few buckets of nuts that we collected before were approximately 70% of bad quality – those go to the bird feeder. Those that we gathered yesterday, however, are mostly good. Those will be dried, cracked, and then stored in jars, sold to friends, or made into oil, depending on how many there will be.

The Nutcranker works marvelously, btw.