I’m always on the hunt for Hickory Nuts! Today I walked around the Gettysburg Battlefield looking for the elusive hickory nuts. I didn’t find any! Calm down Ryan. You’ll find some soon!
The hickory nuts are just about ready to fall for 2018. The squirrels are up there eating them, so I know they’re about to fall! It will be a few more days until they are ready to fall. If the squirrels don’t eat them all.
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yo this is Ryan I am taking a little
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stroll in the woods near my house I’m
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doing the first check for hickory nuts
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super excited I will say this year I
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haven’t really been looking at the trees
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a lot of times I’ll walk around and
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check out the trees and this year this
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summer I didn’t so I’m pretty excited to
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thought I heard one falling pretty
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excited to come out here and just see
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how they’re doing
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okay so there’s a shag bark you can see
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this one happens to be so shaggy
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it’s literally peeling off
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I will sustainably harvest some of this
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bark off of a shagbark hickory I don’t
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over harvest but I know where there’s
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enough trees that I can pull a little
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bit off of each tree so if you want some
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hickory shagbark hickory bark smoke and
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I’m not talking about getting high I’m
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talking about smoking your meats man all
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right man look I’m investigating look
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what we got
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signs of debris I’ll tell you exactly
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what that is that’s a squirrel
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stealing my hickory nuts I’m just
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kidding the hickory nuts are there sue
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I’ll share I’ll be happy to share these
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with the squirrels now when they start
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hitting the ground denim not as happy so
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when you see this kind of debris laying
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around that’s really green and broken
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that means essentially that the nuts
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inside there are good enough to eat
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they’re probably they probably have a
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lot of tannins and they’re really hard
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to get to unless you’ve got big squirrel
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teeth and you know you are a squirrel I
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found that it’s really not worth the
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effort to get to those green nuts so
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what you see now is just the shells
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basically I mean there I heard one and
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when they do fall the squirrels are
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roaming the ground looking for those
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green ones and and prying them open and
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here’s one they’re busy over here the
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squirrels so you see what I mean
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you can’t really get to that you can’t
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get to it
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in a couple weeks when they start
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hitting the ground they’ll essentially
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just they’ll be so dry that they
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essentially just hit the ground
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crack open sometimes they’re so dry that
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they actually just break while they’re
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falling there and then you go around
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with your nut wizard and you just pick
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them up I’ll show you that when they
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start falling but today these hickory
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trees are not giving me edible food this
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is just not worth the time but the good
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news is that it seems like there’s gonna
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be a lot of eat green nuts up in the
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tree
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so I’ll come back and check on these in
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a couple weeks so for now what I’m going
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to do is spend my time mapping these
You just got some hickory nuts. Good for you! Your mouth is about to explode with the delicious nutty flavor. In my humble opinion there is no better nut!
I want you to get maximum enjoyment out of these nuts. Here are a few tips.
How to Get that Goodness in You
It’s an age old problem: cracking nuts and getting that delicious, wholesome nut meat in your body! Back in the stone ages
they used stones to crack nuts. Just hit the nut with a stone. I image they used something like a porcupine quill or stick to dig the meat out.
Thankfully, today we have nut crackers and nut picks.
Hickory nuts aren’t especially hard, so a regular old, hand-held nut cracker is just fine. If you’re sitting around watching a movie or hanging out with friends then that is the best way. Just crack and eat.
If you are doing a lot of nut cracking then you might want to get something more heavy-duty like this nut cracker.
How to Prepare Hickory Nuts
Raw
Raw is the most simple. This is how I eat them. Just get your nut cracker and pick and start eating! You can bake with them or eat them straight.
Roasted
Roasted are the next simple and they take the taste to new levels! Simply spread out the nuts on a cookie sheet. The don’t have to be shelled. Put them in the oven at 300° for 60-90 minutes. If they are shelled then you can sprinkle a little tiny bit of veggie oil and salt.
Once they are roasted then you can bake with them or eat them straight.
Pies
Use hickory nuts in place of pecans in pecan pie! So good
Milk
You can make a hickory nut milk. I mix it into smoothies and ice cream, but you can drink it straight. It is so good for you and tastes amazing.
If your hickory nuts are already cracked then they may not last as long, but they will still last for a long time. If they are cracked then we recommend you put them in a zip lock back or vacuum sealer and put them in the freezer. if you don’t do that then keep them in a zip lock bag at least.
Whole
You could just put them on the counter and come back and eat them a year or more later and they would taste just as amazing. Likewise if you put them in a zip lock bag or vacuum seal and put them in the freezer they will last you years.
A Few Quick Points
Be careful of the shells! They can drive in between your teeth like a wedge and split a tooth. I had this happen to a friend. Just take a little extra time to make sure you got every little piece of shell out before you pop back a handful
Do you have a black walnut or any kind of nut tree? Every year you dread when they drop into your yard. They are so hard to crack that it’s not worth it. Maybe you do have a black walnut cracker, but it only does one at a time. Yeah right!
Those black walnuts are money! They’re free nutrition falling from your tree!
This page is still a draft, so email me or comment below if you want more info.
Obviously I sell nuts, so I needed a way to crack a lot of nuts quickly. I did a lot of research and kept coming back to the Best Black Walnut Cracker. So I bit the bullet and bought this nut cracker. I’m super glad I did!
I’ve been using this nut cracker for a season. I can’t say if it’s the best crank; because, it’s the only one I’ve ever used. Either way it’s a game changer!
Here are a few things I love about it.
It’s fast! I was cracking each nut one at a time. I have a lot of nuts to churn through and this lets me do it fast.
It’s solid! I can tell that it’s well made. I suspect if I use it correctly then it will last me the rest of my life.
Noelectricity. I know not everybody sees that as a good thing. It means you have to actually turn that crank with your muscles. I see it as extending its life. If the grid ever goes down this thing will still crack the nuts in my yard. Also, motors are complicated and there’s a lot more to go wrong.
I’m certain it will pay for itself. I sell my nuts, but even if all I did was eat the nuts myself it would pay for itself.
Of course this nut cracker cracks more than just black walnuts. It will crack basically any nut that is round. I use it for my hickory nuts and I’m certain it will work for macadamia nuts and maybe even acorns.
If you want to process lots of nuts, especially the notoriously difficult black walnut, then you should definitely purchase this nut cracker.
For this model it’s $459, but I think it’s worth every cent for a lifetime tool.
I made it easy. You can purchase directly from the manufacturer by using the PayPal link below. Please tell them HickoryNuts.net sent you! PLEASE TELL THEM I SENT YOU. THAT HELPS ME OUT.
