Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993 TAG: 9310290136
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Lots of black walnuts, that come inside those green balls that drop in back yards and fields and along roadsides when no one's looking. Those things you don't notice until you stumble over them while giving your lawn one last swipe with the mower and stain your hands a nearly-indelible dark brown when you pick them up.
Black walnuts - which sport a black shell inside their green hulls - come from the tree of the same name, known among furniture makers for its heavy, dark hardwood.
You've probably had your kids bag them up for a trip to the landfill, not realizing you were throwing money away.
Well, now you can haul them to the green machine, which makes the cookie monster look like a real piker. The green machine will gobble up your black walnuts, and Mitchell, of Mitchell Fertilizer, will pay cash in return. Not a lot of cash, but money just the same. After all, there's no free lunch for the green machine.
Mitchell Fertilizer on Lucas Street is one of two New River Valley businesses buying black walnuts this season. (Bryson General Store in Draper is the other.)
An uncultivated and sometimes overlooked crop, black walnuts are in bumper supply in the New River Valley. For those willing to harvest them, it's almost money for nothing. And the green machine is hungry. Very hungry.
It's also fun to watch. Powered by a gasoline engine, the green machine - actually a Hammons Hulling Machine - has a Rube Goldberg quality to it. Workers with large shovels scoop the rubbery-looking green balls from a pickup truck bed into a hopper. Almost as fast as they can feed it, the machine laps up the green balls with its conveyor belt and swallows them whole, along with miscellaneous sticks and leaves, clanking and clattering all the while.
Chains inside the belly of the mechanical beast "literally beat the hulls off the walnuts," Mitchell explains.
The machine spits dark, hulled nuts into recycled onion bags from a chute, filling a sack in about two minutes. A second conveyor belt carries off crushed hulls, now looking like bark mulch, into the bed of a large dump truck.
A local farm spreads the hull waste on its pastureland. "They end up somewhere in the vicinity of a 3-3-3 fertilizer," said Mitchell. The hulls are rather acidic.
Four to five bushels of green balls yield 100 pounds of hulled walnuts, which now earn the harvester $10 from Mitchell. However, the price is subject to change without notice.
Each onion bag holds about 40 pounds, and a short pickup bed of unhulled walnuts will fill 15 or more of them.
The hulled walnuts go to the Hammons Company in Missouri, which leases the green machine to Mitchell and other buying stations. Hammons cracks the hard nutshells and removes the meat for processing.
Mitchell said those bringing in black walnuts to feed the green machine are mostly individuals, though some groups collect them to raise money.
Last season - their first with the green machine - Mitchell Fertilizer bagged about two tons of hulled walnuts. This year, with the harvest just under way, the green machine has processed about four tons.
Mitchell Fertilizer will accept black walnuts through the middle of November.
Most black-walnut trees are found in the open, rather than in the woods, says Virginia Cooperative Extension Agent Joe Hunnings. He advises prospective harvesters to look for them along fence rows, roadways and pastures and to get the landowner's permission before collecting.
He also recommends that harvesters wear gloves to avoid stains from the pulp inside the hull.
For more information, call Mitchell Fertilizer, 382-2965.
by CNB