Got nuts? Boy, we sure do!

I posted this over on my Knoxville Trivia blog earlier today but thought I would put it on Tug's Life as well.

Growing up here in East, TN, we always had an abundance of Walnuts. I never much cared for the things as a kid but my dad always made us gather them up so he could lay them out in the sun to dry. He would eat them over the winter. I always remember a 5-gallon bucket of walnuts sitting in the basement beside dad's workbench. He would crack them open on a piece of metal and eat them on occasion.

Here it is 30-years later and I'm torturing my son with picking walnuts up out of the backyard so I can dry them out and eat them later on. I'm still not a great big fan of the taste of walnuts. I prefer almonds, cashews, or peanuts. But, hey, walnuts are free and boy do we have a bunch this year!

I didn't know until this morning, that the technical name for the American Black Walnut is Juglans Nigra. If I had known that as a kid I certainly would have steered clear of them! I also discovered that there is a "Walnut Council," seriously!

I started out by cranking up the old leaf blower and tried to blow most of the leaves out of the way. Then we raked as many as we could into piles on the ground. The whole time we were gathering nuts, the wind was blowing and more nuts were falling off of the tree all around us. My son thought it would be cool if one fell off of the tree and hit him in the head. So, when he wasn't looking, I tossed one at him. I missed his head and hit him the leg. At first he thought it had fallen out of the tree, but common sense prevailed and he knew I was guilty.

We had more walnuts this year than I've ever seen in my life. There was hundreds of them scattered all over the ground. We found a couple of nice ones. One was double jointed, which kept Matthew giggling, saying it looked like a butt. We called it "Shreks butt." Then we found another double with a single still adjoined. Exciting stuff, right? We ended up collecting 5-milk crates full of walnuts. We spread them out on a tarp underneath the playground. I guess they'll do ok under there. If not, who really cares? I had a lot of fun just hanging out with my son on a beautiful Saturday East, TN day.