Black Walnut Trees

Black walnut trees are a familiar sight here on Blackberry Farm landscapes. The trees can reach heights from 40 to 60 feet, and one highly prizes them for their lumber, which is used by furniture makers and artisans who create wooden bowls, sculptures and other creative works. The heartwood of walnut trees is a dark tan color which has beautiful tones when polished.

Walnuts have a very rich, nutty flavor and were highly prized by our early ancestors here in the East Tennessee region. The nuts were shelled and spread out to dry, and then stored in containers for Winter use. There were varying recipes for the use of black walnuts. Some were spread out on the fireplace hearth and roasted and then salted.

One of my favorite cakes is the old fashion black walnut cake, which consists of seven layers. The walnuts lend a wonderful rich flavor to the cake and bring back the memories from long since forgotten times.

I remember that on a number of occasions when I was on long walks through the woods in October and November, I would find myself under a large walnut tree, and the ground would be covered with black walnuts. I would use two rocks to crack open the hard shells and feast on the nuts that I shelled out. Sometimes there would be a persimmon tree nearby with fully ripe persimmons, which when eaten with walnuts then created a wonderful dessert and a great boost of energy.

In the 1700s and 1800s, the mature walnut hulls were boiled in water to create a dark brown dye for cloth. For my own artistic purposes, I have used dark black walnuts to make a dark brown ink which I used for writing and drawing.

A friend of mine had an interesting experience a number of years ago. He had spread a number of black walnuts out to dry in one of his sheds. After about a week, he noticed that a number of the walnuts came up missing, but in the spaces where the nuts were missing, they were replaced with hickory nuts. This went on over a period of time until all of the walnuts were gone and nothing but hickory nuts remained. My friend finally solved the mystery when he saw squirrels bringing hickory nuts to the shed and leaving with walnuts. My friend’s comment was that “them squirrels figured that they was making a fair trade.”

– John Coykendall, Blackberry Farm Master Gardener