Walnuts Grow on Trees

There is one ingredient that is optional in a chocolate chip cookie. The addition of nuts. Preferably walnuts. For it has one of the strongest flavors of nuts that can compete with the richness of chocolate and sweetness of a cookie. It stands out compared to an almond or pecan.  

But many of us have only seen walnuts sold in stores. We have not seen a walnut tree or looked at the fruit as it greens on the branch.  Last month I visited a walnut farm that is considered small.  It is 40 acres. Still, for its size, the trees, arranged in a grid like pattern, spread across a lush green terrain out into the distance.  In the spring the earth is covered with leguminous growth to fixate nitrogen in the soil so the trees can continue to be provided all the nutrients needed to manage a sustainable ecosystem.  

Old Dog Ranch is a spectacle of a farm. They have been harvesting walnuts for four generations. Walnut trees in California are grown by grafting. The root is of an older varietal that is hearty and can withstand a plethora of diseases and another varietal is carved into the trunk and grows from it.  The trees tower in height to about twenty feet as they are about thirty years old, just almost touching each other at their tips.

I came in early spring and the trees were not yet blooming. I intend to go back in October and see the harvest of the fruits and the trees get shaken and the fruits get swept up for processing.  

There are a lot of steps to get to the nut, starting with collecting all the green fruits.

When scaling up to produce tons of walnuts, machinery is needed. Rather than people with ladders reaching out to pick each walnut, a machine grabs the trunk and vibrates the whole tree. Because the fruit is ripe and ready, this agitation jostles them enough to fall off all at once. Then special machines sweep up the fruit in a collector bin to be transported off site to process further.  I am amazed at the ingenuity to reduce time and reap bigger harvests and want to know now how to scale down to a localized size of framework if there were two or three trees in my neighborhood to process.

My in-laws had a walnut tree in their backyard.  I once tried to collect some fruit of my own, but was fighting for the fruit with squirrels. They loved that tree. I also couldn’t figure out how to get them to get to the pit so readily so I am eager to see this done in the processing plant.  

One tip I found when adding nuts to cookies is that it is beneficial to pretoast.  I always thought that the baking time would toast the nuts in the dough but it is not enough time.  So when pre-toasted nuts are mixed in, they have a lot stronger of a flavor added to the overall cookie. And I find nuts or a nut equivalent is necessary for a cookie to move it into the category of a snack and not a treat. They also provide some necessary crunch contrast to keep the palate interested.