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Gaffer Variety:
The Mighty Black Walnut V053:
By Willie Gaffer:
August 14, 2006:
One day in early spring, Mrs. Gaffer was preparing one of her many flower beds. She dug up what she thought was a weed, only to find it was attached to a rather large nut buried in the earth. She brought the whole mess to me and asked me what it was. I recognized the nut immediately. It was a black walnut. These nuts are unmistakable once you have seen one. Mrs. Gaffer had never seen one, but I had. I suggested she replant the baby tree in a pot and try to nurture it. It had the potential of growing into a mighty tree.
I do not use the word, mighty, carelessly. These trees can live as long as 250 years. They can grow to a height of 100 feet or more and they have massive trunks which can reach a diameter of three feet. Mighty indeed. The mature trees produce nuts, such as the one Mrs. Gaffer dug up, in abundance. The nutmeat, almost impossible to extract from the shell without a heavy hammer, are sought after for the making of confections. Most people would not like to eat them straight up. They have a heavy oily flavor which, in limited amounts, enhance the flavor of things like cakes and cookies.
I can testify to the effectiveness of these nuts in baked goods. My older sister, now deceased, lived in a small rural community near Ida, Michigan. I visited her often for many reason, but one reason was surely to sample her baked stuff. She used these nutmeats often. For sure, she had a local source of supply. That's handy because these nuts are usually quite rare. It turned out that many of her farmer neighbors had these black walnut trees growing in the hedgerows which separated their fields.
Collecting the nuts, with the neighbor's permission, was quite easy in the fall. Getting the meats out of the shells was not so easy. I participated in the process one time. The deal was to set the nut on a small anvil and whack it with a hammer. That was the easy part. Collecting up the pieces and sorting them was the tedious part. We ended up with a small bowl full of tiny pieces of nutmeat. They were just fine for putting in cookies and cakes.
These trees are indigenous to Michigan and used to be quite plentiful. That was before the noble lumber barons raped the state to provide lumber for the expanding western migration. At that time they did not differentiate between slow growing hardwood and fast growing softwood. They just stripped the earth and shipped the lumber west Many of those quaint Western towns were built with lumber from Michigan and Ohio. You would think the people who performed this rape would be vilified in Michigan. It's quite the contrary. Many of these lumber barons have streets named after them in Detroit. Go figure! They are, after all, wealthy and wealth, however gained, is honored in America.
That is not the only reason the black walnut is a rare tree. The wood is highly valued in the furniture and cabinet making industries. It is much sought after. Of course, with this demand, the inevitable results followed. Michigan has a burgeoning business in the pirating of these trees from wherever they are. The criminals have developed their skills to a high degree. I was told by one of my sister's neighbors how effective they were. They could actually come in with chainsaws and trucks and be out with the entire tree in less than 20 minutes. By the time the landowner heard the chainsaws it was already too late. Short of setting guards on each tree, they were almost impossible to catch in the act. For sure, for a farmer to have his whole family out guarding trees all night wold not be productive.
You only have to see a piece of furniture made of this wood to realize how beautiful it is. For sure, a person would have to be crazy to paint this wood. Unfortunately, many of our ancestors were crazy or stupid. I have seen many historical buildings where the woodwork, solid walnut, was painted over with some kind of dark, usually black, paint. One of the people near Ida had a home which was treated that way. The young woman who inherited that home spent a great deal of money to get that wood removed, stripped of its blasphemy, and replaced. She then used a transparent sealer and a good clear polyurethane to enhance the natural beauty.
Now, what about the tree Mrs. Gaffer dug up? Where in the world did it come from? My best guess is, it was planted there by a rodent, most likely a squirrel. Now we can guess a squirrel is not going to travel cross country to plant a nut. He will plant it very close to where he found it. I believe that is the case here too. Somewhere, very close to our home, at least one black walnut tree is growing and it is large enough to produce nuts.
Thinking about that, I remember several year ago when I was younger and more vigorous. At that time, we purchase and planted a few black walnut seedlings. Mrs. Gaffer and I have always been practicing environmentalists. We don't go around carrying signs, disrupting commerce, and generally making asses of ourselves, We respect and try to nurture and preserve the environment. To that end, we have planted somewhere near 6000 trees. A few of these were black walnuts. I figured, they would eventually mature and be useful. Apparently, that is happening. I expect to make a exploratory walk this fall, after the mosquitoes are gone.
I also remember why we did not plant these trees very close to our home and garden. These trees have a unique way of acquiring the territory they need to grow. The tree roots actually produce a toxin which is fatal to many other plants. It's a jungle out there! The technical name for this toxin is 5-hydroxy-alphanapthaquinone. It permeates the soil around the tree, sometimes up to a distance of 80 feet. It is particularly hard on the nightshades. The plants we call tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers are of the nightshade species. If we had planted these trees close to our home, that would have been the end of our garden.
Finally, to get back to the tree Mrs. Gaffer potted. The plan
was to pt it out in the same area as the other trees. We did not
get the opportunity. A few days after she planted it a damned
chipmunk dug it up to get the nut. That gives me one more reason
to off that pesky little creature. My son asked me if I intended
to shoot it with a rifle. We both had a good laugh and opened
a couple more beers. Actually, I intend to get a home defense
weapon for the task. A tool like that might also be useful if
some fools decided to pirate trees from my fields. A home defense
weapon is really a short barreled (16 inch) shotgun. It's legal
for Remington to sell those, but it is illegal for me to saw off
a regular shotgun to make one. Go figure.
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