It appears some nut lovers are busy looking for the finest trees, the choicest limbs, and probably marking them in some way to be sure to revisit come harvest time.
Angelkeep has plenty of black walnut trees even though the power company eliminated one or two stately trees in their juvenile years, about the time they began blooming and producing nuts. But the Angelkeep Grand-daddy of black walnut trees thrives on the south shore of Angelpond. Nearby, with branches caressing one another, grows a child of the first. It’s also old enough now to produce nuts.
Come fall, the two-tree family will announce in its own way that the tree limbs will be releasing the 2023 crop. They do so by using the overhanging limbs stretched out well beyond the shoreline of Angelpond.
Probably mentioned in this column previously, but when the large nuts inside the tennis-ball-size husk drop from those limbs, they create quite a splash. From the highest limbs the splash rivals a nice foot-long bass caught on a night crawler harness while leaping out of the pond in an attempt to shake off the hook and prevent itself from becoming a skillet fry. Splash! And concentric ripples radiate from ground zero all the way across the pond surface, marking the end of the high-dive event. Splash! There goes another one.
Black walnuts are a three-season wonder. In spring, not so long ago, those very limbs bloomed. Again the event happens so high overhead that it often goes unnoticed until the bloom begins to fall and Angelpond’s shoreline has a floating band of walnut bloom.
Angelkeep only has one variety, Juglans nigra, or eastern American black walnuts. Many care little for the pungent taste and husk aroma of black walnuts. Angelkeep will not again try, as it did one season, in gathering, husking, breaking shells, and picking out the nut meat. It’s a lot of work that stains hands purple even through Jersey gloves. No, the new crop will forever be allowed to go to the squirrels. After all, it may have been one of their ancestors who planted the first walnut at the edge of the pond to create Grand-daddy Walnut. A walnut tree’s nuts are actually seeds.
A cup or two placed in a white cake mix makes a mighty fine black walnut cake, especially if topped with cream cheese frosting. It’s easier to buy the shelled nut meats at the grocery, although pricy.
Angelkeep’s walnut has both male and female bloom, in the science word called monoecious. The male blooms are what drop and gather at the shore of Angelpond making a greenish-brown belt all around the pond about half a foot wide. It’s an early sign of how large the walnut crop will be in autumn. Raked from the pond it provides some Angelkeep opportunity to add to the compost pile.
Male blooms, called staminate catkins, grow to four inches. Angelkeep Grand-daddy Walnut produces some even a bit longer in April and May. Dangling from the tree, high on the branches, they give the same festive look as tinsel icicles hanging on last December’s Christmas tree. The mast year for 2023 had an early start. According to the catkins dropped into the pond, and walnuts now visually seen hanging over the pond, it should be a very noisy and exciting fall when the nuts, or mast, falls into the pond.
The squirrels get their own share which fall on the ground beyond the pond’s edge. Some will be buried for winter. Squirrely rodents forget where they buried them. That’s why Angelkeep will never be without a black walnut tree. New trees are found often.
Another reason Angelkeep will have walnuts forever is the fact that Grand-daddy Walnut will live to about the age of 130. It currently is approximately about two decades old, the prime age of producing large mature crops of nuts.
Fox squirrels love the black walnuts as much as the Angelkeep Journals’ writer. Fox squirrels are an entertainment in themselves. It might be fox squirrels that begin dropping the nuts into Angelpond for the loud plopping splash. They might drop a nut picked off the branch for their own use. Angelkeep never saw a fox squirrel fall into the pond. Angelkeep witnessed them sailing through the air moving from one branch to the other, as though they have mastered the flying trapeze.
Aerial fox squirrels. Diving walnuts. It’s circus time at Angelkeep.
Dad made up a recipe for homemade black walnut flavored ice cream. Angelkeep misses Dad. Angelkeep misses his homemade black walnut ice cream.
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
