Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting | Page 9

Stoke: I line it with wax paper. I made a form and fold the wax paper around it to get the size. This makes a neat lining and then I just pour in the nuts and fold the top down.
Mr. Graham: Do you notice much difference in the kernels?
Mr. Stoke: Not in black walnuts. I found a few nuts which I could not use. The best nuts I found this year were in and about our locality.
Mr. Smith: Did you try offering prizes? Mr. Hershey and I once got almost tipsy testing a lot of walnuts in a prize contest.
Mr. Stoke: No. The best nuts I got would score not higher than the Thomas. They were brought in by different people and mixed together so that I was unable to tell their source.
The President: Do you do your separating of kernel and shell by hand?
Mr. Stoke: Yes. I use sieves, too. I use first a 3/8 x 3/4 inch mesh. It will take out most of the shell. Then for a minimum size, the best is 8 mesh to an inch, as used by the Forest Park Nut Co., Ottawa, Kans. This is smaller mesh and eliminates the smaller bits of shell.
Mr. Hershey: Did you have any correspondence with those people?
Mr. Stoke: I was interested in their machine for cracking nuts and I wrote the company a letter. Two or three months later I received a letter from Mr. Werner, a son of Mr. C. E. Werner, and who signed himself as Len Werner of the Werner Steel Products Co., and I received details and facts about the machine. He asked me if I would be interested in buying a machine or renting on a basis of kernel production. The younger Mr. Werner said they built the machine for themselves but could supply orders if they came in.
Miss Sawyer: Did you get any information on the price?
Mr. Stoke: No, none whatever. It seems to be taken from place to place mounted on a truck and cracks the nuts right on the job.
Mr. Reed: Do you have any difficulty in cracking nuts when they are dry?
Mr. Stoke: The nut cracks best when not too wet or too dry but just right. If too dry, they are too brittle and you break up the kernels too much, also get too many spalls of shells. If wet you have other troubles. In the South and Southwest the summers get hot and so some nuts get rancid. The sweet type that have less oil seem to stand up better.
Question: Do you ever steam nuts before cracking?
Mr. Stoke: No, I haven't. To keep them in a damp atmosphere is also not good. Nuts should be kept dry while in storage. Kernels should also be kept in a dry place. I put them in trays of wire mesh and if the nuts are too green or I am in a hurry for them, I turn on the electric fan.
Last Fall I put some in cold storage in December. I also put some in cold storage in May and I found that I would not have needed to put any in cold storage until May as they have kept just as nicely as those stored earlier. But I find it is essential to have the kernels thoroughly dried before they are put away. If thoroughly dried they will not mold, but if kept in too warm a place they will turn rancid. To keep them in a damp atmosphere is also not good. If they are treated right they will keep indefinitely.
Dr. Zimmerman: Mr. Stoke, how many nuts did you crack?
Mr. Stoke: About 40,000 or 50,000 lbs.
Mr. Reed: What did you do with screenings?
Mr. Stoke: I fed them to the chickens. Some said that they would keep the chickens from laying but I found that by mixing about 25% with ordinary mash it worked fine.
Mr. Hershey: Did you find that it made the egg shells hard?
Mr. Stoke: No, the chickens had too much sense.
Question: What percent do you lose in sieving?
Mr. Stoke: When I did my fine sieving, I used a 4-inch screen. The shells were taken out entirely. I lost, maybe, 4%.
Prof. Reed: Do you people in Virginia have local names for different types of walnuts? What is the swamp black walnut?
Mr. Stoke: My own opinion is that there is only one black walnut in the East. We have a butternut that some people call the English walnut and some the white walnut. The Japanese walnut is sometimes called an English walnut. We also have the English or Persian walnut.
Prof. Reed: I believe the botanists recognize only the one black walnut.
Prof. Slate: I do not think there is more than one kind.
Mr. Stoke: It is interesting to know that while the black walnut has been higher