19 18 



BETTER FRUIT 



Page 13 



Harvesting & Packing California Walnut Crop 



By L. D. Batchelor, University of California Citras Experiment Station, Riverside, California 



A GENERAL review of the walnut 

 harvest and methods used in pre- 

 paring walnuts for market may be of 

 interest to fruit growers who are about 

 to enter this industry. In the following 

 discussion the various steps in handling 

 the crop, from the trees to the freight 

 car, are briefly described. 



The harvesting and packing of the 

 walnut crop extends over a period of 

 about two months. The harvest season 

 usually begins about September 1, and 

 as the walnuts mature the shucks crack 

 open and the ripened nuts fall to the 

 ground, leaving the shucks attached to 

 the twigs. Dropping of the nuts is hast- 

 ened by shaking the trees by means of 

 hooks fastened on long poles. This 

 makes only about two or three pickings 

 necessary. Some trees have a tendency 

 to ripen the crop all at once, while 

 other specimens may mature the nuts 

 throughout a period of two or three 

 weeks. 



Under normal conditions there is little 

 or no difTiculty experienced in shucking 

 the nuts. Occasionally, however, they 

 become sunburned and the shucks stick 

 tightly to the fallen nuts. This difficulty 

 is more pronounced on the light soils 

 and in groves which are underlaid by 

 gravel subsoil or which have lacked 

 sufficient irrigation. Trees which are 

 suffering for want of water, or trees 

 which may have become too dry at any 

 time during the growing season, often 

 drop their nuts with the shucks on and 

 shed a portion of their leaves at the 

 same time; the nuts may or may not 

 be sunburned in this case. The hand 

 shucking of such nuts and searching for 

 them in the leaves adds considerable 

 to the cost of harvesting and should be 

 prevented if possible. An application 

 of irrigation water just before harvest 

 aids normal maturity of the nuts and 

 prevents some of the early dropping of 

 leaves. 



The methods of harvesting are simple, 

 consisting of merely picking up the crop 

 and bagging them in ordinary barley 

 sacks. This work is generally done by 

 Mexican labor under contract. The cost 

 of such labor ranges from forty to fifty 

 cents per sack or eighty cents to one 

 dollar per hundred pounds. 



The nuts are usually washed on the 

 ranch by running them through a re- 

 volving cylindrical drum made of coarse 

 wire netting on which a stream of water 

 plays as the nuts pass through. This 

 removes all dirt and small portions of 

 husks. Barbed wire braces are some- 

 times woven across the cylinder to as- 

 sist in removing the sunl)urncd shucks. 



In case the nuts arc reasonably free 

 from dirt and there are no attached 

 portions of sunburned husks, the wash- 

 ing process may be omitted. Such nuts 

 which have not been washed will bleach 

 more readily than washed nuts. Wash- 

 ing may stain the nuts slightly, as por- 

 tions of blighted husks in the wash 

 water make it as highly colored as 

 strong tea. 



After washing, the nuts must be thor- 

 oughly dried before rcsacking. Methods 



of drying vary with the size of the crop 

 to be handled and climatic conditions. 

 Small growers in the southern sections 

 usually dry the crop in the open. The 

 nuts are placed in shallow trays about 

 six inches by three feet by six feet. 

 The bottoms of the trays are made of 

 laths placed about one-half inch apart. 

 The nuts are not allowed to remain long 

 in the direct sunlight after washing, as 

 very rapid drying causes them to crack. 

 This trouble is more acute with some 

 of the poorly sealed varieties. During 

 sunny weather the trays may be spread 

 out for a few hours each morning and 

 then stacked up again after the nuts 

 have been stirred several times and be- 

 come thoroughly warmed up. Such a 

 process requires from five to seven days 

 before the nuts are dry enough to go to 

 the packing house. 



Drying houses have been erected by 

 some of the growers in an effort to save 

 much of the labor in connection with 

 the tray method. These houses are built 

 with lath outer walls to give ample 

 ventilation. The drying bins are made 

 principally of wire cloth on a light 

 wooden framework. The bins are about 

 twelve inches deep, arranged one above 

 another. The floor of each bin is built 

 in sections, with each section held in 

 place by a pivot. The pivots are at- 

 tached to a lever, the movement of 

 which dumps the contents to the bin 

 below. The drying space is thus com- 

 posed of six or seven shallow wire 

 screen bins; and the nuts are thoroughly 

 stirred as they are dumped from one 

 bin to another. 



Nuts will dry in such packing houses 

 in from five to nine days, depending on 

 the weather conditions, the location of 

 the house and its surroundings. 



At some time during the washing and 

 drying process on the ranch, the nuts 

 are picked over to cull out the inferior 

 specimens. The cull grade includes all 

 cracked and perforated nuts, as well as 

 those on which a portion of husk is 

 still sticking. In the most elaborate 

 drying houses this hand picking of the 

 culls is done both as the nuts pass over 

 a belt on the way to the drying bins and 

 again as they are carried on a belt com- 

 ing from the bins to be sacked. 



After being sacked on the ranch the 

 nuts are delivered to the packing houses, 

 where the crop is graded for size, 

 bleached, and prepared for market. As 

 each load arrives at the packing house 

 it is sampled and the "crack" deter- 

 mined; that is, the number of good 

 meats is determined in a hundred nuts 

 picked at random. For example, one 

 packing house takes a double handful 

 of nuts from each tenth sack of a load 

 and then fifty to a hundred of these 

 nuts are cracked to find the percentage 

 of good nuts. Thus a "crack of ninety" 

 means there are ninety good nuts per 

 hundred. This is usually the percent- 

 age demanded at the association pack- 

 ing houses. 



The nuts are first screened to take out 

 dirt, small sticks, etc. Also as the whole 

 lot passes over the cleaning screen on 



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the way to the cylinder grader, the nuts 

 which have no meats in them and are 

 therefore lighter than normal, are re- 

 moved. The removal of these light- 

 weight culls is accomplished by a suc- 

 tion grader which is regulated so it 

 has sulTicient power to readily pick up 

 the blank nuts, but not power enough to 

 pick up sound nuts. 



The grades are determined by the size, 

 and grading is accomplished by passing 

 the nuts through a revolving wire cylin- 

 der. Nuts passing through square holes 

 1%2 inches in size are known as seconds, 

 while those which drop through a li%2- 

 inch hole are graded as firsts; and the 

 grade of nuts which is too large to drop 



Continued on page 17 



