09/23/12 Black Walnut Gathering

Did you know that the Maryland Department of Natural Resources collects Black Walnut pods that have dropped into people's yards? These pods are collected at various sites all around the state and transported to  the state sapling nurseries where they are planted and cared for. The resulting sapling that grow are then sold to the public at cost for private planting. All of this to help re-establish the black walnut tree in Maryland, a native species!

Our next door neighbors, Andy and Robin and their kids collected the walnuts from our trees a few years ago, but we decided to gathering them this time ourselves. George bought us two buckets at Home Depot while I emailed the DNR to make sure they still wanted them and to find out the procedure for turning over what we collected.

There is a drop site up at the Maintenance Building near the Ranger's residence in Gambrill State Park, a few short miles from our house (and where we got married). So, out we went into our great backyard to see what we could find. We managed to collect about 11 gallons of walnuts! Both buckets were mounded over, and of course, tipped over in the car on the way to the park. My hands were a little stinky after the pick-up because the walnuts "skunk"  their odor on your hands.

  

When we got to the drop off site, we followed the signs around to the back of the building where we found transport crates to deposit them into. We dumped in our haul and filled a crate just over half-way full. Examining the other crates, we noticed that people had dropped off some walnut pods that were partially rotted or the pod was punctured or broken open. We had sorted all of these out from our load into a lawn/leaf bag and had planned to drop them out at Heritage farm to be composted. Perhaps we will have to bring them up...

 
 We each posed with the transport bin. I think I held Sutter too tightly, as he mushed his eyes shut while we smiled for our picture. Of course, he was much happier riding home on George's chest, smiling while the wind whipped his fur around. Sweet boy.