After washing, drying and curing, we hand sort our walnuts into 3 sizes, unlike most vendors who just mix them all together. The smallest of the 3 sizes, generally about 50% of the crop, we sell as “squirrel nuts” for several reasons: there are a lot of people who feed their squirrels, the squirrels don’t care about nut size, they are happier having more nuts per box, and saving the larger nuts means less hand cracking for the people using the nuts for eating and baking. The “squirrel nuts” are perfectly fine for those who want to use the nuts for eating and baking but, for we list the larger 50% of the crop as being for “eating/baking.” Out of this group, we take the largest roughly 10% and sell them as “extra large” nuts. This is the size we crack at home because there are the fewest number of nuts to crack to get a pound of nutmeat.
Our Fall 2023 crop was comparable to the 2022 crop, which was noticeably smaller than the bumper crop we had in 2021, and there was an unusual number of really small nuts. Normally these extra small nuts get mixed in with the rest of the “squirrel nuts” because squirrels are just as happy eating them. We had so many this year (about 10% of the “squirrel nuts”) that we decided to pick those out and sell them as extra-small “chipmunk nuts.” Chipmunks are normally okay with all of the “squirrel nuts” but we thought that they might prefer a nut size that’s more in line with their little size.
Subject to availability, these 5 choices are:
10 lbs. BLACK WALNUTS in the shell – Fall 2023 crop – X-Small for chipmunks & squirrels
10 lbs. BLACK WALNUTS in the shell – Fall 2023 crop – for you or the squirrels
6 lbs. BLACK WALNUTS in the shell – Fall 2023 crop – for eating/baking
10 lbs. BLACK WALNUTS in the shell – Fall 2023 crop – for eating/baking
9 lbs BLACK WALNUTS in the shell – Fall 2023 crop – EXTRA LARGE for eating/baking (these sell out fast!)