The motor on the huller rumbles as thuds resound when black walnuts hit the sides of the metal bin as shovel load after shovel load of what’s called “the Ozarks black gold” land in a hopper.
A pungent aroma - earthy, musky - rises from the mountains of hulls growing taller as the machine separates the soft hulls from the nuts. Older mounds are dark black, surrounded by fl ying insects on warmer days.
The nuts go into the hopper in varying shades of green, gray and black. The nuts pour out a chute a dark brown, falling into green mesh bags. The oily, smelly hulls come out a dark mush, rising up a conveyor belt to be shot o◊the end onto the growing mountain.
Sometime this winter the mush will be spread over fi elds.
Mike Bressler mans the hulling machine. Wearing gloves but no coat despite the chill of the day, he works hard all day - from about 8 a.m. until after 5 p.m. - helping customers unload walnuts, picking up strays and throwing them back into the hopper,scraping the dark husks out of the back of the huller when the mess begins to clog the gears and occasionally moving the huller severalfeet away from a too-tall mound to a new collection site. He carefully hooks the edges of the collection bags on the dispensingend of the huller, then ties them shut when they’re full. He throws the nearly 50-pound bags onto an antique scale.
Once the customer’s truck is empty, the machine is shut o◊, the silence a welcome respite from the rattling contraption powered by a gasoline engine.
Bressler weighs the nuts, writes the weight on a bill and hands it to the customer who will take the bill back to Webb Feed and Seed to collect $13 per hundred pounds of hulled nuts.
The bags of hulled walnuts are stacked on pallets in rows behind the mounds of decomposing hulls. The bags will be taken to Stockton, Mo., by truck after Nov. 4.
Bobby Williams of Springdale brought nearly 400 pounds of walnuts Friday. This was his third trip to Pea Ridge to Webb Feed and Seed. He said his two grandchildren, ages 4 and 10, like the extra money selling walnuts provides.
Laban Needham of Little Flock said he picks the walnuts up because he doesn’t like stepping on them.
For six days a week, trucks and cars, some pulling trailers, line up on the hillside waiting to unload the bushels, buckets and bags of walnuts gathered from yards and fi elds and woods.
“We’ve been doing this forever,” Doug McKinney said. The son of Fred McKinney and grandson of Hugh Webb Sr., the founder of Webb Feed and Seed, McKinney said he’s helped with the walnut collecting and hulling “all of my life.” He said they sold the walnuts to Gravette Shelling Company before Hammons purchased the fi rm.
“I hauled ’em myself,” Fred McKinney said, recalling the early 1950s when they bought the walnuts already hulled. “There are plenty of walnuts this year.
Last year was a bummer.”
Doug said his mother and sisters bake with black walnuts and especially remembered zucchini bread with black walnuts, which have a distinctly di◊erent fl avor than English walnuts.
The walnut hulling begins Oct. 1 and will continue until Nov. 4 this year. “We’ve done more in the last two weeks than all last year,” Doug McKinney said. He said the Pea Ridge huller processed about 6,000 pounds in 2012. As of Tuesday, they’ve bought nearly 50,000 pounds.
The McKinneys have been buying walnuts, husking them and selling them to Hammons Products longer than anybody and have been recognized at a huller appreciation banquet, said Tom Rutledge, vice president of Hammons of Stockton, Mo.
Rutledge said Hammons has 300 hulling machines and has 220 hullers this year across about 15 states. He said that, in Arkansas, most of the black walnuts come from the northern edge of the state close to the Missouri state line.
“They’ve been selling the walnuts the longest. They always are very pleasant to get along with. They do us a great job and always have,” Rutledge said of the McKinneys. “I enjoy going down to the old feed store - it’s a neat place.”
It’s been a bountiful year for walnuts, a boon compared to last year, according to Brian Hammons, president of Hammons Products Company. Hammons said that last year was the smallest crop gathered since 1990. He said his grandfather started the business in 1946.
The company purchased Gravette Shelling Company in the mid-1960s.
“Welcome to the online home of Hammons Products Company, the world’s premier processor and supplier of American Black Walnuts! Wild, handharvested Black Walnuts stand alone in the nut world as a fl avorful, nutritional ingredient to some of your favorite baked goods, dishes, and ice cream,” states the introduction to the Hammons website.
“This is not the walnut you find in the grocery store,” Hammons said. “It has a very rich and bold fl avor. People have been using it for generations in baking.”
“This year, we’re thankful we’ve got a much better harvest,” he said.
Bob and Beulah Prophet and son-in-law Henry Durand unloaded walnuts from bags and buckets and a trailer. After several trips, they had sold nearly 750 pounds of walnuts. Bob said he picks the walnuts up with a special wire cage on a stick that is rolled over the ground to collects the nuts.
Vickie Henson of Pea Ridge brought in nearly 400 pounds Tuesday. She said she still picks them up by hand.
Kenneth Craig of Woodard Holler, Mo., just north of the stateline, unloaded his second load Monday afternoon. He said he had taken two loads to Cassville, Mo.
“I’m retired,” Craig said, “and have nothing else to do but pick up walnuts.”
News, Pages 1 on 10/30/2013