the
power to run the husker. The nuts are run through the husker a couple of
times to assure a clean job of husking. The cleanly husked nuts drop
into a basket at the end of the husker. Only 3 minutes or slightly more
time is required to turn out a bushel of husked nuts. The freshly husked
nuts are washed in a large copper kettle of water by vigorously stirring
them a few minutes with a common garden hoe. About 1-1/2 bushels of nuts
are washed in each batch. All nuts that float lightly on the water are
skimmed off and discarded. The nuts are then spread out about 2 or 3
nuts deep on trays to dry. The frames of the trays are made of 1x3 inch
lumber and are 1-1/2 feet wide and 3-1/2 feet long; 3/4 inch mesh
galvanized chicken wire netting forms the bottoms of the trays. Walnuts
dried indoors in the shade produce lighter colored and finer flavored
kernels than do those dried outdoors in the sun and rain. When nuts are
being dried indoors, care should be taken to see that they have a good
circulation of air or the nuts may start molding in the early stages of
their curing. Although the outside of the walnut shells may dry off
quite rapidly, it takes considerable more time for the inside of the nut
to cure properly for storing. The nuts should be left on the trays for a
few weeks to insure thorough curing.

[Illustration]

The cracking of the nuts is done with one of the small mechanical
crackers that is to be found on the market. The more care exercised in
the cracking at the nuts, the less work and time will be required in
separating the kernels. After cracking the nuts they are sifted through
a series of screens. This helps very materially in preparing them for
rapidly picking their kernels. It is quite important that this
operation be done properly if the kernel picking is to be made simple
and rapid. The cracked nuts are first sifted through a screen made of
1-inch mesh chicken wire netting. Next the nuts are sifted through a
screen made of 1/2-inch mesh hardware cloth. All material which will not
pass through this screen should be kept separate. Some of these pieces
will require recracking and kernel picking with the fingers. The
material which has passed through the 1/2-inch mesh screen is now sifted
on a hardware cloth screen with 5 meshes to the inch. Only the very fine
material will pass through this screen which is not suitable for further
kernel recovery. The material which remains on the 1/2-inch mesh screen