nder and over, cure at room
temperature for about three days. If you cure longer than three days you
will lose quite a few of your nuts. That is a rapid cure. We have not
tried curing under cooler conditions to see if we can eliminate part of
the damage that is caused by deterioration, but curing the nuts rapidly
you get a deterioration on quite a few of the nuts after the third or
fourth day. If you take the raw nuts three days cured rapidly where the
air can circulate over and under, the quality is excellent raw, and I
have those nuts cured for three days in cellophane bags on cold storage
that can be sold throughout the year. Those nuts must be heated enough
to stop the deterioration, whatever it is. It may be a physiological
condition, I am not sure, it may be a vitamin reaction, I am not sure,
but when the nut dries too fast it turns white on the inside, gets hard,
loses its flavor, and it is no good.

This nut (indicating) canned in cans, I will give you the treatment for
it. I told you we cured them on those drying racks for three days. Then
we put them in a pressure cooker and run the temperature up to about 10
pounds pressure for 30 minutes, take them out of the pressure cooker and
hull them, and at that stage they hull quite easily. The hull itself
will turn loose from the nut quite easily if you heat it a little while
before you try to hull. A machine which can thresh the hulls off very
easily will be simple to develop. After the shell is taken off, then
they are put in an oven (a drying oven that has an automatic control at
270 degrees), for about 10 minutes in order to evaporate the excess
moisture that you get in the steaming process. Then they are put in the
cans hot, set back into the oven and heated for just a few moments to
get your temperature up again and you put lids on at a boiling
temperature. You get quite a vacuum created by sealing them hot. We have
had as high as fourteen and a half pounds of vacuum on those cans the
third day after they were canned, and if you can get a vacuum like that
by sealing the nuts hot, you can preserve their quality for a long
period.

I don't care if you open any bag that's here and taste these products.
You will find that the ones with the shells off are much better than the
ones with the shells on. I believe you will find that. However, the
quality of the nut with the shell on is excellent.

[Illustration: Mr. Hardy and some chestnuts prepared for storage
(Cour