ice?

Mr. Stoke: No, none whatever. It seems to be taken from place to place
mounted on a truck and cracks the nuts right on the job.

Mr. Reed: Do you have any difficulty in cracking nuts when they are dry?

Mr. Stoke: The nut cracks best when not too wet or too dry but just
right. If too dry, they are too brittle and you break up the kernels too
much, also get too many spalls of shells. If wet you have other
troubles. In the South and Southwest the summers get hot and so some
nuts get rancid. The sweet type that have less oil seem to stand up
better.

Question: Do you ever steam nuts before cracking?

Mr. Stoke: No, I haven't. To keep them in a damp atmosphere is also not
good. Nuts should be kept dry while in storage. Kernels should also be
kept in a dry place. I put them in trays of wire mesh and if the nuts
are too green or I am in a hurry for them, I turn on the electric fan.

Last Fall I put some in cold storage in December. I also put some in
cold storage in May and I found that I would not have needed to put any
in cold storage until May as they have kept just as nicely as those
stored earlier. But I find it is essential to have the kernels
thoroughly dried before they are put away. If thoroughly dried they will
not mold, but if kept in too warm a place they will turn rancid. To keep
them in a damp atmosphere is also not good. If they are treated right
they will keep indefinitely.

Dr. Zimmerman: Mr. Stoke, how many nuts did you crack?

Mr. Stoke: About 40,000 or 50,000 lbs.

Mr. Reed: What did you do with screenings?

Mr. Stoke: I fed them to the chickens. Some said that they would keep
the chickens from laying but I found that by mixing about 25% with
ordinary mash it worked fine.

Mr. Hershey: Did you find that it made the egg shells hard?

Mr. Stoke: No, the chickens had too much sense.

Question: What percent do you lose in sieving?

Mr. Stoke: When I did my fine sieving, I used a 4-inch screen. The
shells were taken out entirely. I lost, maybe, 4%.

Prof. Reed: Do you people in Virginia have local names for different
types of walnuts? What is the swamp black walnut?

Mr. Stoke: My own opinion is that there is only one black walnut in the
East. We have a butternut that some people call the English walnut and
some the white walnut. The Japanese walnut is sometimes called an
English walnut. We also have the English or Persian walnut.

Prof. Reed: I believe the botanists recognize only the