days.

Various methods of hulling other than by the corn sheller are in use.
Some involve merely stepping on the nuts with a forward movement of the
foot, just as the hulls are softening. This is not particularly
satisfactory as the nuts must still be picked out of the mashed hulls by
hand. Besides leaving a very persistent stain on the hands this method
is unsatisfactory for two reasons; it is not at all rapid and very far
from perfect in the degree to which it removes the hulls.

Other methods involve the use of automobile wheels. Sometimes machines
are driven over the nuts as they are thinly spread on the ground. Again
a wheel is jacked up and set in motion in a tub of water in which the
nuts have been placed. Both methods have their advocates. The writer has
had experience with the former only, yet he can conceive of little to
commend either method.

Still another method is that of pounding off the hulls by hand. Of all
common methods this has the fewest conceivable advantages. It is slow,
thoroughly inefficient, and extremely objectionable from the standpoint
of the stain.

What is perhaps far the most satisfactory method of any yet used for
removing the hulls, from every standpoint except that of expense, is one
evolved by the Department of Agriculture in 1926. It consists merely of
running the nuts through large-sized vegetable paring machines. These
machines consist of metal containers, circular in form and having a
capacity of approximately 1-1/2 bushels. The inner walls are lined with
hard abrasive surfaces. A bushel of nuts is placed inside, the lid
closed, a stream of water turned into the container, and the machine set
in operation. By means of gears attached to the bottom of the container
which is separate from the walls, plated and perforated, the bottom
spins around several hundred times per minute. The nuts are made to beat
violently against the rough walls with the result that, in from 2-1/2 to
5 minutes, depending upon the firmness of the hulls, the nuts are ready
to be taken out. They are then perfectly hulled, thoroughly washed and
light or whitish in color.

With a few days of drying, the nuts should be ready for cracking.

_Cracking_

As soon as fit for cracking, and before becoming so dry that the kernels
break badly, the nuts should be shelled. The hammer and a solid block of
wood, or a piece of metal with a shallow cupped depression in which to
place the nuts while held for hitting, i