Nuts

This photo montage shows you Garry’s little fall hobby. It was what kept him busy last year at this time, along with long walks and practicing Russian by reading it off little cards. Since he has his cows to keep him busy this year, he is cracking nuts at night.
He had his dad helping him with it while his parents were here. Garry picks up walnuts under the walnut trees in the yard nearly every day, since nuts are constantly falling off as they ripen and the wind picks up. There are at least six trees in the yard- the best producer this year is the one Victor was going to cut down because it has a big hollow in the trunk. We were sitting outside with his parents one afternoon having tea with Victor and the nuts were raining down on us when the wind started to blow. Some still have the husk attached, so he peels them off as he picks the nuts up. Sometimes the birds, or stray neighbour chickens beat him to them and there is an empty shell with a round hole in one side of the nut. Some days he gets a bucket or as in the photos, he just fills his shirttail up and carries them in.
Garry has been sitting watching television at night and cracking nuts by whacking them with a hammer on a stool (last year he used his vise-grip but he broke that one and couldn’t find the new one- turned out a neighbour returned it a couple days ago.) It’s a little noisy. His father suggested drying them in the oven – that’s what he does with the pecans that he gets when they are in Mississippi in the winter (they work at a mission there- running a thrift store and Dad does some preaching). It has worked well when Garry puts them in the preheated oven and shuts it off. One night I smelled what seemed to be burning nuts- Garry had some well-toasted walnuts on the top of his tray- he had set it on broil to pre-heat with the nuts in. Garry and Maxim think that those are very tasty, and have been eating them. I turned some into walnut “turtles” and with the way containers filling up now, all the baking will have nuts in this winter.