I spent some time hiking this weekend at a state park in northeastern Minnesota and was surprised to find hickory nuts on the ground all through the park. They weren't quite ready (soft and a little bitter), but I would guess that in another week or two they will be ready for harvest. They look like (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) with some dark brown splotches now, but will be dried out, completely brown, and splitting when the nuts are ready.

So... If you are getting out in the next few weeks (as I surely will), taking a look at the ground every now and then can reap some tasty treats.

After stumbling upon the hickory nuts, I started looking for other kinds of nuts that I can identify (beechnuts, black walnuts), but couldn't find any. If you have a taste for acorns, though, there seems to be a bumper crop this year...

-aj

My parents would take the family on hickory nut runs in the fall and asparagus runs in the spring (SE WI).  Put down the tailgate on the station wagon , we'd sit on that while Dad would cruise the countryside hitting hot spots he had memorized.  It was something to do on a Sunday afternoon.

Although the trees/plants were on the roadside, some farmers would get upset and sic their dogs on us, or fire shots in the air to scare us off.  We'd scramble back onto the tailgate and mosey off to the next cluster of trees/plants.

I remember sitting in the basement, cracking hickory nuts and extracting the meats for my mother to use in one baked thing or another.  It took a pretty good whack from a hammer to bust their shell.  Don't hit it square enough and the nut becomes a projectile.  It was hazardous duty.

We had a couple bitter hickory at our home on the Rock River.  Squirrels didn't even take 'em.

I've got two black walnut in my yard and I've so many nuts it's an ankle-twister to walk across my yard.  Never thought of trying to get at the meat of those things...one of the most impenetrable objects known (yet squirrels get into them.)

I've done battle with black walnuts in the past - my in-laws has a small grove of mature trees on their farm in south-central Michigan. A big part of their harvesting strategy was to spread the walnuts in the driveway and run over them for a while. Then use a vice to get a controlled crack.

Each fall I would bring a gunny sack or two to parent's place so they could spread some on their driveway...

I had some juvenile black walnut trees (about 4-6" caliper) on some property in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but never had a harvest.

When I first stumbled upon the hickory nuts, I first thought they were walnuts (until I picked one up).

-aj  

I have what I believe is a black walnut next to my driveway. It's a candidate for removal. If three nuts are left on the ground for more than a day I think the squirrels are not doing their job.

So inside those green "golf balls" is a walnut like the ones I crack at Christmas? How/when should I be harvesting?

We regularly process black walnut - they have a much more pungent, earthy flavor than English walnuts (and much better in my opinion, especially in a carrot cake) .  We load the green golf balls into a sack (old onion or potato sack works great), then run over it about a million times with a tractor or car.  After that, put on a pair of rubber gloves and extract the nuts out of the mess.  Walnut die is one of the most permanent you can find in nature, so don't forget the gloves!  Store the nuts in the basement for a few weeks, then crack them open in a vise.  It will be rare to extract a "whole" nut, most will be in small pieces.  Use a pick to get the meat out, and keep a sharp eye for shell fragments.  After you get all the nutmeat out, look for small shell fragments.  Look again.  And again - those suckers are sharp!  After that, throw the nutmeat in the freezer and use as needed.  Very therapeutic work while sitting in front of the fire on a winter's day.