Part 22

I have a "California" walnut, or Persian, as you call it. I was much surprised to see all these samples of walnuts down here. I have a walnut shelling plant in Chicago, I do at this time. Maybe when you get there it will be a pecan shelling plant, or maybe it will be a _Macadamia_ nut plant. How many of you people have ever heard of _Macadamia_ nuts? (Several hands raised.) More than I thought for. Well, we are working on a plant to shell _Macadamias_ now. Of course, that is a tropical nut, grown chiefly in Hawaii and Australia. The Australian nut is not nearly as good as the Hawaiian nut. But to those of you who are not familiar with the nut, I have given it to any number of people and asked for their reaction, and some said it tasted like a filbert, others said it tasted like cocoanut, and the third one named was Brazil nut. So it's a very pleasant nut to eat, but very, very expensive.

Dr. Moss: I live in Williamsburg in Whitley County not far from you, and we have no market there for black walnuts at all and got quite a lot of them there. I wonder if it would be practical to have a collection center.

Mr. Mullins: It certainly would. In the southeastern part of Texas we have one.

Dr. MacDaniels: A question, Mr. McCauley. You said that you are able to recover about 11 per cent in the cracking plant on the average, I think you said 10 to 11.7 for ordinary run quality. Now, if you had walnuts that would run 25 to 28 per cent kernel, how much would your processing plants recover out of that, I am just-wondering?

Mr. McCauley: Well, I would like to say two per cent less than the hand-cracked weight. In other words, if you had a total, hand-cracking total kernel content of 25 per cent, I would like to say 23, but I think that is just a little bit strong. In Tom's early processing of black walnut kernels at Renfro Valley his first average was 16 per cent on wild nuts. I don't know where he got those nuts. They must have been Thomas variety. But as he told me today, he is down to 10.7.

Mr. Mullins: Those nuts I talked about, Mac, that ran up that high percentage were from over in Clark County around Winchester. And I have quite a few of them that I pick-up that are even larger in size than some of these Thomas nuts that are lying in here, out of that particular locality. They are very big.

Mr. McCauley: You will find that that is true. Your percentage varies over the country. I like to think that the wild seedling black walnut has a possibility of about 18 pounds in a hundred. I may be wrong.

Dr. MacDaniels: Is that loss in the cracking procedure; I mean, that the things don't crack out?

Mr. McCauley:. The loss is in the cracking, but on an 18 pounds possibility we would probably get between 14 and 15 per cent with this new method of cracking and processing.

Dr. MacDaniels: Now, if you had a nut that would run hand-cracked 24 per cent, you lose 2 in your cracking procedure, and you recover 22. Would you pay twice as much for nuts of that quality as you would for common grade?

Mr. McCauley: Yes, I think that I would. If I had assurance that I was going to get 22 per cent kernels I would be very pleased to pay double. It would pay me, if I were shelling, to pay twice as much for that variety for the simple reason that I only have one cost of picking. Now, the average cost of picking black walnuts kernels is about 11-1/2 cents a pound. At least, that's the best I have ever been able to do with them. And if you sold me a walnut that would give me twice as many kernels with one cracking and one picking, I'd make money and I could pay you twice as much money for that nut.

Dr. MacDaniels: What volume would a cracker have to have to make it interesting? What quantity would have to be produced and offered to a cracker to make it interesting? That is, say I have 50 bushels of Thomas. That isn't any good to you, because your cracking plant--

Mr. McCauley: Why wouldn't it? If I had 50 bushels, that is 2500 pounds, right? All right, Tom could run his plant for two hours and a half, we will say, on 2500 pounds, and in that two hours and a half he would be getting as much kernels as he would otherwise in five hours. That's good business.

Mr. Chase: I'd just like to comment on that 18 per cent kernel you mentioned as the average you'd like to think of. Mr. Zarger has run a study on the sample trees in the Tennessee Valley to measure the kernel content in some 130 trees for about seven years running, and it pans out to about 18 per cent. I thought you'd just like to know.

Mr. McCauley: I didn't want to make a definite statement and then have somebody throw something back in my face. That's why I said I'd like to think.

Mr. Fisher: Since this question has come up and a cracker is here, and that is the question, whether the commercial cracker would be willing to pay a premium price for premium nuts, I wonder if Tom will answer the question, would he pay twice as much?

Mr. Mullins: Certainly.

Mr. Chase: Mr. Acker is another sheller who operates in Morristown, Tennessee, and Broadway, Virginia, who just dropped in on us. I'd like to ask him that same question.

Mr. Acker: What is the question again?

Mr. Chase: Would a considerable quantity of walnuts such as Thomas be worth more to you?

Mr. Acker: We'd be inclined to buy them according to the value we get out of them.

Dr. MacDaniels: What would you do, run sort of a pilot test on them?

Mr. Acker: If I can buy something for a dollar and make money on it, I am willing to try.

Mr. Chase: I made a little unscheduled talk last night in which I said from my information from shellers in Nashville, particularly, that they at this time would not be able to pay any premium price for higher quality nuts simply because they do not have time to examine each bushel, each hundred pounds that comes in and see whether they would pay a special price for better walnuts. Is that the general situation?

Mr. McCauley: Yes, I think generally that is. They take everything at the price of seedling variety. However, you gentlemen who are growing cultivated nuts shouldn't be too disturbed, because of the fact that there is going to be a time in the not-too-distant future where you can dispose of those nuts according to the kernel content within the nut.

President Davidson: I think that's the answer. Eventually it will come.

Mr. McCauley: It's good business. Stop and consider. We go right back to that point where we are going to get twice the amount of merchandise out of a hull which must be broken, which must be picked, which must be cleaned, which is one operation. In a two and a half hour period, which is what it would take, we will say, to run 2500 pounds, you would get the net content on a Thomas variety that you would ordinarily receive in five hours of actual operation. You are saving two and a half hours labor, you are saving two and a half hours machine time, and you are getting just twice as much.

Mr. McDaniel: You'd have twice as many girls on the sorting belt, wouldn't you, to examine that volume?

Mr. McCauley: No, not necessarily. When it gets to that point it isn't necessary. Sometimes the machine gets too far ahead of them, but the machinery is fast getting to a point where it is going to be more or less mechanical. It's an inspection proposition.

Mr. Taylor: May I ask you this question? In other branches of farming you have what you call seed certification, as with certified potatoes, and people who certify those potatoes. Wouldn't it be possible for the same Government agency to certify growers of walnuts so that when you bought from certain members of this association they would be certified so you would know what you were getting? Would that be possible?

Mr. McDaniel: Certification has to do with planting stock.

Mr. Taylor: I mean a different type of certification.

Mr. McDaniel: What you have in mind probably is U. S. Grades on fruit. For instance, if it is stamped "U.S. 1" it should be considerably better than orchard run, and I don't know why it shouldn't be possible for nuts in the shell. It is used in California.

Mr. McCauley: It is in peanuts. All peanuts are Government graded, and that's in the shell. But this black walnut situation is going to take a little longer than that. But I am sure that there are people in the shelling business who would buy Thomas variety or the other varieties if you just go ahead and tell them that's what you have. People are always looking for something better, and I am sure that your cultivated varieties are going to be better, but you are going to have to keep talking them up all the time and getting them to the people who will buy them.

President Davidson: Right. We'd all like to go on with this, but we must really go on with the program, too. We will next hear something about pasteurization. The Production of Bacteria-Free Walnut Kernels will be discussed by Mr. Pease of West Virginia University. Mr. Pease.

Production of Bacteria-Free Walnut Kernels

ROGER W. PEASE, Assistant Hillculturist, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia

Mr. Pease: Before I go into any detail about the construction of the pasteurizer, I am going to review the bacillus that causes the trouble very briefly. Most of you will know more about it than I do, but some of you may know less.

When the farmer takes the hulls from the black walnuts he generally spreads his hulled crop to dry almost anywhere. Rats will go over them, and these rats or mice infect the hulled walnuts with an organism called _Bacillus coli_ that is on the outside of the shell. They go from there to the cracking plant, go through the cracker which thoroughly mixes up the infected nuts with the clean ones. They go from there to the separator, which does a better job at spreading the bacteria. Then they go on the market. If they are shipped from one state to another they are subject to inspection by Federal authorities. If they find this organism in the kernels, they may at their discretion heave the whole shipment into the river. They don't always do it. They haven't worked out yet a definite scheme to follow. In other words, they will not tell us, "If your kernels have a certain number of these _B. coli_ in them we will let them by." As it reads, there should be not one organism there, and I can assure you that's almost impossible to get if a rat has crawled over those things.

Now, to get rid of poison ivy the best way is not to get it, and it's just the same with this organism. The place to get rid of it would be for the farmer to store the nuts to dry where the rats and mice cannot get to them and for the cracking plants to do the same. Unfortunately, this isn't done and sometimes isn't practicable. The next place to hit them would be before they are tumbled, that is, before the black powder on the outside of the shells is shaken off in a tumbler, or immediately after that to disinfect the shell without hurting the kernel.

That is where we should have started at West Virginia, but we didn't. We began at the other end after the thing was through and began studying pasteurization. The Government had recommended, I believe, temperatures of up to 300°F. for pasteurization. We found out right away--that is, I didn't, Dr. Colmer and Harvey Erickson, who are now--one of them--in Baton Rouge and the other one in Seattle, and they would know about it. They found out that after temperatures of over 300° the nuts tasted toasted and they would not keep nearly so well or so long as an unpasteurized nut.

After inspecting what pasteurizers they could get access to they concluded some work was necessary, so they spent 12 months and found that at a temperature of 160 and humidity of 80 per cent a more efficient job of pasteurization was done, and at the same time the kernel was not hurt at all. The taste was identical with an unpasteurized nut, and it would keep just as long. At that point one of them, as I say, went to Louisiana and the other went to Washington, and the research fell on my shoulders, that didn't know much about it.

We started to construct the machine. Meanwhile, Mr. Erickson told me he had developed a new strain of bacteria which was much more hardy and 160 degrees at 80% humidity would not kill the thing. So we constructed our machine to run a temperature of 180 at 70% humidity for 30 minutes, and that will kill them.

Now, in 15 minutes I can't give you anywhere near all the details of construction of that machine. I can give you a few of the principles. On the outside, of course, is a well insulated box. The nuts are fed through the top with a revolving drum with fins on it. They comes down to a belt that travels this way for six feet, drops to another, travels back, a series of five belts. It takes them just half an hour to go through. The layer of nuts is perhaps three-eighths of an inch thick. The temperature is kept up with electric coils. It is regulated with a thermostat.

We had some difficulty with the humidity. Try it and see. As we raised our temperature it was hard to keep our humidity up. Finally we went back to the simplest thing, which usually works. We just took a pan of water, with a solenoid valve and float such as you have in the modern hot air furnaces and put a magnetic switch on it. As the water boiled it helped raise the temperature, and it gave off vapors. The automatic switch and the wet and dry bulb from the thermometer and thermostat will shut the water off and shut the heat off automatically when you get the required temperature and the required humidity. In that machine our nuts start at the top, take 30 minutes to travel through. From the time they start at the top until the time they get to the bottom they have a standard temperature of 180° plus the 70% humidity.

Then the second problem, if you want to make one, is to get that temperature standard in all places. I know one man who made one of these machines and put four fans in at different places, and when he closed it up and got it to working, the center of his machine was still cold, because your hot air acts differently from free air. We put at the bottom a shelf with a tube in it and a big fan in the middle. The air is drawn down from the top here, driven through there, hits some baffles and comes across each belt. In that way it works.

Now, if you want, any of you, to get the details of the pasteurizer you could write to Mr. Erickson, College of Forestry, University of Washington, Seattle 5, and he who designed it would be very glad, I believe, to help with your problems, or you could write up to our Agricultural Engineering department, and they would do the same.