Cracking Butternuts or White Walnuts Juglans cinerea

Quick breakdown of how I crack butternuts, which is similar to black walnuts. These are a delicious, buttery nut that are actually illegal to harvest in Minnesota, but legal in Wisconsin, which is because of the trees being protected as they're attacked by butternut canker.

Butternuts fall earlier than black walnuts, and I harvested these in September, where black walnuts I might get in October up here in the NorthI. After harvesting I dried them a couple layers deep in cardboard boxes in the garage. Keep the squirrels away from them.

After a month or two they were dry enough to crack. It took me a few tries, but this is the best method I found so far. Take a hammer, do it on a sturdy surface, I'm using a table here, but it's not ideal, get outside and do it on a rock, or some other surface that can absorb the shock--you'll get better nuts for it.

After the nuts are cracked, I use a snips to spot-treat the shells to reveal whole halves, which is a great trick Sam Thayer showed me (Sam discusses these nuts in his first book, The Foragers Harvest).