The Black Walnuts Of Walnut Tree Hill

By Jan Howard

A local resident gives gray squirrels a little competition in the yearly race for the crop of black walnuts on her property.

Betty (Saunders) Guarino of Walnut Tree Hill Road has collected a bushel of the nuts this year from just one giant tree near her home, enough for her winter use.

“They fall on the lawn and are easy to get,” Mrs Guarino said last week. “The squirrels are very slow to learn the concept of sharing! They got more than their share.”

The giant tree, which measures about eight feet in circumference, has stood by the house ever since Mrs Guarino can remember.

“When I was growing up here, there were several that size or larger, that succumbed to storms years ago,” she said. She and her parents moved to the Walnut Tree Hill house in 1940 when she was 3 years old. About eight years ago she moved back into her childhood home.

Walnut Tree Hill Road, a long, meandering road that was laid out in the early 1700s off of Church Hill Road, is one of Newtown’s longest roads at over 3.5 miles. It intersects Black Bridge Road at its lower end. The road and the school district later established in the area were named for the many black walnut trees that exist in that area.

Mrs Guarino said that while black walnut trees may grow elsewhere on Walnut Tree Hill Road, the majority of them are on the eastern end. “There are about 30 on my property.”

Apparently the area was well known in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the abundant black walnut crops, she said.

Mrs Guarino said an early 1900s entry in the diary of her grandmother, Sarah (Murray) Elliott, noted, “We packed a lunch and set out for Walnut Tree Hill early this morning… home before dark with over two bushels.”

“They walked from Mile Hill Road!” Mrs Guarino said. “They would follow the railroad tracks to Church Hill Road and then Walnut Tree Hill Road.

Her grandparents probably came to Walnut Tree Hill for other nuts as well, she noted. “In the 1920s there were more nut trees in addition to black walnut, hickory as well as chestnut. The blight took all the chestnut trees.” Her house, built in the 1800s, has hand-hewn beams from chestnut trees.

The wood of black walnut trees was extremely valuable for its fine grain and is prized for making furniture and for gun stocks. Because of that, she said, many old trees were cut down.

Mrs Guarino said she recently read an article about World War II in which it was noted that the government would pay people to cut down the trees for gun stocks. “I guess it was another way to help the war effort,” she said.

The nuts she collected have been cracked and the meat picked out and frozen for future use in cakes, cookies, and other desserts, she said.

 Getting to the nutmeat is a challenging job, Mrs Guarino explained. First the husk must be removed. She uses rubber gloves because the juice, which is yellow-brown in color, stains. “If it gets on your clothes, it’s there for good. Bleach won’t take it out.”

The nuts are then dried in a mesh onion bag. Once they are dry, the stain won’t come off on your hands, she noted. She then cracks the rock-hard shell and picks out the walnut meat inside.

“It’s a tremendous amount of work, but I enjoy it,” Mrs Guarino said. “I’ve done it for many years.”

Black walnuts are not easily found in grocery stores, she said, though some specialty stores may carry them. They are very moist. “It looks nothing like an English walnut.”

The nuts are a delicious and different addition to desserts, she said. “The meat has a very distinctive flavor. It enhances the flavor of cakes or cookies.”

Mrs Guarino said she adds the chopped walnuts to a yellow cake batter, then frosts the cake with maple-flavor icing. “It’s an unbelievable flavor,” she noted.

Black walnut trees are very slow growing, Mrs Guarino said. Because of that, it takes about 20 to 30 years before they bear nuts. “They might be 10 to 18 inches around then,” she noted. “I have no idea how old that giant tree is. I only know it’s a very old tree.”

It has withstood some pretty good storms, Mrs Guarino said. In the summer, the tree is “like a big green umbrella.”

 Black walnuts are the last trees to get leaves in the spring and the first to lose them in the fall, she noted.

Mrs Guarino mentioned there most likely were many more black walnut trees in the area, but that they were probably cut down when land was cleared for farming. “I know of a few on Currituck Road. There are a couple on Andy Sedor’s property. There may have been a lot of them years ago.”

Perhaps because of their continuing need for a supply of lumber, the conservation of trees was a matter of vital importance to Newtown’s early settlers.

 According to Ezra Johnson’s history of Newtown, the issue was discussed frequently and as frequently acted upon at proprietors’ meetings. Stringent measures were enacted as emergencies arose.

In April 1738, it was “voted that no person shall cut or fall any oak or walnut tree under 12 inches over at ye stub, nor any chestnut tree under 18 inches over at ye stub within ye sequesterment for ye space of three years from ye date above. This act to hold three years and no longer.”

Job Sherman, Sgt James Botsford, Lemuel Camp, Henry Glover, and Sgt Benjamin Dunning were voted as agents to prosecute on behalf of the town those who cut down any oaks, walnuts, or chestnuts under the sizes indicated.

Also voted at that meeting, Thomas Skidmore, Joseph Bristol, John Blackman, and Nathan Baldwin, Sr, were appointed as agents to prosecute those that had done harm in the destruction of young timber.

Mrs Guarino’s house is located on about six acres of land. “Why there is a concentration of black walnut trees here, I don’t know,” she said. There are also quite a few on the Nature Conservancy land that borders her property. “It could be because of some very industrious squirrels who couldn’t remember where they buried the nuts.”