We have some hickory three way back in the woods, loade with nut.
I will harvest some and test.But I think it is too early to pick them around here.
Luckily we have no squirrels. Thanks to chicken hawks. So I can wait.

Update : 8/25/17
I checked my hickory nuts. They are still too soft. But tasted good.
I will keep checking regularly.

One thing my Dad did was to get some old window screens, elevate them with blocks of wood, spread the nuts out on the screens and let them dry out. The screens allowed air to circulate all around the nuts and they dried out evenly and faster.

[QUOTE=NewWestGardener;660672]I've never seen a hickory nut. By googling, they reminded me of how we dealt with hazelnuts.
As a child I used to help my mother going out into the woods and picked 100s of lbs of hazelnuts. They had green fuzzy hulls.
We spread them on a paved section in the yard to let them dry out under the sun. Once the hulls turn brown and shrank, we used a long stick (twice as thick as a handle of a shovel, and longer) to pound them. The nuts will fall out of the hulls that way. Much quicker than peel them individually.

This is also how we deshell dry beans, with a lighter treatment.

Just an idea, it may or may not be suitable for your harvest. And good luck![/QUOTE]


When I lived in Richmond BC, I once saw someone wearing rubber boots hop into a shallow 6'x6' bin and sort of lightly stomp the hazels to get the husks off. Hundreds of pounds of nuts were done this way.

When I was a kid my job was to crack hickory nuts with a small hammer and pic out a quart jar of nut meats. It was enough for my mom to bake hickory nut cookies all winter. They were Awsum.

[QUOTE=pmcgrady;662156]When I was a kid my job was to crack hickory nuts with a small hammer and pic out a quart jar of nut meats. It was enough for my mom to bake hickory nut cookies all winter. They were Awsum.[/QUOTE]
Wow, beautiful memory, Patrick. I am a senior and this is my first time trying to harvest hickory nut. :))

Thanks for the drying tip, Paul. I have a big screen frame that I can use it for this purpose.