I was so pleased with the walnut harvest this year (2025) that I hulled over 2000 fresh walnuts before I made myself stop. The harvests of the last several years have been lean, so I'd been waiting for this. But nutmeat left in the shell is good for about a year and I will be hard pressed to crack 2000 nuts in a year so I cut myself off. I left most of the remaining fresh walnuts in the orchard where they fell, but about 100 that were already in a bucket on the porch processing center, I decided to leave for the squirrels at the other end of the property, at the base of Double Sycamore Tree. The tree is located behind my studio on the creek bank, and is one of the natural wonders of the homestead. I often see squirrels in that area, mostly gray squirrels, but red squirrel, too.

Double Sycamore Tree isn't readily visible from my workbench, so i didn't really observe how the offering was being recieved and mostly forgot about it. Three day later, while walking to the shop I noticed two gray squirrels at the base of the tree and went to investigate. One ran to the right and disapeared into the brush, the other scrambled up the left trunk of the tree to a large limb, 50 feet up, and chattered down at me. When I got to the base of the tree I could find no intact fresh walnuts, only fragments of hull. I knew the squirrels would get to them eventually, but I did not expect such fast work.

Gray squirrel high in Double Sycamore Tree.    (+)

Squirrel walnut processing site.    (+)

Squirrels will often use a stump or a flat rock to work at hulling walnuts, so the crotch beteen the two sycamore trunks was a natural choice. I have never seen squirrels pile that many hull scraps in one place before, but I set the stage for it by supplying so many fresh walnuts. When I looked more closely, I found one hulled nut left behind among the scraps. I'd read that squirrels can tell by scent when the nutmeat isn't good and will reject the nut. I decided to do some research and cut open the abandoned nut, and sure enough, the meat was shriveled and brown. By rejecting the nut, the squirrels avoided wasting the time it would take to store it for the winter.

Winter storage of nuts by squirrels brings me to why I sidetracked from discussion of the orchard. It's because gray squirrels played a part in the planting of the orchard. They store nuts for winter using a method called scatter hoarding, which involves burying individual nuts in shallow holes across a wide area. This ensures that if another animal finds one hiding place, the squirrel won't lose its entire food supply. While they successfully retrieve most of their buried nuts, some are forgotten. These unrecovered nuts often sprout and grow, which means the squirrels played a part in spreading the trees in the orchard. This includes First Tree, which sprouted well away from where a fresh walnut would have fallen from a parent tree.