Missouri - Part I: The Walnuts

I was staying in Wilard, MO, which is pretty well a small little town minutes from Springfield.  Up the Farm Road you will run into Walnut Grove, which is the town Renee grew up in.  They kind of have a lot of Walnut Trees in Walnut Grove.  

Come to find out that it's a pretty serious thing down there.  

Turns out it was harvest season while I was there, so most of the tree

s were bare.  In the area during harvest you can pick up walnuts and put them in a sack and sell them for cash!  We encountered a young gentleman in a orange jumpsuit who had the road blocked off to collect walnuts - he had several sacks in the back of his pickup truck.  It was quite the interesting experience for me, I wish I had taken a photo of him (I'm quite certain he was a jailbird, orange jumpsuit and all).

Once we made our way through Walnut Grove and seeing all of this I became a wee bit obsessed.  I needed to have a photo of a walnut tree, I needed to blog about walnuts, I needed to stage a photo shoot.  I had big plans!

First let me show you a walnut tree.  You will notice little green ball looking things on the tree (there are only a few, click the photo to make it larger), those are walnuts:

Since all the locals had pretty well picked through all the fallen walnuts we kind of had to go on a walnut hunt.  Renee snapped a shot of me on the hunt (although I many not look to be hunting for walnuts, I was in fact hunting for walnut trees near by to hunt near):

Once we finally found some I was absolutely blown away that walnuts don't just grow on a tree as you buy them in a store.  They are in a soft green hull, with a very dark inner core holding the actual walnut.  Here is what it looks like after it falls off the tree:

Once it falls off the tree the hull starts to darken, which is why you see some black in some of these photos.  I stepped on one with my shoe because Renee told me the inside will stain your hands very badly.  Here is what the inside of it looks like (that is the walnut you see there):

Here is a small group of them we were able to collect, notice how they are changing colors:

We staged a photo shoot in honor of Terri, who was not able to join us on the trip but LOVES to stage photo shoots:

Last, because I was so excited to have found some walnuts to photograph, I had to have my picture taken with one.  Can you say you've ever had your picture taken with a walnut?

What I have failed to mention up until this point is that I made Renee drive around for quite some time (and by that I mean at least an hour) trying to find a walnut tree with many walnuts still on it; these were the best we could find.  Turns out people jump at the chance to make a few bucks selling their walnuts!  Strange things you find in other places... 

I had a great time hunting for walnuts while in Missouri!