Autumn Diary: The Walnut Tree

Each year I easily forget just how long it takes for the walnuts to form & ripen. As soon as the calendar turns to Autumn I wait expectantly as the walnuts hang heavily in the tree above me. But it is not until mid autumn when a storm arrives, that the wild winds tear the walnuts from the huge tree that reaches over the edges of our house. A deep resonant thud, followed by a rumbling as they tumble down off the roof & fall to nestle into the thick carpet of sodden dun leaves below.

There is pleasure to be found in raking a dry leaf, the sound of the crisp leaf skimming across the ground, a relatively easy & satisfying task, yet wait too long or if a heavy rain comes through then the task is made infinitely harder & slower.

Just how many leaves can a tree like this hold? As I spend a month or so raking the continual flow of leaves, I wonder is it thousands, or hundreds of thousands? As the last leaves fall & I can look through the bare boughs to the sky beyond I begin to question if it was even a million leaves that I have shifted!

We gather up the nuts & set them by the fire for a couple of weeks to dry them out. Gently rolling them in their basket every couple of days to ensure that they are evenly dried. We find that the easiest way to crack them is in the mortar & pestle, the bowl of the mortar stops any walnuts escaping.

We love to toast them up to add to winter salads, make walnut dukkah & make our favourite cake recipe of all which is a pear, walnut & dark chocolate cake from My Darling Lemon Thyme’s second cookbook A Year in my Real Food Kitchen (actual recipe is with pistachios but we swapped them out for walnuts).