Walnut pickers harvest ripe walnuts and may also perform other seasonal farm work. Preparation of the soil and tree maintenance are important for efficient harvesting. Small orchards are picked by hand, while larger ones use a tree shaker and tractor. Sorting and packing are also part of the job. Harvesting is physically demanding and requires attention to detail to avoid problems.
A walnut picker is someone who picks walnuts when they are ripe. Like other seasonal workers, walnut pickers supplement their work with a variety of other jobs, including harvesting other seasonal crops, general farm work, and so on. In some cases, a walnut harvester can manage a walnut orchard all year round, keeping the trees in good condition and performing maintenance tasks; on small farms, the farmer usually handles the harvest and all similar tasks independently, without hiring staff to help.
Nut harvesting begins with preparing the soil under the trees. People harvest pecans by picking them from the ground, which means the soil needs to be even and clean to make harvesting easier. Keeping the growth trimmed under the walnut trees all year round helps with this, and in the weeks leading up to harvest, a walnut harvester can mow, trim, and sweep to clear the soil. It’s also important to clean off falling walnut leaves, which tend to appear as walnuts mature.
For a small orchard, when the nuts start to drop, the nut harvester picks them up by hand. This can be done by bending over to pick up the nuts by hand or with nut harvesting equipment, which usually takes the form of a spoon or bag on a pole. The post runs along the ground and the nuts are caught inside the device. For larger orchards, a walnut harvester can operate a tree shaker to knock down as many nuts as possible at once, and run a small tractor through the orchard to harvest the nuts.
Nut harvesters are often involved in post-harvest processing. This includes sorting out the nuts to identify those that are in poor condition and packing the nuts for storage. Pecans are packed in their shells and shelled afterwards, usually with the help of a machine that opens the shells and then separates the nuts and shells.
Harvesting walnuts is hard work, even with a tractor. Harvesters may need to go out every day for several days at a time to collect all the nuts, and they will be outside in weather that can range from mild to extreme depending on the year and area. Like other types of manual work, walnut picking requires physical strength and stamina, combined with the patience to do the job right. Making mistakes during harvesting can lead to problems down the road, ranging from rot in nuts collected too late to poor quality in lots of shelled nuts, which can reduce their value.
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