By Jill Draper
Missouri ranks first in the nation in producing black walnuts, and October is the peak month for harvesting them. It’s when you’ll find an 88-year-old woman sitting on her heels at Leawoof Dog Park gathering hundreds of pounds of nuts in plastic grocery bags.
Curious dog owners visiting the park always wonder what she’s doing and how she can sit like that for 30 minutes at a stretch while their doodles, terriers, dachshunds and labs run in circles around her.
“It’s easier than stooping,” shrugs the woman, who prefers to go by her first name, Magdalena. “I’m used to it.”
In addition to Leawood City Park, Magdalena collects nuts at Minor Park, Loose Park, the grounds surrounding Nelson-Atkins Art Museum and “wherever I find trees.” She sells the nuts and donates the money to charities, splitting the proceeds between African and Native American causes, plus UNICEF and CARE, which focus on global hunger.
“That goes back to my youth,” she explains. Born in Estonia, her family was forced to move to Germany when World War II started in 1939. She and her siblings and her widowed mother had 24 hours’ notice to pack up and leave their home. By the time the war ended, some people had died of starvation. “My early youth was marked by no food,” she remembers. “We got 50 grams of meat a week. That’s a 2-ounce hamburger. So I am supersensitive about hunger.”
She later taught school in a small village, managing four grade levels in one classroom, and married a German man. They came to the United States in 1963, eventually relocating to Kansas City where her husband was a chemistry professor at UMKC. She raised four children and ran a preschool before retiring, but still tutors children every week.
One year the four black walnut trees in her Brookside yard yielded a bumper crop of nuts. She looked at the scattered heaps and thought, “there must be a use for them.” And so it began. Her son helps truck the nuts she collects to a hulling station in Pleasant Hill, which then takes them to a processing plant in Stockton, Mo. owned by Hammons Products Co., a longtime family business.
Last year she earned $672 for 4,200 pounds of hulled nuts; the previous year she made over $1,000 for 5,800 pounds. It’s worth noting that before hulling, the mottled green and brown nuts, larger in size than golf balls, weigh nearly double their hulled size. She carts them to her car in a collapsible wagon, back and forth, back and forth, until her car is some 500-600 pounds heavier.
That’s about her limit per trip.
“It’s a lot of work, a messy affair and not very prestigious. And the squirrels scold you,” Magdalena says.
Sometimes passersby scold her, too. “You’re taking the squirrels’ food,” they admonish, and threaten to call city park officials. But the officials approve of her actions, she says.
“They appreciate it because there are more walnuts than the squirrels can eat and I am cleaning up their parks.”
Nobody bothers her at the dog park. In fact, strangers often help gather the nuts or bring rakes to make a pile. “That’s pretty amazing,” she observes. “It doesn’t happen at other parks where everyone is walking or running.”
And do the dogs bother her? “No, they kiss me. They see I am on the ground and they are on the ground, so we have something in common.”
Last year the harvesting season was five weeks. This year Hammons is only accepting nuts for two weeks. “They obviously have enough, so they are not concerned about it,” says Magdalena, who notes that Hammons, the world’s largest commercial processor of black walnuts, stores extra nuts in caves in the Ozarks.
She keeps a small stash for herself, cracking their famously hard shells in a vise and eating them raw.
Unlike the milder English walnut, the black walnut has an intense flavor, described as bold, earthy, almost fruity and/or mildly bitter (the signature taste of fall, some say) that pairs well with both sweet and savory dishes.
Six years ago researchers led by Chung-Ho Lin at the University of Missouri in Columbia confirmed that black walnuts contain compounds known to help prevent obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease while promoting lower cholesterol, lower inflammation and anticancer activity in the body. Lin’s team members now are validating these findings with animal studies.
The nuts also are thought to be good for improving memory.
Magdalena’s memories of her life in Europe remain strong, and when the Communists left Estonia in the early 1990s, she traveled there to see her old home. It’s still standing and is now a center for children’s art and music lessons.
“That pleased me,” she says.
Here’s something else that would please her—a successor to assume her annual black walnut round up.
“There will be a year when I pass and say I can’t do it anymore, and I wish someone else will take it up,” she says. Rising to her feet, she carefully positions a load of nuts in her wagon and begins a slow walk back to her car.
There will be a year, but not yet. This year she’s good.
