When most people look at a yard full of fallen black walnuts, they see a mess to clean up. One of our newest members saw an opportunity.
After a bumper crop of black walnuts dropped from a tree in their yard, Kathy decided it was finally time to learn how to harvest them. After hulling and drying the nuts—filling two large storage totes in the process—she faced the biggest challenge of all: cracking them.
Anyone who has worked with black walnuts knows they’re notoriously difficult to open. After watching countless videos and exploring different methods, Kathy found plenty of ideas but few practical solutions. Running walnuts over with a car didn’t produce great results. A hammer was tedious, inefficient, and potentially dangerous.
Then she discovered a tool designed specifically for the job: Grandpa’s Goody Getter.
The catch? Purchasing one would cost around $180.
Fortunately, a web search led her somewhere unexpected: the Cville Tool Library.
Although she lives in Lynchburg, she quickly signed up for a membership, reserved the tool, and made the trip to Charlottesville with her husband to pick it up.
The specialized nutcracker turned out to be exactly what she needed.
“The tool was just what I needed,” she told us. “It did an amazing job of cracking those super hard black walnuts.”
Even with the right tool, the project was no small undertaking. By the time they finished, they had cracked more than 600 walnuts and painstakingly picked out the nutmeats by hand.
“But I know I couldn’t have done this job without the tool.”
Now comes the fun part: experimenting with recipes featuring their home-harvested black walnuts.
Stories like this remind us that some of the most valuable tools in a lending library aren’t the ones people use every day – they’re the highly specialized tools that make a unique project possible. Few people need a black walnut cracker often enough to justify purchasing one, but when the need arises, access to the right tool can make all the difference.
As Kathy put it: “Borrowing a tool is so much more cost effective than buying a new tool for every project.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Have you finished a project with help from the tool library? Tell us about it!
