Our Wild Black Walnut Bounty

Missouri’s state tree nut feeds families, fuels a unique industry, and flavors ice cream and baked goods.

Long before black walnuts became a retro ice cream flavor, Missourians were gathering these wild nuts in buckets, gunnysacks, and pickup truck beds. Today, millions of pounds of black walnuts still make their way from backyards, pastures, and woods to hulling stations, processing plants, grocery shelves, and holiday kitchens. Black walnuts have become a treasured part of our Missouri heritage, and they fuel a unique industry in our state. Best of all, many families continue to make memories by picking up black walnuts together every fall.

Bonded Because of a Nut
Three generations of the Hammons family stand together in a field of black walnut trees behind Hammons Products Company in Stockton, the world’s leading processor of black walnuts. The company buys black walnuts from 160 hulling stations across 12 states, produces nutmeat for baking and cooking, and grinds the shells for industrial use.

Dwain Hammons is the son of founder Ralph Hammons; Brian Hammons, Dwain’s son, is the company’s CEO; and Brian’s nephew, Jacob Basecke, is the company’s president. The trees above them have been growing for about 20 years, planted after the 2003 tornado took out part of the plant. The company decided that instead of rebuilding on this part of the property, it would “plant trees and show what it’s like to grow an improved variety of nut trees right here,” Brian says.

These black walnut trees have been bred from specific cultivars. Although some of these cultivated nuts also come from local growers, the vast majority of the nuts Hammons purchases from suppliers come from wild trees and have thick shells. The cultivated black walnuts, which the University of Missouri has helped develop, have thinner shells and a larger nutmeat yield, nearly 100 percent more kernels than wild trees. Hammons named the premium line of cultivated nuts the Missouri Dandy in honor of Ralph’s first brand.

After returning from serving in the Navy during World War II, the company’s founder, Ralph Hammons, opened a grocery store near Stockton. “He had a reputation as being a pretty good entrepreneurial kind of person who bought stuff and sold stuff,” Brian says. “He would buy a truckload of bananas. He would buy local rabbits from people for the furs and sell them in different places.” A company in Staunton, Virginia, bought Missouri black walnuts from him, and when the company closed, Ralph decided to go into the black walnut business himself. He bought his first cracking machine from Tennessee in 1946. That first year, he bought 100,000 pounds of black walnuts and named the brand Missouri Dandy. Today, Hammons can process 100,000 pounds a day.

Jacob says that it took him a while to become interested in the family business. “At holidays and gatherings, we would, of course, have black walnut dishes, and I knew about the company from afar. But it certainly wasn’t automatic that this was something that I wanted to pursue. But I think as I got older, I really started to have an appreciation of how unique this business is.”

When Brian started working for the company, he got to know some of the people who worked with his grandfather, “people who really helped it grow, some now legendary characters, as you could imagine,” Brian says. Some current employees are relatives of the first employees who worked for Ralph. “Maybe their aunt and uncle or parents worked here, so we’ve seen multigenerations of a lot of our staff.”

“Picking up black walnuts with jersey gloves will leave your fingers stained black for days after. I vividly remember fall Saturdays when my mom and my Aunt Mary Lou loaded us kids in a pickup and headed to the farm to pick up walnuts, which the newspapers of the time advertised as ‘black gold.’ With the truck bed full, we would head to the nearest walnut-hulling facility, where the nuts were dehulled and weighed to determine the cash amount Mom and Aunt Mary Lou would split. In Mom’s case, I’m pretty sure this became extra money for our family Christmas budget.”
—Missouri Life reader Debbie Noland, Warsaw

Our State’s Offcial Tree Nut

The black walnut, Brian says, is “part of our Ozark heritage.” The eastern black walnut, Juglans nigra (different from the commonly known English walnut, Juglans regia), became the state’s offcial tree nut in 1990, after a fourth grade class from Stockton Elementary School traveled to the state capital and successfully testified before both the House and the Senate to secure its designation.

Black walnut trees are also significant to Missouri. “Missouri has more wild black walnut trees than any place else,” Brian says. Missouri has over 97 million wild black walnut trees, according to Michele Warmund in a University of Missouri article. Not only are black walnuts worth cultivating, but “they are still an important part of our forest industry and valuable to landowners,” Frances Main says in a Missouri Department of Conservation article.

What to Do with Black Walnuts

Black walnuts are often left on the ground to decompose. Their hulls break down relatively fast, becoming black and mushy, but the shells decompose slowly. Squirrels, mice, and insects eat the nutmeat.

Many people gather the nuts from their yards and fields and bring them to hulling stations to sell. The price per pound varies depending on nut quality; typically, the more meat a nut has, the higher the price.

There are currently about 80 hulling locations in Missouri, including at Hammons in Stockton. The black walnut trees grow in 16 states, and Hammons buys nuts from most of them. However, Brian says that around 60 to 65 percent of the nuts they receive are from Missouri.

One way people connect through black walnuts is the wild harvest when people pick them up by hand, Brian says. Indeed, cultivating memories and connections between people through black walnuts is the stated purpose of the Hammons Products Company. “Thousands of people pick up black walnuts every year. They have stories of taking them to a hulling station and picking them up with kids and grandkids, teaching them lessons of hard work and earning a little bit of money,” Brian says.

“I enjoyed watching the squirrels hide them for winter, then watching them try to find them.”
—Missouri Life reader Janis Gates, Eureka

How Black Walnuts Are Processed

Although labor-intensive, black walnuts can be processed at home. You can tell when it is time to harvest the nuts when you can press in the husk with your thumb, Michele says. To remove the husk, some people run them over with a vehicle, while others use a grinder. Once removed, hang the walnuts in loosely woven bags and dry them for about five weeks. Then either crack them immediately or store them at 32 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Inspect the shells because “Walnuts with cracked shells are often infected with microorganisms and should be discarded,” Michele says. Cracking the shells usually requires a heavy-duty cracker. Once the nutmeat is removed, store it in an airtight container or in the refrigerator for up to a year.

When black walnuts are brought to a hulling station, they are transported to plants such as Hammons for processing. Hammons is the largest processing plant for black walnuts in the United States, collecting on average between 10 and 20 million pounds of wild black walnuts per season. When it comes to commercial use, Hammons is the only company of its kind in the world to produce black walnut products at its scale and is one of the largest wild-sourced food companies, Brian says.

Once they are received, the black walnuts are cleaned, dried in their shells, and stored in barns. Next, the walnuts are passed through large steel wheels that crack the hard shell. Separating machines then separate the nutmeat from the shell, and the nutmeat is hand-inspected. Last, the nuts are boxed or packaged and stored, ready to be shipped.

How Black Walnuts Are Used

Hammons sends various nut sizes to customers such as Walmart, Sam’s Club, Baskin-Robbins (black walnut ice cream was one of the original 31 flavors back in the 1950s), Blue Bell, Hiland Dairy, candy makers, bakeries, restaurants, and numerous grocery stores.

Hammons also processes the rock-hard shell for use in water filtration systems, blast cleaning, sandblasting, baseball and soccer fields, and sealing cracks in rock for oil drilling. “Companies reach out all the time and propose a way that the black walnut shells could be used,” Brian says. “ They contact me and say, ‘Hey, we have an idea. We want to experiment with something. Can you send us a sample?’ ”

Baking with Black Walnuts

Black walnuts are “high in protein, antioxidants, and unsaturated ‘good’ fats,” Kristie Hilgedick says in an article for the Missouri Department of Conservation. What better way to enjoy those health bene ts than baking with black walnuts for people you love? This is another way that people connect through black walnuts, Brian says, like with “Grandma’s favorite cake at Christmas time, those kinds of memories and connections. These kinds of connections reach back for generations.

“We had a tree and nut farm between Pineville and Noel for many years. The black walnuts were grafted so the nuts had a thinner shell and a higher percentage of nutmeat to shell, as well as a lighter color of nutmeat. We sold them in the shell to Hammons in Stockton on a grade-and-yield basis. Additionally, we sold the picked-out nutmeats locally.”
—Missouri Life reader Barb Ittner, Anderson

Hammons Black Walnut Emporium

Down the road from the Hammons production plant is Hammons Black Walnut Emporium, a boutique and cafe where visitors can purchase the company’s products and enjoy black walnut baked goods, salads topped with black walnuts, and black walnut ice cream. “Black walnut ice cream has a long history in the Midwest and the South as just one of those classic flavors,” Brian says. “It’s one of those flavors that has staying power.” More brands are now bringing the black walnut ice cream back and calling it a retro flavor, he says.

At the emporium, try Jacob’s favorite product, the honey-glazed candied black walnuts. Or try one of Hammons’ newer products, Harvest Crunch, which Brian explains was created by accident. “We do a lot of different coated products with a company out of Chicago, and we ordered honey glaze for our candied black walnuts.” On that same shipment, Hammons ordered chocolate-coated walnuts. “Well, what they did is they candy-coated them, and then they enrobed them in chocolate,” Brian says. “This isn’t what we ordered, but they’re super good.”

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This article was orginally printed in the October 2026 issue of Missouri Life.