Maria,
It's pretty common for BWs to 'abort' a significant portion of the crop early on - whether this is due to inadequate pollenation, insect/fungus infection, or just self-thinning, kind of like "June drop" in apples, I don't know - but they just do it. The real crop of mature nuts won't be dropping until well into October. At that time, you'll want to gather those well-sized nuts as they drop and remove the husks from them - you can roll 'em under your booted foot on a hard surface like pavement or a board, or dump them in a gravel driveway and run over them for a few days with the cars, or run them through an old-fashioned hand-cranked corn-sheller. However you do it, you need to get that husk material off soon after they drop so that it doesn't penetrate the nutshell as it softens & blackens and discolor the kernels. After you've removed the husk, 'float' the nuts in a bucket of water - well-filled nuts will sink, poorly-filled 'blanks' will float and should be discarded(but crack a few just to make sure - sometimes some of the really thin-shelled varieties will float even if well-filled). You'll then need to spread the good nuts in a cool dry place to 'cure' for at least a couple of weeks - straight off the tree, they're not ready to eat. But be sure they're stored in a spot secure from maruading squirrels/rats/chipmunks, all of whom will make off with them - they don't share.
I've got no experience with the Carpathian type walnuts, so I can't advise you there, but the hickories and pecans, you just pick up as they fall from the trees. Again, don't count on the squirrels leaving any for you - they don't share, and they'll be cutting and eating nuts long before they're 'ripe'. If my trees were carrying a good crop of nuts, I'd be starting my war on the bushy-tailed tree rats right now.
Now, the next thing I'll recommend is that you join the KY Nut Growers Association. You can find contact info at the NNGA website, linked below:

Here is a link that might be useful: NNGA

Hi Lucky, thanks for telling me exactly what I needed to know in a nutshell. The contact person for the Ky nut growers is in my town, how cool is that. I will definitely look into this! I did wonder what you could have possibly meant by "war" on the tree rats. The trees are loaded.

I would advise against going to war with the critters. I saw that Willy Wonka movie. They go crazy if you touch their nuts!

{{gwi:383920}}

rofl. The husband and I have never had squirrels, just chipmunks until we started planting nut trees. If you plant them.......THEY WILL COME! Last year, like usual we were not too panicked into gathering the falling black walnuts. Well, that was a mistake. Every dusk or dawn, marauding squirrel cleaned the ground like a hoard of little Dysons. They say that black walnut husks are so hard they're used for commerical emery, and I'd like to know the Moh's value for squirrel teeth, but they make it through a black walnut shell.

Lucky, I consider to be the ultimate forum resource on nut trees. You got fortunate he was around to catch your post. However, he failed to tell you one thing. Everyone you know and most strangers will also know what you have been doing for some months after the event. I don't care how many gloves you wear and how many pair of surgical gloves are underneath them, they will somehow allow your fingers to become exposed to the rankest, vilest, most permanent green dye you have ever seen. After a few days of husking, any body part exposed to it, starts to turn from green, to Army Olive Drab, then to some sort of sick brown. Nothing removes it short of a skin graft for about two months. Your fingernails look like those old men who used to sit on benches outside of the wine shops puffing on unfiltered cigarettes until they burnt their fingers. The last year I husked Black Walnuts, I was working part time away from my own business. I had forgotten the public factor. Essentially I had to tape most of my fingers to hide them.

Have fun!

ROTFLMBO, suzi!
Yeah, I thought about including a warning about the stain from the husks, but left it out - probably a bad move.
I did, however, also leave out the method of pounding the nuts through an appropriately-sized hole in a 2-inch thick board. That one, I'm pretty sure would also leave you with some walnut husk-induced facial freckles - or an overall tan the likes of which even George Hamilton doesn't sport.

Aw Geeze, Lucky. Now that she knows "everything" about Black Walnuts since we hinted that the husking part might have some sequelae, let's go to phase II. Mirabee, let me tell you about shelling them.

Removing the shells from them involves about as much folk-lore as planting by moon phases. IOW, every old codger has the secret to make it easy. If you have a night with indigestion and can't sleep, just Google all the helpful hints, most of which involve major infractions against OSHA standards, dangerous sharp objects, volkswagons and the nutcracker from hell.

None of them work. I have literally driven over them, and they remained intact. However, I did really mess up some nice concrete. I am not kidding, this did happen. A relative gave my husband one of those huge, cast iron, lever-action nutcrackers they advertise will make it an easy chore. I use mine as a book-end in my pantry. Sledge hammers make them ricochet off walls and body parts.

Two years ago, I did the dirty deed of husking a couple bushel of them and curing them up at which point they shrunk to maybe half a bushel of nuts in the shell. Then pretended I forgot about them. Then I started talking up things like black walnut cake, black walnut ice cream, black walnut breads. You know, subliminal suggestions. The DH bit. He spent his leisure hours for a week out in our solarium, sweating and pounding, and prying. I honestly don't know how he did it, but he perservered and we ended up with maybe a gallon sized freezer bag, crammed to the hilt with meats.

Was it worth it? Yes.

Ahh, cracking. The next phase. Often fraught with frustration - but it doesn't have to be.
I did forget one point on the husk removal - after you've gotten the bulk of the husk material off manually(and stained your fingers/hands), you really need to wash them to get as much of the remaining husk off as is possible. The big boys just pitch 'em in a cement mixer with some rough rocks or chunks of broken bricks - and I've got a friend who used an old clothes dryer - with the heating element removed - to roll 'em around for a while with water & rocks/bricks to get them almost squeaky clean. I don't have either, so I just put 'em in a 5-gallon bucket, fill it with water, and stir vigorously with a stick, pouring off the black water and adding more, until it comes off fairly clean.

After the BWs have cured for a couple of weeks or more, then it's time for a session of cracking. A good heavy duty hard-shell nutcracker(not one designed for cracking pecans) is really helpful, but a bench-mounted vise is quite serviceable. Here's my main tip for BWs and hickory nuts - soak them in a pan/pot of warm water for an hour or two before you begin a session of cracking. The shells will absorb enough moisture that they will bend, buckle, and split, rather than explode into pieces when you reach 'critical pressure'. With a vise or nut cracker, a pair of diagonal wire-cutting pliers(for making a snip here and there in the nutshell to release nutmeats) and a nut pick, I can usually extract intact halves/quarters from the most inhospitable walnut or shellbark/shagbark hickory.

A vote for the 'improved' nut varieties with thinner shells and open central cavities is in order. Emma Kay, Clermont, Thomas Myers, Neel #1, etc. are primo black walnuts, with thin shells and kernel % 2-4 times greater than the typical wild-type BW. Hickories - I'm still waiting for mine to bear, but I've had occasion to sample a few named varieties, and I have a local shagbark selection that won 1st place at the KY State Fair several years back. J.Yoder #1 and Grainger are probably two of the top shagbarks. Fred Blankenship's KY discovery, 'Simpson #1', may be the best shellbark to come down the pike.

Calliope, I'm glad you said it was worth it, because I was beginning to wonder! Another question, would it help to shake the trees somehow to get them down before the rats eat them all? I knew the black walnuts would stain badly, and I have some concern on how to dispose of the wash water. I knew they stunted other plants, but this year I have some tomato plants that are 20 ft away and they're much smaller than all the others. I might use the wash water to stain a wood fence.

I husked about 1500 black walnuts two seasons ago while wearing just one pair of rubber gloves and hardly got any stain on my fingers; I cut the husks off with a sturdy paring knife. The husk juice is a great natural dye for natural fabrics like cotton, rayon, etc., that gives a range of fast and pleasing colors from tan to green to dark brown depending on how long you leave the fabric in it.

I'll try the paring knife the next time, thanks for the tip. But you have the dye sequence wrong. My fingers definitely went from green to tan to dark brown ;-)

I don't shake the trees, because I can't even reach the lowest branches of mine, they're pretty tall. I sorta figure with nuts, they're ripe when they fall. I may have that all wrong though. I may also be missing the rodentia taking them from the branches, but I think they get most of them from the ground. And I mean they don't lay long! I know they aren't all eaten and I can only imagine great blinking piles of them buried over the acreage.