Hammons Black Walnuts - A Hulling Station - Springfield, MO

your weekly sit down with local agricultural leaders and businesses this is tailgate conversations presented by Pinta guru Chevrolet you traveled with us to Stockton Missouri to see firsthand how black walnuts are processed now we're here at the Ozark Empire fair grounds here in Springfield at the black walnut hauling station to meet the family behind it all the Hammond [Music] my grandfather started famous products company in 1946 even poster had a grocery store in Stockton's or a small town where he lived with his family there and he had an opportunity to buy black walnuts for a company in Virginia he looked around and it's all these wild natural black walnuts a gift of God and say hey maybe there's an opportunity for me here so he bought a black walnut cracker in Tennessee and the first year in 1946 bought a hundred thousand pounds of black walnut that's a lot of nuts when you don't know exactly what you're gonna do with them and they ran the business and grew it from the late 50s it became one of the leading black walnut shelters in the country at that time there were several others and during the 60s continued to grow and develop the shell business with ground nut shells and distributed black walnut nut meats all over the nation the people are the real blessings in what we do every fall we get a chance to buy black walnuts wild black boys that people pick up and deliver to us in all the different buying stations two hundred and some-odd buying stations in so many different places thousands and thousands of people who each have a different story they'll pick up the nuts and sometimes they need the money sometimes I use the money for boots during the wintertime for coats sometimes you can put food on the table sometimes for paying insurance that comes due every year our taxes I've heard that sometimes it's Christmas spending money I see people that don't normally get a chance to interact with and hearing them tell their stories of the difference it makes in their lives going out with their families picking up flag ones enjoying the fall day is the crisp cool here it's so much more than just getting rid of the nuts that are littering the yard before you I hear from people that I interact with now people who are executives very successful businessmen this is people and they tell me stories of picking up black walnuts when they were little and what a difference it made for them and the opportunities had provided for their families as they were growing and I'm so thankful that we can continue to do that well certainly I'm very thankful for my grandfather my grandmother who's still with us who had the vision for this business and my father who continued to run it and had a vision and a hope that maybe I would be able to be a part of it too and I'm also thankful for my nephew Jacob basica who is fourth-generation involved in our business I've got a son who has done some work with us and another son who may in the future as well all the generations of our family have been involved with it and will be for the next generation hopefully years to come you know we're not guaranteed another day on this earth we're not guaranteed another year but thankfully Hammonds products company has been around for 72 years and I think we can be here for a lot longer when we get up at 6 o'clock every morning or thereabout and we get out to picking up Wallace probably 8:00 to 8:30 and the bring a wallets in about 3 o'clock and then we go back out and pick up until about dark it's much easier than it used to be when you pick them up the hand but still rolling these rollers all day and dumping them in the trailer is the hardest for me it's really can up Wallace people will stop and ask us to come and pick those up and we have people will say we want you to come back next year and just Easter Day Afternoon this man said as long as I live here I want you to pick my wallet up one of the keys is people picking up the wild crop and continuing to recognize God's resource every year every year that's renewable it's agriculture so we are all dependent upon the rains and the natural produce of the land for our substance and that's what we depend on every year we're dependent upon customers we've tried to anticipate directions in the food industry the trends in the food industry for wild foods wild flavor low flavored foods is a food ingredient and we think the black walnuts have a great message that is on trend right now for consumers interest in these kinds of foods and flavors and developing wild natural products that folks are looking for more more nutritious healthy we think that there's a big demand a future demand that we're just tapping into a little bit we're gonna need a lot more nuts to be able to meet that demand - so we're planting improved varieties of black walnut trees we're encouraging landowners to plant orchards of improved variety trees we're doing some of that ourselves so someday we'll thousands of acres of improved varieties of wild black walnut trees that are producing the future generations supply of black walnuts so we're excited about the future of this industry and of the heavens products companies the leaders of black walnut night industry [Music]

Channel: From the Tailgate

Views: 2,072

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: From The Tailgate, KOZL-Z27, Hammons Black Walnuts

Id: rNftrwfeakQ

Length: 6min 10sec (370 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2019