Walnut harvest 2

Nuts are being blow and swept with a 1983 Weis McNair sweeper operated by Suzanne Love.

Last week we talked about the first step in walnut harvest, which is shaking the trees. Next the nuts are swept into rows down the center of the tree rows to prepare for harvesting. The machine that does that is called a sweeper.

There is quite a variety of sweepers available today. Most new ones are diesel powered, self-propelled units with an air conditioned cab. A cab is nice as sweeping walnuts is a dirty job.

Sweepers can also be installed on tractors. The tractor-mounted sweeper has some advantages in that it is less expensive to purchase, as it has no engine. The drawback is that it ties up a tractor and has to be taken on and off each harvest season.

The first real sweepers were small walk-behind machines with a lawnmower engine for power. It produced a narrow sweep of four feet or less. Sweepers today commonly have sweep widths of eight feet or more. The actual sweep is accomplished by either a rotating rubber flight or a reel arrangement. They are actually much like a hay rake, only smaller.

It became apparent early on that a sweeper going around trees leaves a lot of nuts that must be hand raked. And while the original sweepers did not have them, all sweepers today have air blowers to blow the walnuts out of the tree row. As sweeper engines have gotten more powerful over the years, the blowers have also become larger.

In addition to the sweeper, or perhaps because of it, a second key ingredient in getting a good sweeper job is the condition of the surface of the ground. Ground that is flat, level and weed-free is a breeze to sweep and there will hardly be one lost nut. Sweeping in grass and uneven ground is a challenge and even the best of the new sweepers will leave little piles of nuts in all the ruts and holes.

Our sweeper was manufactured in 1983 by the Weis McNair Company of Chico. It has a four-cylinder air-cooled gas engine and makes a seven-foot wide sweep. Unfortunately, it does not have an air-conditioned cab so the operator gets very dirty. The engine has also been overhauled at least twice.

We have a spare sweeper to use in case of a breakdown with the Weis. It is an older, smaller sweeper but can get the job done.

Once the nuts are rowed up we run a stick picker through the rows to get the bigger sticks out that came down when the trees were shook. Our Sept. 28, 2007 blog on Walnut harvest talked about the stick picker.