I came home today to the sound of grinding. Piles of walnuts, still in their fruity, green outer shell were being fed into a machine (actually a revamped washing machine) that scraped this layer off, leaving the hard, brown shell that most of us see and struggle to crack to reach the nut inside. My 27-year old host-brother is starting a business, and I’d say he’s off to a fantastic start.
He owns about 10 hectares of walnut trees. Normally he can sell these green walnuts for just under 1 lei (7 cents) per kilo. After peeling off this layer they sell for anywhere from 5 to 13 times that much. So, he and some friend took apart an old washing machine, put a kind of rotating blade on the bottom, and voila – about 1000 kilos of peeled walnuts in a day. The work on the machine cost him about $150, and he’s hoping to save enough to buy a $2500 machine (which I helped him find on the Internet, thank you very much) that actually breaks the inner and harder brown shell and removes the nut, which he can sell for about 60 lei per kilo.
It was so refreshing to see a totally new business in the village – not just another general store. I really think he’s going to be successful.
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