It seems to me that this black walnut kernel industry is sort of a tradition, particularly in East Tennessee. If you have lived in this state as long as I have, you have become curious about its history. Well, in the early days there were no railroads in this state, and commerce moved pretty much by means of wagon team, and the supply center seemed to be Baltimore, Maryland. Now, I can visualize very well that on outbound trips they doubtless carried black walnut kernels, and on the way in, of course, they'd bring clothing and other materials that were not produced here at home.
In the early days they produced tremendous amounts of maple sugar and maple syrup. Doubtless this was consumed at home and nowadays we don't have any evidence of that, because the climatic conditions in New York State and other northern states and New England are much better suited to the flow of the sap. The weather, I believe, is not so changeable up there. Our weather is changeable. We may have a very severe cold week, and then in ten days it will be balmy and pretty weather. We haven't made any effort to bring back the sugar maple industry. We don't consider it economic in this state, because cane sugar in the past has been cheap in price, and then we have another product that some of you may not be familiar with, sorghum molasses. That serves as dessert lots of times in many meals, hot biscuits and sorghum to finish up the meal.
Now, I might mention something about the size of the black walnut industry in this state. We estimate that there are eight million pounds of uncracked whole walnuts produced on the average in a normal crop year in Tennessee, and there is another five million pounds that is never gathered, never hulled, never enters the market, never used, and the value of this crop in a normal year would be around $750,000. That is for the nuts, the fruit, the kernels. If you speak of timber it will amount to $960,000. That is in the form of lumber and veneers, and if you figure that in the form of a log at the shipping point, we'd reduce that figure and say it would be $480,000.
I think to understand this state you have to give some consideration to physiographic regions, and if you will bear with me I'd like to sketch through these regions of the state, because they have a bearing on production of black walnut. Here in the east we have the East Tennessee Mountains, and proceeding westward we have the Great Valley of East Tennessee. It goes all the way down to Chattanooga, up through Bristol, on up through Virginia to Hagerstown, Maryland, all the way up to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.