Like apples and stone fruit, which had robust crops this year, this is turning out to be an exceptional harvest for black walnuts.

I use the term “harvest” loosely. By harvesting, I mean picking up off the ground what has fallen from the limbs overhead. This invites all sorts of comparisons to manna from heaven and riches falling from the sky, which I will pass up. Nor will I exploit the comparison of my driveway littered with yellowing walnut husks to a street paved in gold.

Suffice it to say that black walnuts are a true gift. Most people never plant a black walnut tree, yet anyone who lives near one or has access to the woods in which they grow can gather them at will. In early fall, they drop to the ground and lie there for the taking.

Many cooks, particularly those who bake, consider the oily-textured black walnut to be the most flavorful of the nuts. Its flavor complements chocolate, and so we find walnuts as a traditional ingredient in fudge and brownies. The walnut meat also crumbles easily, which makes it easier to work with in some cases.

While the walnut is clearly a gift from nature, it also isn’t free. Wild walnuts are not user-friendly, and messing with them is a labor of love.

When it falls from the tree, the walnut is encased in a husk that is not quite the size of a tennis ball. The walnut itself is the seed for this larger fruit. Unfortunately, the husk’s only resemblance to a fruit is that it consists of an outer rind and a soft inside. The contents of the husk are the first impediment to effortless walnut harvesting.

The walnut husk is filled with a black goo that stains the hands and is pretty much impossible to get off. For that reason, the first rule of walnut gathering is to wear rubber or leather gloves. As the husk dries out, the rind cracks and this nasty substance leaks out. It’s difficult to gather a bucket of walnuts without getting this stuff on your hands.

I spoke to a veteran walnut-gatherer who said he has cleaned the nuts by running them through a cornhusker, but most people clean the nuts with gloved hands. The black goo can be wiped away and the nuts washed. The nuts must dry thoroughly before they can be cracked.

My walnut source suggests spreading the nuts out to dry in some protected location.

“Let them dry some place where the squirrels can’t get them, because I guarantee they’ll get into them,” he said.

This also is why it’s unwise to simply let the nuts lie on the ground until late fall when the husk will have deteriorated and the goo decomposed. Because humans aren’t the only connoisseurs of walnuts, those left on the ground will disappear.

Once you have a cleaned and dried supply of walnuts, the next phase of processing begins, and here the hard shell presents a challenge. Even Euell Gibbons in “Stalking the Wild Asparagus” says there’s no easy way out. Gibbons, you will recall, was the grandfatherly forager who stared into the camera and proclaimed that his bowl of Grape Nuts cereal tasted just like wild hickory nuts.

“I know no shortcut method of shelling them; one just takes a heavy hammer and a nutpick, and the rest of it is just work,” Gibbons writes.

A table-mounted, levered nutcracker might be a more practical option – and might save the thumb from certain destruction. Either way, it’s a time-consuming task to smash the shells and pick out the meat.