CAMDEN, Ohio — Nut tree farmers are diligent when it comes to preserving and improving their craft. Some prefer to call the craft a hobby.

Call it what you want, but be sure to call it an agricultural business, as well. “I have my own walnut trees, but I scavenge county parks and woods throughout Ohio for these nuts because they bring good money,” said Orville Stamp, who has been tending to his 200 walnut trees in Preble County most of his life.

Pecans, hazelnuts and hickory nuts also dot his landscape, though not in number like the walnut trees. He also has quite a few hicans, which is a cross between and hickory and a pecan.

“My dad used to harvest the nuts and me and my brother spent many Saturdays picking these off the ground by hand,” he said. “We wore special plastic gloves to do this chore, but we still got (skin) stained by these nuts. That’s the only drawback, is the stain.”

Nut tree farmers like Stamp, while mighty in their mission, are modest in numbers – yet their numbers are steadily growing in the agricultural landscape. The Ohio Nut Growers Assoc. (ONGA) will hold its fall meeting Sept. 30 at the Hietter family Nut and Horse Farm at 6475 Refugee Road in Pataskala.

There, Joe Hietter will be giving a tour of his farm, which consists of black walnut, heartnut, chestnut, hazelnut, hickory, pecan and hican nut trees. The trees at this farm have been planted each year since 2004 and range in size from small seedlings to mature trees over 30 feet tall.

“Many people planted trees in the early 1900s during wartime because there were food shortages and nuts were an alternative source of protein,” said Ohio Farm Bureau member Joe Cullman, a second-generation nut farmer from Marysville.

His 120-acre farm (60 of which stands with nut trees) straddles Union and Delaware counties. His father started nut farming as a hobby in 1987 and now the land has enough trees in production to make it a full-time, profitable venture.

His acreage includes a pond, stream and wetland. Nut trees are staggered rather than in rows. Among the trees are pecans, oaks and fruit trees for wildlife. Leaves and fruit drop, he said, decompose and work their way back into the soil.

“I harvest the nuts every three days, throughout the fall,” Stamp said.

He and Cullman sell their nuts (in the hull) to Hammons, a Missouri nut hauling station where the nut is hulled, washed, dried and cracked. Growers are paid by the pound. Shelled nuts are sold online, locally and through catalogs. The after-product, or ground shells, are used for sandblasting and in health and beauty products.

Cullman will harvest roughly 1,000 pounds of top-quality nuts and store the meat in his drying shed for about a year before cracking and selling at the farmers’ market in Marysville.

He also harvests some of the young black walnuts in May before they’ve formed in the hull and sells them to Watershed Distillery in Columbus, where they are crafted into nocino, an Italian-style liqueur with a nutty flavor and molasses-like sweetness.

Assisting nut growers like Cullman and Stamp is the ONGA, which began in 1941 as a way of supporting and educating farmers, nut growers, agriculturalists and others. Both men agree that if someone has just 5-6 acres they can be used to grow this specialty crop as a supplemental income.