Tunetti Natural LLC

Tunetti Natural Soap will be there with natural personal care products, natural laundry soap, and gift items for everyone on your list!

Cup O’Cheer is back for its 28th year! Join us on Friday, November 20th for the beloved Cup O’Cheer Homes Tour, Holiday Tea & Market.

This year, guests will tour 5 stunning homes decorated for the holidays in an open house format from 10 AM to 6 PM. The Holiday Tea & Market will be held at Life360 Church and will feature sweet and savory treats from Simply Delicious, tea lovingly served by our volunteers, a silent auction, and shopping with our local vendors.

The first 1,000 guests to purchase a ticket will receive a keepsake 2026 china teacup and saucer. Don’t miss this holiday tradition that brings joy to families and hope to those served by Ronald McDonald House. This year’s Cup O’Cheer is generously sponsored by American Glass.
Jingle your way to tickets today!

https://rmhcozarks.org/events/cup-o-cheer/

Every fall, Missourians fill pickup trucks with wild black walnuts and drive them to a hulling station to be paid by the pound.

The business behind it started in a grocery store. In 1946, Ralph Hammons, who owned a grocery in Stockton, noticed the black walnuts growing wild across southwest Missouri. According to one account, he had a chance to buy walnuts and send them to a company in Virginia. Then he bought a nut-cracking machine and began selling his own black walnut nutmeats under the brand Missouri Dandy.

In its first year, the company took in about 200,000 pounds of walnuts. A January 1946 article in the Cedar County Republican said the plant would be equipped to process 1.6 million pounds a season and employ about sixty people. Today, according to company-related reports, Hammons averages 20 to 25 million pounds a year.

Black walnuts are not farmed. They are wild, and they are collected by hand. People gather the nuts, haul them to a Hammons hulling station, where the outer hull is removed, and are paid for what they bring. The number of stations varies by source, from about 200 to about 250 in 11 to 16 states, with more than half in Missouri.

Missouri leads the world in black walnut production, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation. Hammons says the most come from southwest Missouri. The black walnut is Missouri's official state tree nut.

The company says it is the world's largest commercial sheller of black walnuts. A University of Vermont library exhibit notes that Hammons is the only large-scale processor of wild black walnuts in the country, compared with ten cracking plants in 1955. It is also the largest employer in Stockton, a town of about 1,700 people, with about 80 workers year-round and more during the harvest.

The buying season is short. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation, it runs from early October through the first week of November.

For many Missouri families, gathering walnuts is a fall tradition passed down through generations. Do you remember picking black walnuts with your family, and who in your family still does it?

Illustrated with the use of AI

Are you ready for No Shave November?