Getting ready to harvest the grains

Oh I'll be watching this thread!

Please see my related thread :

All Things Gardening forum
Cereal Grains for Yard & Garden

1st pic - Awnless Winter Wheat

2nd pic - Awnless Winter Wheat after selectively harvesting. Only the completely straw-colored seed heads were harvested, which showed no green tinge.

3rd pic - Kitty standing guard by the first bagful of harvested Awnless Winter Wheat.

4th pic - Pima Club Wheat

5th pic - Kitty laying low, watching out for grain pilferers.

6th pic - Oats

7th pic - Full Pint Barley

8th pic - "Wild Barley" (Hordeum murinum)

9th pic - "Wild Barley" (Hordeum murinum)

10th pic - "Wild Barley" (Hordeum murinum)

11th pic - Awned Wheat which has re-seeded (or re-sown) itself for the 3rd year in the same location.

12th pic - Bags of harvested grains with select seed heads in plastic containers, which will be used as reference. A Corona grain mill (1970s vintage) stands at the ready. The grains will be tested for hardness - if too soft to be milled into flour, they will be allowed to set in the bags for a few days to harden up.

Love your set up! I will be harvesting soon as well. My grains are still a little soft, but soon will be dry and hard like you mentioned. I love how kitty is keeping a watchful eye... to protect you from critters while you cut the grains.

Can't wait to see how it turns out. I clicked on this thread because I was going say
"who harvested the grain" with a title like that you have to start with the grain and you did Nick

Thank you both for watching and waiting ... I'm still trying to get my first AM cup going ☕ and then have to ✎ some checks to pay the bills to keep the internet on

There's bread AND A KITTY!? Best thread ever!

I have a black cat too. Doesn't help with anything though.

Well, probably the reason why is that you don't talk to your cat! I was just telling my kitty yesterday, in fact, that "If you don't talk to your kitty cats, they just get bored and lie there, and fall asleep ... "

And it's so true. I've had my kitty, who you see in my pics, for about 9 years now, and I've been talking to him ever since he barged into the house and adopted me as his human. Another thing about him, previous to him, I had another black cat who I leash trained, and took him for daily walks out in the yard on a leash. My neighbor saw me doing that once and asked "is that a little black dog of some sort that you have?"

So I tried the leash on my "new kitty" and after about 2 days he was out walking on the leash too. I was talking to him all the time, explaining to him what we were going to do. He listened very carefully to my voice and watched my hands as I was explaining it to him. In a short time, he was listening, and watching my hands for hand signals when we were out with him on the leash. I would just point in the direction I wanted him to go, and he would be out ahead, on the leash, his ears quickly changing directions (an indication that he was listening to me) and glancing at my hands for signals. Basically, that's all there is to it. No cat is too old or too lazy to learn how to do this, so just give it a try!

A tip: The first time you put the leash and collar on your cat, he or she will just lay down and wonder what you're doing. Don't pull on the leash to get your kitty to raise up. Never do that, or it's all over. Never again can you approach that cat with a collar and leash. Just let the cat lay there and talk to it. If he struggles to get off the leash, take it off immediately and try again some other day. Just say "It's OK, let's try again some other time ..." You have to vocalize it so he or she can hear the tone of your voice, whether you're mad, or just casual, etc. Very important to vocalize.

My kitty is a little scrapper. He's caught so many mice I've lost track. When he sees a big dog come into his territory he will raise up and "sit at attention." If the dog approaches, he will hunch up his back, fluff up his fur, and advance toward the dog! This surprises most people the first time they see it. It surprised my next door neighbor who has a "puppy" mastiff which is much bigger than my kitty, but kitty advanced toward puppy, puppy backed down and went the other direction. Another time it was my brother who came over with his big black lab on a leash. Same thing, kitty hunched up, fluffed up, and advanced toward the dog. Since it was kitty's territory, and the black lab knew it, he just lay down, bewildered.

Kitty also has raccoons and possums to contend with at night, so he's not bored by any means!

I have an older lady up the street with about 40 or 50 cats. You can smell her house before you see it. We only have 1 that is ours and some of her friends that show up from time to time. I don't think I could do more than 2 or 3 cats at a time. I have no clue how she has so many but this is SC we are talking about. I have a friend with a goat that wears dipers and sleeps on her sofa Its a tiny goat but still a goat in the house, chillin on the sofa

to ediblelandscapingsc :

We had a "cat lady" here in Gladstone about 25 years ago that had more than 100 cats in her house before she got "busted" from complains from her neighbors about the "aroma" that wafted through the air, which you could smell more than a block away. The humane society and several cops removed all the cats and she had to show up at the courthouse for a hearing. After that, I lost track of what happened, but I think she was allowed to keep about 5 of them.

Rain in the forecast here ☔, so I had to take care of several sundry details yesterday before I commenced to bread making. Now I'm making progress ...

1st pic - The Corona grain mill has been disassembled and cleaned out using a pastry brush to remove leftovers which have remained inside from the last usage.

2nd pic - A dab of coconut oil (for lubrication) will be placed at the locations shown by the red arrows where a ball bearing inside the piece on the right aligns to the recess on the piece in the left. When reassembled, the piece on the left, which is a shaft with a spiral "worm" onto which one of the grinding plates is mounted, rotates against the piece on the right as the handle is turned.

3rd pic - The shaft with the spiral "worm" from the other side showing the grooves on the steel grinding plate. The "worm" feeds the grain to the grinding plates. The other grinding plate is still attached to the body of the grain mill. The two grinding plates are indicated by blue arrows in the 1st pic.

Corona grain mill lubricated with coconut oil, reassembled, and Winter Wheat (harvested 7 July 2019) put in a large old wok and ready to be evaluated for hardness of the grains and threshed out by hand rubbing.

Since this is an awnless wheat, it will be much easier on the hands than an awned wheat or barley. Since this is such a small amount the process will be to take each spike separately and just rub out the grains between thumb and fingers, leaving the grains in the stainless steel bowl and the stems in the tin pie pan.

Each spike is threshed out individually by holding the stem in one hand and scraping from the top of the spike with the thumbnail, working downward, releasing the grains and chaff. Some of the grains are light colored, but are hard when tested with the thumbnail. The darker ones are fully ripe and definitely hard.

It would probably be best to let the spikes alone for a few more days to fully harden and ripen the grains, but since this is just the first cutting - and I was trying to beat the rainfall which is supposed to be up to ½ inch in the next few hours - I will go ahead and thresh out the rest, winnow it out, and get the grinding underway.

Nick ! We've enjoyed organically grown grains, & home-made baked goods for years. It's a process, for sure. But, oh so worth it.
Good job !

to katesflowers :

Thanks for checking in.

I'm in a residential area and all of my neighbors here are lawn mowing people, so my "front yard" contrasts sharply with them, but they put up with me, since I'm an old-timer I guess. Anyone who wants to look and ask, can see examples of wheat, barley, oats and rye, growing right here in the yard. And uncommon cereal grains like foxtail millet, and "ornamental grains" like Utrecht blue wheat and variegated barley.

Every year I purchase seeds of different varieties and kinds of cereal grains for trial plantings in tiny plots of about 1 x 2 feet and some of the grains have begun to naturalize by reseeding themselves year after year.

The youngsters can see the "tall grass" that their bread is made from, and adults can see what common grains like wheat, oats, barley and rye actually look like, and I can actually make bread from the grasses growing right here in my yard, in all of it's stages from sowing the seeds to harvesting, threshing and milling the grain into flour, and baking it, which will be in it's most primitive form, so keep watching as I go through the process. I hope it will be entertaining as well as educational!

> Nick

1st pic - A Wheat Thins box will be used to make an implement for winnowing the grain.

2nd pic - Finished product.

3rd pic - A small handful of the grain with the chaff is placed here (white arrow) while holding the implement at a slight incline in one hand. Gently shake it a little so the grains run slowly down to the "trough" end (red arrow), while very gently blowing puffs of air with your breath so the chaff spills off the end (in this case, into the wok). The winnowed grains will be put in the stainless steel bowl.

It will take practice, and the first winnowing may have to be followed up by a second winnowing, until the grain is satisfactorily free of chaff.

Another method is using a fan to blow off the chaff, and there are several other methods I've used, but for small amounts of seeds or grain, this does the trick for me.

Here is a site for you:
http://www.backtotheland.com/h...

https://permies.com/t/2036/sma...

There are also very small combines and balers now available from china.
https://www.eqmachinery.com/in...

to RpR :

Thanks - I will check those out for sure ☺

From my NOTES :

Winter Wheat
Territorial Seed Co.
WW4413/E
sown 1 NOV 2018 (small patch)
1" sprouts 14 NOV 2018
_________________

DATA

[ weight measurements made with an OHAUS TRIPLE BEAM BALANCE scale, which weighs only in GRAMS ]

weight of remaining Territorial Winter Wheat (not sown) = 490.0 gm (which means that Territorial gave me more than 1 pound)
Note that the Territorial bag gives weight as 1 LB (not in grams)

VOLUME measurement of winnowed Winter Wheat is exactly 2 level cups (500 ml)
_________________

METRIC conversion:

1 cup = 250 ml

2 cups = 500 ml
_________________

size of my plot of Winter Wheat :
3 ft. x 1 ft. 4" (36 inches by 16 inches)

conversions:
[4 inches = approx. .34 feet, or ⅓ of a foot]
3 x 1.34 ft. = approx. 4 square feet
1 acre = 43,560 square feet

weight of winnowed wheat shown in scan labeled "Winter Wheat my harvest 7 July 2019"
306.5 gm (10.8 ounces)
Note that this represents only a portion of the wheat grown in the plot - the rest (about half) was left uncut since it was not quite mature yet.
_________________

WEIGHTS & MEASUREMENTS conversions

Avoirdupois (U.S.) weight (common measurement)
(avdp.)

1 pound = 16 ounces

To convert grams into ounces (avdp.) Multiply by 0.03527

To convert ounces into grams (avdp.) Multiply by 28.35 *
(* rounded up)

how many grams = 1 pound ?
16 (oz.) x 28.35 (gm) = 453.6 gm (approx.)

_________________

to RpR :

I did check out those links you posted : the thresher for $1,000 would be nice if I had about an acre or so ...

And that other web page about small home scale threshing machines had some good ideas and comments which were interesting too, but those would be for much larger plots than I have here.

I buy absolutely NOTHING from China unless there is absolutely no alternative. I think the young people here in the U.S. have to stop being consumers of Chinese products and learn to be producers of products Made in U.S.A.

Much more could be said about this, but let's just leave it at that ...

A good "old fashioned" thresher is what is known as a flail, which doubles nicely as one of the best and most deadly close-combat weapons there is ... so if you have to fight off zombies while you're threshing your grain, you already have it "handy" as my grandmother used to say ☺