They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
This week has kind of gotten away from us, in terms of getting out of control busy, but we still managed to push ahead on one project that has been in the works for the last year. We got the grain mill set up on the porch at the farm. This is not an ideal… Continue reading Milling the wheat
We recently bought a grain mill. We bought a Diamant, by all reviews, the Cadillac of grain mills. It can grind beans, large and small grains, corn, even oily things like crushed nuts and sunflower seeds. It's also supposed to last practically forever. We certainly hope it can do all of those things, because it… Continue reading Mounting Bracket for the Grain Mill
Our seed cleaning screens from Siskiyou seeds came on Monday, so on Tuesday we completed the winnowing of the wheat. As it turns out, it was also the final threshing. First, scrubbing the tomato out of the rubber tote. The kids were all about this because it involved using chlorox wipes. They love the smell… Continue reading Final Winnowing
We finished threshing the wheat on Tuesday. It is amazing how small the actual pile of berries and chaff was, considering the size of the stack of wheat we started with. Threshing the last of the straw with sticks, baby girls is very much a monkey-see-monkey-do kind of girl. A great long stick of molding… Continue reading Winnowing time.
Last week we harvested the wheat, so that it wouldn't get rained on. Timing the harvest is a bit of a challenge. If you harvest it too early the sead heads are green and they don't let go of the seeds worth a darn. If you harvest it too late the seed heads dry out… Continue reading Threshing Time
I was originally planning on harvesting the wheat on Monday, but it is supposed to rain on Monday, and Saturday is looking like it’s going to be a busy day, so I took a couple hours to cut it and get it into the shop on Thursday. 140 ft.² of Fife red wheat planted last… Continue reading Bringing in the Wheat
The Red Fife winter wheat we planted last year is turning brown and dry. It will very soon be ready. Pluck and roll the heads. Blow gently to blow away the husks, and... Wheat berries! Hopefully we will harvest it on Monday.
The garden is slowly beginning to take shape. Our winter wheat is coming in very nicely, and we even have seed heads forming. The beans have come in quite satisfactory, unlike most of the rest of the seeds we have planted. We have four trellises worth of blue lake, two trellises worth of purple French… Continue reading Wheat and beans
After our experience with the buckwheat, we realized we don’t have weed control in the north field, so it would be a waste of money to plant wheat there this fall. The weeds would just take over. However, we realized that we were taking the tomatoes and squash out of the straw bales, and one… Continue reading Wheat sprouting
https://youtu.be/B2MAv8EwWqI Last week we finished our buckwheat project. Alas, it was not fit for human consumption, and the effort necessary to make it so was not worth while. We identified a few things to fix for next year. For one thing, it went into the ground too late in the year, so that it reached… Continue reading Winnowing the Buckwheat: Lessons Learned.
Little Farm in the Big City 