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.
Tuesday was the day we got around to harvesting our wheat. It was a bit disappointing. If you look closely at the picture above you will see that a significant number of the wheat stalks are missing their seed head. In this section it was 50% or more, most other sections were not hit quite… Continue reading Harvesting Wheat and Garlic
Last year we had issues with the wheat getting too tall and falling over, so this year we decided to get ahead of it and set up a trellis. This is a very simple structure, just a set of T-posts every ten feet down both sides of the row. On the right hand side, (west)… Continue reading Trellising the Wheat
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
Busy day last Tuesday. We dug all the taters. This year we planted German Butterball variety. We had never tried them before, but they had the word "butter" in the title, so Mommy had to have them. We also found a volunteer tomato, looks like it came from one of last year's costolutos. Lots of… Continue reading Taters and Wheat
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
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.
Little Farm in the Big City 