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This post is out of date, by almost a week. Geese have grazed the wheat down to about 3 inches on average. Supposedly this is a good thing, and is supposed to encourage new root and tiller production and a thicker stand, as well as provide nitrogen for initial spring growth. We shall see. However,… Continue reading Geese and Ducks off the Garden
It has been a while since our last post here. We have been on vacation for the last week, visiting Ryan's family in Tennessee. We did some sight seeing, and helped out with some projects on the homesteads there, had some family meals and game nights. All in all a good vacation, but it did… Continue reading Catching Up
The very first thing we made with our home-grown, home-milled wheat flour. Added water (and nothing else) to make a batter of a soupy consistency. Dropped on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. After about 5 minutes at 400 degrees we took them out and traced crosses in them, then baked them for another 5… Continue reading Altar Breads
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
Didn’t get much time at the farm yesterday, spent about an hour in the afternoon, getting a new paddock set up for the cows and the sheep in the Orchard, and prepping the legume to be planted to wheat, hopefully today. Math. Still needs to get done. One of the things we needed to set… Continue reading Clearing the legumes
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
Little Farm in the Big City 