Growing wheat and other grains on the small scale

 


 


Wheat, ready for harvest.

 

 

About five years ago we decided to try our hand at growing wheat.  We had an old corral that was rich with composted horse manure.  My husband tilled it up and I scattered wheat across the ground.  I used a 5-lb. bag of organic hard white wheat, and I planted it on Mother's Day, hoping it would ripen by fall.  In our climate that's always an iffy proposition.

 

After tossing the wheat out by handfuls we walked around scuffing our feet on the ground and using a rake to cover as much of the wheat as we could.  A week later it looked like the corral had been planted in thick, lush dark green grass.  During July and August, our dry months, we watered it.  In the fall the wheat heads formed.  Antsy to follow it's progress I broke off some kernals and they were green and soft.  As time passed they turned yellow and then brown, and became hard.

 

I didn't know what to expect or when to harvest them, so I almost waited too long.  The wheat kernals had begun falling from the heads.  We decided it was time for harvest.

 

 



 



The first thing we thought of was to have my husband cut it with the weed-eater.

He carefully edged the weed-eater into the stalks near the ground, but they flew everywhere and were a disorganized tangle of stalks. 

He next tried a scythe and it left them a little more organized but still difficult to sort out.

 
I finally ended up just breaking the heads off the stalks one at a time and putting them in buckets.  It was slow work but I enjoyed being in the fall sunshine, and I spread it out over about a week.  I went out and broke off wheat heads for half an hour to an hour, a couple times a day.

I tried scissors and while it did work, it wasn't any faster or easier than breaking the wheat heads off by hand.  It made me think of the cotton-pickers of old, carrying a big sack and picking the cotton, one head at a time.

 Over the fall I threshed the wheat by hand.  The middle bucket in the picture has the whole wheat heads.  The one my hands are over is the one I was 'squishing' the wheat kernals into.  The bucket around the side of my legs is where I tossed the empty wheat head after all the kernals were out.

 

 

When I had a bucket full of them done I spread them on an old cookie sheet to clean them.  There was a lot of "chaff" mixed with the kernals.  The chaff is light-weight and easily blown away, leaving just the heavier wheat kernals.  This is often done outside.  One way is to spread a tarp and pour the threshed wheat onto it.  This is best done with at least two people and on a breezy day.  Hold onto both sides of the tarp and toss the wheat and chaff into the air, just enough for the breeze to blow away the chaff.  You'll probably still have to do some cleaning by hand but it blows away a great deal of the chaff.

 

Regarding threshing, I've seen several homemade threshers, including one that uses a five-gallon bucket.  There's a hole drilled in the center of the lid and a drill on the outside is attached to a chain on the inside, through that hole.  When the drill is turned on, the chain whips in a circle inside the bucket and threshes the wheat.

We have an electric grain grinder that makes a fast job of milling the wheat into flour.  This one has several setting from 'fine' to 'coarse', but even the coarsest setting is finer than our hand-cranked grinder.  Here's a quick-link to electric grain grinders in case you're interested in seeing what's available and how much they cost:  http://amzn.to/19NqZAC

Our grandson loves to pour the whole grains into the hopper on our hand-cranked grinder.  This grinder is a heavy iron one that we picked up at a second-hand store about twenty years ago.  We have a lighter steel hand-cranked grinder too, but prefer to use this one because it's more heavy-duty.

Here's a link to hand-cranked grinders for those interested in browsing:

http://amzn.to/14SuRBU

 

  We grind not only grains for our own use, but also for the chickens and whatever other livestock we have at the time.  Right now it's just laying hens, but we've had goats, pigs, ducks, turkeys, and rabbits. 

Just for an experiment I found a large flat stone and a smaller stone and tried hand-grinding some grains.  Grains like wheat are hard-shelled and it was a lot of work to grind even a little.  I tried some dried corn and it worked very well and it was easy to grind a lot in a short time.  Unfortunately we can't grow corn in our cold, short growing season, but for those of you who can, if you ever find yourself needing to grow and grind your own grain, especially by homemade means like stones, corn is the best grain.

This is the ground wheat when I finally got it all smashed and ground around on the stone. 

 

 

The following year after we first planted wheat, it came up on it's own, reseeded by the kernals that fell to the ground before we harvested it.  The third year it was sparse.  We tilled it up and I divided the corral into three parts and planted wheat, rye, and hulled oats.  This time I used hard red wheat out of a 50-lb. bag of non-organic wheat.  There were bare patches that didn't come up, and what did come up grew poorly and never produced mature wheat heads.  I can't say it was just because it was non-organic.  Maybe the hard red wheat has different needs than hard white wheat. 

 

Later in the summer I tried to sprout some of the wheat still in the bag, and it would not sprout.  Now before I plant, I test a small handful of kernals from the batch I want to use as seed, and if it sprouts, I plant it.  If it doesn't, I get different wheat or other grain.

 

I had ordered the rye and oats from Johnny's seed company and it grew well.  The rye was much like the wheat.  We ordered hulled oats to make harvest and threshing easier.  The oats were wonderful.  They grew well and were very tasty.  We ground some into flour, but I also put some on my big cutting board and rolled them with a rolling pin to make 'oatmeal'.  I haven't tried to grind oats on a stone, by hand, but they flatten easily with a rolling pin, so they must not be as hard of a grain as wheat.  Some day I hope to have an oat roller, but in the mean while, it does work this way.  Here's an oat roller if any of you want to look at them to see what they are, or to order one:

http://amzn.to/19Nruuy

 

I've a notion to try and make a hopper for my pasta roller and see if it could double as an oat roller.

 



Raising Animals for Meat!

I've had several people ask why I didn't include Meat animals in the chapter on stretching your basic food storage.  I have reasons why I don't consider domestic meat animals to be a viable option for the poverty prepper.  But I failed to let my readers know!  So today I wrote in a few new paragraphs to the book, and it will be uploaded during the night tonight.  Starting tomorrow, new purchases will include the information, but for those who already bought the book, I'm copying & pasting the new section from the book file so you can read it too.

"RAISING YOUR OWN MEAT ANIMALS This is not a practical option for most people. It takes space to raise them, and a means to feed them. The cost of animal feed is likely to be more than it's worth to raise the animal, and on a low budget, it's something to consider. In addition, you may have other costs such as fencing, housing, and keeping the animal(s) healthy.

Will you be able to kill and butcher the animal when the time comes? How will you preserve the meat? Where will you dispose of the “guts”, bones, and hide of the animal(s)?

If you have never had meat animals before, you could start with something small and easy-to-feed like rabbits. Even on a small piece of land in a cold climate you can grow and gather enough to keep rabbits fed. They'll eat grains, vegetables, fruits, grasses, willow and other tender branches. You can make a portable cage and just move it around the yard periodically and let it forage. Rabbits need more than grass, though, so if your yard isn't covered with nutritious plants like dandelions and clover, you'll have to supplement with other foods. I used to take my pruners and snip off the occasional willow or aspen branch and toss it in to my rabbits.

There is much you'll need to learn about how many cages you'll need and how to manage your rabbits. The same is true of any meat animals you want to raise. Many people reading this book already have or have had domestic meat animals, but for those who haven't and don't, please do some research before you tackle this."

That's the end of the new part I added into the book.  Now, as a bonus, I'm going to include part of an article I wrote called "Self-sufficiency: Crunching the Numbers".  In this article I had been talking about gardening, and how often people will tell me "Oh, if times get hard, I'll plant a garden", and I was talking a bit about what it would take to start a garden and then preserve it.  I followed that with a discussion on animals, which is what you'll read here:

"The next thing people say after the bit about planting a garden is something along the line of “…and get a few chickens for eggs and maybe for meat”. Brace yourself, here comes the numbers! 

Family of four, 2 eggs apiece, 4 times a week. Simple math…32 eggs. To allow for the hens to miss a day here and there, you need at least 5 hens. In the winter, egg production will slow or stop.

The hens need to be replaced every 3 to 7 years, depending on your breed of chicken, climate, and feed. So if you’re truly self-sustaining, you need a rooster in order to replenish your flock, plus you need a hen or two who are willing to “sit” and hatch the eggs. If you’re self-sustaining you’re probably off-grid and may or may not have enough electricity from your solar or other power source to operate an electric incubator.

Now you’ve got your broody hens setting on some eggs, and lucky you! 26 of them hatched! After the normal loss of a few of the little fluff balls, you have 23 of them. They happily scratch around in the yard in the important manner of their full-grown counterparts, and you select the ones to keep as layers, and butchering day comes for the rest. But…wait a minute, that’s only 18 meat birds! And they’re not nice and big and fat like fryers! They’ve been free-ranging bugs and seeds in your yard all summer, and they’re full-grown, but under those feathers, there’s just not a lot of meat! Well, you decide you’ll just have more soups and stir-fry’s.

18 chickens butchered for meat…that’s a meal with meat about every 3 weeks. In order to eat chicken once a week you’ll need 52 chickens. That’s a lot of critters looking for free-range bugs and seeds. What do you eat with your fruits and veggies the other 6 days of the week? Some people can add to that with raising other livestock or hunting. Then you’re back to the question of how to preserve it. The logical way if you’re self-sufficient, is to can it, and then we’re back to the logistics of having and storing large amounts of jars.

One last subject: feeding your critters as a self-sufficient person. Our chickens free-range during the months things are growing here and the bugs are active. Unfortunately this far north, that’s from about the end of May until the middle of October. In order to keep the hens laying we also feed “layer feed” from the feed store. We’ve started growing our own grains in the last 3 years and I can tell you, it’s a big job planting, harvesting, and threshing wheat, oats, rye, and barley with hand tools. We’re no where close to growing enough to feed our chickens year round, let alone having enough to use for our own cooking.

We go through 50 lbs of feed a month to feed 7 hens, plus table scraps and seasonal foraging. We’re too far north to grow corn, but people who can, greatly ease the job of growing their own feed.

Meat, vegetables, and fruit are a wonderful diet, but when you’re doing the kind of work it takes to keep a self-sufficient homestead going, you really appreciate the breads, biscuits, and other things grains can make. In our home with two of us we use around 25 lbs of wheat a month. We’d need to get our homegrown production up to 300 lbs just for cooking, plus the 600 lbs for the chickens, per year.

Just imagine if we added rabbits, goats, and other animals to the demand for feed!

Someone told me the other day that 100 years ago people were able to keep chickens and other animals fed without having to buy feed from the store. Yes, they did. Can you tell me how? Do you have the tools, equipment, and land ? Are you physically able and mentally committed to the kind of work you’d be doing?"

If you're thinking about raising animals for meat, perhaps this information will be of help to you.  There are a lot of rewards to raising your own meat animals, but if you're on a budget, make sure you consider all the costs.  Then, make sure they don't turn into pets and drain your resources to feed them!  We like to give ours 'cute' names that remind us of why we have them, such as the two pigs we raised.  Their names were "Hamlet" and "Lord Bacon"!