Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Hi group,

I did hand harvest 2 acres of various wheats. These were all grown on someone else's land in a mutually attractive venture.

I use a very sharp hand scythe to harvest(this is essential and you need to sharpen just as soon as is needed and for heaven sakes keep these away from children who are not mature enough to use them!) and I plant with a 30 inch wide hand rolling seeder. I very much like using a scythe.

The reason I did this initially was that I wanted whole grain durum wheat and could not purchase it locally( I am a whole grain pasta connoisseur). So I thought to try growing it myself without the use of large machinery.

The 2 acres are separated from each other by a large field of corn.

The land is very hilly that the hand sewn wheat is grown on. The farmer cannot use this land because he or she (husband and wife team) cannot safely operate a tractor on this terrain. They laughed when I approached them on this and frankly I joined them some. But, they wanted the brush taken care of on those 2 acres and I needed a laboratory.

So....instead of needing to do P90X in some gym somewhere, I cleared the land, hand cultivated using a single horse drawn hand plow and york rake (no cost to me...the farmer wanted the kinks taken out this big 5 year old colt, that he plans on training for the County Fairs). Did it in strips at a time (because it was too exhausting for the horse on this terrain after he threw himself on the ground with my help for a few days---I have learned that when we would rather buck kick and or throw ourselves over backwards it helps to have some help with this...so I help them by making sure they get tossed down rather hard and fast---pretty soon they get this out of their system and are ready for other things), tested the soil and trucked in some free additives, removed rock, and all of the other good things that were needed. Then I walked over every inch, seeding in an old homemade hand rolling grain seeder.

I did have to reseed in a couple of places.

I live in NY where it is usually considered too moist and other environmentally unacceptable things to grow anything but soft wheat. However, being on a serious incline, drainage was not one of the issues.

I planted Golden 86 (my bread wheat of choice) and Durum.

When harvesting a strip at a time, I cut low to the ground using a hand scythe, felling onto a tarp (just make your sweep so it falls sideways neatly onto the tarp). Then I ran the whole stalk and wheat heads that did not shake loose initially through a board with close together spikes fed up through it positioned in front of a mulcher...and yes I did...hand fed this through the homemade board teeth.....if you feed it foot first, the mulcher finally pulls it through the spike teeth and it shreds off the wheat berries very nicely. You run it through a series of these spikes going from wider apart to thinner apart,,,you can hook up a brush like arm with a lever near where you are feeding it if you don't have the gravity incline available to you :)

So every sunny dry day I walked a whole acre length strip harvest on both acres (about 1.5 hours per day after I got my process down and figured out I could use the steep incline to slide the wheat into the harvesting teeth/ mulcher set up). It took me about a month of very kind weather for me to hand harvest the entire 2 plus acres. This was a real pain in the neck. I had tarps for the mulch and large handable 10 gallon closed top containers to move the finished wheat...that needing to go home and be screened by hand during the slow grow seasons (piece of cake really)....

I saved out plenty of seed to plant another year on another location and paid the farmer in wheat (taught them about making homemade pasta and they are completely hooked.)

I got about 40 bushels off the durum acre and about 85 bushels of Golden 86.

At about 58 pounds on average my bushels, this was a sizable yield for a novice wheat grower.

I used the mulched straw for various projects on my garden, gave some to others, (this year we built up vertical potato bins using the straw mulch around the inside of chicken wire towers and also used a lot of straw mulch for insulation purposes....also bedded chickens and such.)

Bottom line is that I now have the wheat storage I need. I have the equipment to put in mylar bags at home and can borrow for free a #10 can sealer and the can company is a hop skip up the road so save in shipping costs. This time I sealed the grains in large mylar bags that sit in the 10 gallon closed top containers. I use a lot of both of these in wheat grass, durum pasta products, breads cereals crackers pastries salads, glues, gluten meats you would not even believe, in chicken and pet feed.

Would I do this again?

YUP! Only this time I am growing Amaranth on one acre and lima beans on the other. (following year if we have a growing year, I am growing barley and quinoa on one acre and chick peas and fava beans of the other) I love Amaranth greens and Amaranth grain (popped or otherwise) and someone might have a gluten/celiac issue. I lost 15 pounds of disgusting fat and put on muscle. I studied the entire time using my old cassette recorder, so instead of sitting at a table studying, I studied while farming...it gives you some time to think (I am in process of taking back my education). My only cost was initial heirloom durum and Golden 86 seed and gas to run my truck back and forth and my little electric mulcher ran off my multi use battery pack. :)

I made money, studied, worked full time and still have a 4.0 GPA (whatever that means), and I put in a good store of grain, got the knots out of the colt, cleared the brush and made some good friends of this farmer and family, taught some preparedness principles and learned a whole lot.

This is not for everyone. You need a huge inside drive engine and a desire to be physically fit. These long-term store items, can be grown at home on an acre or so one year at a time. So in this way of doing things, I am patiently putting in long term store items an acre or two at a time. But my short term use familiar food I now have in use....down pat....made in the shade.....

I learned this from a very strange person, whom I found myself very much liking, who lived near Saratoga Springs NY up in the hill country. This man and his wife have focused on a couple of different long term store crops every season. They have grains of every kind and beans I have never seen before. Her pantry is one of the most beautifully colored pantries I have viewed. They grow what they eat and eat what they grow. And, they have put up an incredible supply for a rainy day or 2, or a thousand :)

For now I am living on what I grow outside of a handful of items. I have what some consider a shorter term food storage supply for a year or two for needing to shelter in, the near future. And as I go along I am putting in different long term storage items (those that store for 20 years or so).

One reason I do this is because I am a Mormon. Being Mormon and believing in a modern day Prophet's ability to get inspiration that will bless the lives of many people, I have been obedient in storing up for a rainy day. This is, to help me and my neighbors. Why neighbors? because everything I experience here and now must help me to grow into having a heart that is tender towards God's other children (we do need to protect ourselves though). If I do not learn how to love others it is all for nothing I think.

Another reason is for good common sense health...need I say more?

And...having been blessed to eat at 5 start restaurants, I have a taste for cooking as an art!!!!! I cannot afford the way I like to eat unless I grow the very best food known to man and then have learned to make up unusual soul satisfying eating experiences. For the creative person this is art and life. Many artists garden!

And, I seriously believe we will need to be able to shelter in for a time. And after this, we will need longer term store items and be able to grow gardens in the most extreme conditions imaginable. The beginning of really hard times is coming for us in my area. In other parts of the world people are living on the edge of extinction daily.

Kathleen OMeal

----- Original Message -----
From: heartshape7
To: MittleiderMethodGardening@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, February 25, 2011 10:38 AM
Subject: [MittleiderMethodGardening] grain

About Wheat storage and use:
Nicely written, Nancy!
I also do what Nancy does, and have what she does- the grinder, the cans, and rotate with use in our menus, and use the resources she recommends, though I wasn't speaking on that level of detail in my post. In my earlier post I was only responding about home harvestable types to the group member who wants to collect various grains for "just in case". I have dreamed I 'could' harvest grain for homeproduction, but no, again, it isnt so feasible. But, more for my children's education than anything else, I do have clumps of wheat and oats growing as " ornamental grass" in my flowerbeds like fancy landscape varieties. They are beautiful, and my kids learn where thier bread comes from, how many kernels it takes to make a cup, and how much kidpower it takes to grind enough (purchased in bulk from places like Walton Feed and the LDS Provident Living site) to make a loaf!-HeatherBrinkerhoff

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