My Wheat Fields

Dateline: 29 July 2014

My wheat field in July

I planted two fields of heritage wheat this year. The fields are less than an acre in size. A lot less. They actually measure about 2' wide by 4' long. That's as much as one packet of seed will plant.

I bought the heritage seed from Sustainable Seed Company. They have an impressive selection of old wheat varieties, and other grains too (I also planted a field of sorghum). 

This is my first year growing wheat. I wanted to observe how the plants grow. It turns out they grow easily.

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When I was around 17 years old (1972), I harvested a section of wheat field that a local farmer was growing on my parent's land. 

I used a rusty old scythe that I had bought at a yard sale for a few dollars. I sharpened the blade to the best of my ability and mowed down a fairly large patch of the grain.

I tied the grain into bundles to dry, then hauled them to my parent's barn. The barn had tall rolling doors on the back with a sturdy drive floor just inside. I laid a tarp out on the floor, put the wheat in the middle and used a homemade flail to beat the seeds out of the stalks. It was a lot of work but I had a lot of energy and enthusiasm back then.

I ended up with a couple pails of seeds and chaff. I winnowed the chaff by pouring the wheat from pail to pail repeatedly. There wasn't much wind the day I winnowed so I hooked up a fan.

I ended up with some clean, beautiful wheat berries, and it was a good feeling. 

My mother was a bread baker and we had a Marathon Uni-Mill electric grain grinder. I milled the wheat into flour and my mother used it to make some really good bread. 

By the way, we inherited that Marathon Uni-Mill, and  Marlene has used it over the years to grind a lot of wheat for her homemade breads.

One of these years I'd like to grow a larger plot of heirloom wheat, harvest it by hand, and process it….. just like I did in the "old days" when I was a kid.