Wheat Harvest

The wheat isn't full yellow, but the book says that it should be cut when you can still dent the kernels with your fingernail but not mash them.  The kernels at the top have passed yellow and become brown.  They are so hard I can't dent them, but the bottom ones are still slightly green and mashable.  We decided to go ahead and harvest. 

I held the stalks while my daughter cut them off at the ground. It worked, but it was cumbersome.  I totally get the scythe now, which a person can use all by themselves and much faster.

My other daughter held the cut wheat to collect a bundle.  It was scratchy work, but essential.

When her arms filled up, we tied the bundles up tight.  The bailing twine from the hay was perfect.

When it was all done, we leaned our harvest up against the house to dry.  They need to dry for about two weeks and then we thrash them, knock off all the little wheat heads.  It looks pretty good.

After we were finished, I pulled up some big thistles that had been hiding along the fence and were about the bloom.  I threw them to the chicks and was surprised to see them swarm over the spent plants.  At least those nasty thistles make good chickie food.

Harvest Begins

We have been spending the mornings in the garden, getting as much done as we can before the heat hits.  The weeds got away from us while we were working on the cow shed so there's a lot to do.  While we're out there, we're noticing many things ready to pick, like this beautiful head of cabbage.

Here is today's harvest — head lettuce, cabbage, radishes, turnips, and shell peas.

We just finished our last read aloud from last "year" but with so many peas to shell, I think we'll start another one tonight.

Last fall we planted some carrots, hoping to harvest them in early spring, but when we pulled some in March they were kind of woody.  So they've been sitting in the garden ignored.  They are now five feet tall and blooming, but they're shading the tomatoes so they have to come out.

In the last week the wheat has gone from solid green to lots of yellow.  It's time to get out the book and figure out when we harvest and dry and all of that.

Our neighbor discovered a badger burrowed under his hay shed.  He got rid of it, but now we wonder if it got some of our chicks.  They don't stand still long enough to count, so we won't know until butcher day when we can count them.

I Pray They All Make It

Oh Good Lord. I just found some squash that has been thawing in the frig for a long time, maybe a few weeks.  It didn't smell bad so I cooked it up into three pumpkin pies.  Pumpkin pie is a multi-purpose food.  Plain it's breakfast or snack.  Add whipped cream and it's dessert!

This has been one of the coolest Memorial Days I can remember.  Today the rain finally broke and we put in a hard day in the garden.  It is time to get everything planted.  Every day we wait now reduces our yield.

One of us ran the cultivator down the rows to pull up the weeds, then another came behind with a hoe to put the row back together and take care of any surviving weeds.  Finally, I put seeds and plants in the ground.  We got the sweet pepper plants in, along with several marigolds.  I laid out the seed packets and got quite a few taken care of — pickling cucumbers, slicing cucumbers, radishes, zucchini, dry beans, flour corn, green beans, and squash.  We planted one section in the "three sisters," the Native American reference to corn, squash, and beans growing together. I've never done it so it will be fun to see how it turns out.

While we were out, my husband said, "have you looked closely at this wheat?"  Look what we found!  Seed heads.  There are lots and lots of them.

I pruned an apple tree that had a broken limb and took the opportunity to look over our fruit trees.  There are lots of baby fruits on those trees.  Oh, I pray they all make it.

Early Garden

That lettuce I started from seed and transplanted six weeks ago has grown well.  We are enjoying salads every evening along with some early radishes.  I think it's a pain to wash lettuce, but the salads are so good!  They are crisp, sweet, and rich.

We are slowly getting on top of the weeds in the garden.  This old cultivator is like a manual roto-tiller.  It works remarkably well.  Three passes plows up the row.  One or two more days and we'll have all the garden done.  It rained hard last night, so we'll see if we can get out there today.

The two cups of wheat I sprinkled on the ground last fall has grown to about two feet high.  It's such a pretty mass of flowing green in the wind.

After a few times of throwing tall, green grass to the cows while we were weeding, they now are intensely interested in our afternoon activity.  They come over to the fence and if grass doesn't come flying, they start mooing at us.  It just cracks me up.  We were working the garden to a chorus of cows.  Then we broke down and picked some grass for them.

Growing Our Own Grain

We got the rest of the corn done.  It was a much larger patch than we realized and it took a while.  Everybody chipped in.  My husband cut the stalks off at the ground and then kids and I pulled the cobs off.  We threw a few stalks to Christina and beefy because they were hanging around looking sorry, but the rest went into the shed for storage.

I plowed up a few rows to plant some winter wheat.  We don't really have the land to raise our own grain — it's the only real staple that we continue to buy — but I wanted to raise some, maybe only symbolically.  These were the rows that had the onions.  We found this wheel hoe in the barn after my in-laws passed away.  My husband attached the cultivator prongs and I was amazed how effectively it tilled up the area, just as good as a roto-tiller.

I think these old tools are amazing.  They are fast, efficient, and zero-carbon.  I've seen tools like this before, but it feels special that this tool is old and belonged to my in-laws.  I got three rows tilled up in ten minutes.  My bicepts will be sore, but not bad.

For seed we used the organic wheat we bought from the Co-op.  I spread about two cups over the three rows.

As I sprinkled the seed, I thought, "hey, I'm sowing wheat!"  How many times have I read biblical stories about sowing wheat?  How many hymns have I song about "seed, scattered and sown"?  But I've never done it.  It was easy just sprinkling the seed, but because it's my first time, I have no expectation how it will work out.  Will the seed germinate?  Will it produce?  Will we be able to harvest it without losing all the grain?

Jesus told a story of a farmer sowing grain and some of it falls on rocky soil, some on shallow soil, some on good soil, etc.  But he didn't include the grain that falls in the goofy place because the farmer didn't know what she was doing.  Well, I guess there were no goofy farmers; I'm learning things that everybody knew back then.

Jesus also told a story of harvesting ten fold or a hundred fold.  If we just recover our two cups, I'll be happy, but maybe we'll get a hundred fold harvest of 200 cups of wheat — that's enough grain for a month or two!