Grow it! Grain

(Page 11 of 11)

November/December 1973
By the Mother Earth News editors 
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THRESHING AND WINNOWING

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When your wheat is cured, haul it in off the fields for threshing. Spread out a layer of it six to eight inches deep on a clean, dry, hard surface, preferably concrete. Now take out all your frustrations on the wheat by beating it with a flail, a long pole jointed to a shorter pole which hits the grain to be threshed.

Threshing is going to be a bit of work. You're done when the grain heads are empty. Remove the straw by lifting it off with a pitchfork, using a sifting motion to let the grain drop through. Shovel up the grain and chaff and winnow it by pouring from one basket to another...try to arrange to have a cooperative wind blowing. Let the grain fall from at least four feet to permit the chaff to be blown clear. A more efficient means is a fanning mill. However, in most cases, it will be too expensive for the amount you'll be harvesting. Give the chaff to your chickens as bedding, and they will pick out any grain you missed. The wheat is now ready to mill.

FLOUR MILLING

For whole-wheat flour in small ready-for-the-oven-bread batches, you can use a manually operated grist mill and grind your own just before baking. For larger quantities, ferret out the nearest miller from his floury bin and strike a bargain with him. There'll be a lot of other equipment your farm will need more urgently than a full-sized flour mill capable of grinding hundreds of pounds of flour at a time. Some sunny day, for a touch of real country life as the early farmer knew it, you might want to go hunting for a nice flat, smooth rock from the bottom of the creek and try stone-grinding your flour on it. But don't plan on making a general practice of bagging your own, or you'll never get the goats milked and the eggs gathered and the honey into jars.

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