Growing Grains Without Heavy Equipment

maddy · #1 08/12/12, 08:46 PM

Does anyone here grow grain without large machinery? Is this even possible? What techniques have worked for you? How many acres have you managed to do by hand, and what has your yield been?

rambler · #2 08/12/12, 08:58 PM

I use big equipment, tho by today's standards I am a very small farm.

I'd think harvest would be the difficult part, what grains are you thinking, corn, wheat?

Corn.

soybeans.

wheat, oats, barley, other small grains.

These are very different crop groups, and would need different ways to grow them. If you want to do _all_ of them, you will have more issues to work through as you need to develop different ways to plant and harvest each group.

--->Paul

maddy · #3 08/12/12, 09:35 PM

Hi, Paul-- I was thinking wheat and barley.

FarmboyBill · #4 08/12/12, 09:56 PM

yeah, but how many acres of each?

Amaranthus · #5 08/13/12, 02:28 AM

I recommend reading "Small Scale Grain Raising" by Gene Logsdon.

FarmerRob · #6 08/13/12, 04:48 AM

Depending on how small an operation you are planning and how little equipment you want to use these may be of help:

Scytheconnection Homepage
Scythe Works
Scythe Supply - Scythe blades, snaths, equipment
High Quality Scythes, Sickles, and other tools from The Marugg Company, Tracy City, TN

sammyd · #7 08/13/12, 05:27 AM

we planted half an acre of oats a couple of years. Did use a very small tractor and plow and disc to work up th eland. Used a tow behind broadcast spreader hooked to our riding lawnmower to seed then ran over that with a piece of fence wrapped around a board and weighted with a cinder block or two. Had fairly good germination.
The first year I cut the oats in boot stage and fed them as green feed.
The second time I scythed a bunch bundled and shocked them by hand, http://sefsufficient.com/archives/oats.JPG then had a buddy with a small combine come in and do the rest since he wanted to play with his new machine.

Been thinking about doing 1/8 acre of wheat, scything and hand bundling/shocking again. Have been looking at these to thresh the stuff since my buddys combine no longer works. Farming Equipment > Wheat Thrasher
We could work up the 1/8 acre with our tiller instead of using the tractor.

geo in mi · #8 08/13/12, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maddy

Does anyone here grow grain without large machinery? Is this even possible? What techniques have worked for you? How many acres have you managed to do by hand, and what has your yield been?

Many years ago, I tried it as an experiment in the home garden. It grew pretty well, but I had a few problems of scale. First, you have to grow the variety that is already adapted to your wide area climate and growing conditions. Six Basic Classes of Wheat Then you should buy your seed locally, since, wheat has been selected and bred specifically for each growing area in the US I went to the local farm seed store and all they would sell me was a fifty pound bag of treated seed, no less. True, I got seed that was selected over many years to do well in this locality for the winter growing conditions, etc, but I think I eventually threw the rest of the bag into the trash.......Threshing it became a problem, too. I sort of gave up--and ever since, regularly on this forum I go off on a toot about how it would be a good project for an engineer/welder to come up with a threshing system for use on the small land holding of homesteaders.....(Don't get me started...

)

As a kid in Indiana, I became fmiliar with growing wheat on the farm scale, but haven't been able to put it to use on the small area, for homestead use and bread......

You will need some knowlege of just how to grow your wheat--planting depth, spacing, and such. Mother Earth News has this article online that may help: Growing Your Own Wheat

And, for a hands-on version, though from Great Britain, a good U_Tube presentation in two parts, plus the home page has a few others that may be good to look at, too.

Hope this will give you something to think about,

geo

Soupmaker · #9 08/13/12, 10:18 AM

What is intended use?

I see very little reason to grow small grain.

FarmboyBill · #10 08/13/12, 10:48 AM

Man you could buy one heck of a good combine of any specie, and especially a AC All Crop for $800. AND Likely have it hauled to your place also. Id have to see a live demonstration of that machine before I plunked down that kinda money.
Why not build a frame. Build it so that you could put a tray with say 4in sides on it underneith and inside the frame. Get a say 8 to 10in plastic pipe say 2ft long cap it on both ends and drill a 1in hole in either end. then drill 3 doz or so holes in it that you could fit a 1/2in dowl thorough tightly and have stick out 4in. each end. Run a 1in pipe through the end caps and have it sticking out 6in each side. Weld a crank on one or both sides, and youve made the same thing for under $50. Have a crew at threshing time. 2 to alternate with the bundles threshing them, one to keep the straw away from the machine, and to dump out the grain into buckests/wagon/sacks. and brush oil over the shafts where they rotate against the wood on both sides of the frame. 2 to crank. alternately.
The frame might be as wide as you make the cylinder, which is what it is officially called, and maybe 3ft long. with the back being 12in higher than the front.

Molly Mckee · #11 08/13/12, 10:49 AM

Can you? Yes you should be able to. Should you? I don't think it's a wise way to use your time..

Little Bit Farm · #12 08/13/12, 11:33 AM

It is easy to grow, produces a lot of grain in smaller space, can be cut down with a good knife, and is easy to thresh. Also, I have talked to people who raised chickens years ago and it was often used as their sole feed along with what they could forage.

DavidUnderwood · #13 08/13/12, 12:18 PM

I love milo, but all milo is hybrid.
So you will be buying seed.

silverseeds · #14 08/13/12, 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidUnderwood

I love milo, but all milo is hybrid.
So you will be buying seed.

there are non hybrid varieties. And its self pollinating anyway, so its real easy to just save seed, grow it again, and as the diversity of the parents that made that hybrid show up select the best plants to basically have your own locally adapted variety.

fishhead · #15 08/13/12, 09:41 PM

Of course you can grow small amounts and harvest it by hand. People have done that for centuries.

I've been wondering if I could grow brown rice here in MN. Even just 100 lbs would get me through a year of eating well.

elkhound · #16 08/14/12, 02:34 AM

do some searching on youtube for growing grains or harvesting grains in africa and other poor countries and you will see all kinds of techniques and procedures.

silverseeds · #17 08/14/12, 04:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fishhead

I've been wondering if I could grow brown rice here in MN. Even just 100 lbs would get me through a year of eating well.

Give it a few years, I think you should be able to. (without a greenhouse or the like) There is some breeding work going on for short season commercial rice. If I remember right it is out of vermont, with a goal of 90 days. It was about 2 years ago I read it should be out within a few years.

momagoat61 · #18 08/15/12, 08:07 AM

Wow this tread brings up some childhood memories, hard working memories at that. Four or five of us out in a 5 acre corn field picking ear corn with mules and wagon to fill the corn cribes..We got herdone tho... We then would take the corn from the cribes to a grinding mill to grind the corn to make ground corn to feed the dairy cows.

jennigrey · #19 08/15/12, 11:26 AM

A couple years ago at the Small Farmers Journal auction, someone had imported some treadle-powered drum threshers. Pretty nifty way to thresh a very small-scale grain crop. They are manufactured and produced in 3rd-world countries.

eruehr · #20 08/17/12, 02:32 PM

Check out this series on YouTube:

It's in German - but you can easily tell what's going on...