Growing your own grain???

TomYaz · #41 10/19/10, 12:27 PM

I vacuum pack then freeze my wheat and corn.

**Terri** · #42 10/19/10, 01:00 PM

A few thoughts on the subject:

I have grown small amounts of wheat for my bread. The harvest was not too hard as I only had a small plot, but, getting those little husks off was a PAIN! I did it a fistfull at a time. Leather gloves would be usefull for getting the loose husks off: the tight ones I peeled of with my nails. I did this as I needed it, until in the late winter I saw signs of a moouse so I fed what was left to the chickens.

Chickens can get the husks off without any help at all, if they do not just gulp the entire seed down.

I considered raising wheat for my chickens, and I was going to feed the wheat straw and all but I had no protien supplement. I tried roasted soy but they did not like it. I decided to grow alfalfa to feed with wheat by the armfull but life happened and the alfalfa was overgrown by weeds: I have no idea if it is living in there still or not. I WAS going to establish the alfalfa this year and grow wheat next year but.......

2 years back I grew a few stalks of field corn but it was a wet year and the ears molded. I am very glad that, in this day and age, food CAN be bought! I will try again with Indian corn for seed: there is quite a lot for sale right now as decorations.

I think, ideally, that more than one type of grain could be grown for food security. That way a wet year would not leave a person with nothing edible. I think that ideally an established stand of alfalfa would be a good protien supplement for chickens, along with table scraps (I only have 4 birds). I think that I am very glad that there is a local feed store, as the learning curve in growing grain is apparently kind of steep.

Lasly, I have looked for machinery for grain because I am older and somewhat handicapped. I found a sickle bar walk-behind mower for $1000 that would do to cut the grain, a neat Japanese rice harvestor overseas for considerably more than the sickle bar mower that would cut the grain and bundle it, and some really old machinery that I do not have the skill to keep in repair. I drove a tractor once, 40 years ago. I have no idea how to repair one or how to maintain it. I know so little that even a tractor manual is not enough. Needless to say I did NOT buy the machinery!!!!!!!!! Too expensive for the yeild and not enough fun to be a toy.

I only own one acre, and if I raise 10 bushels of grain a year it would take me HOW long to break even??!??!??

After pencilling things out, cutting the grain with my oldest bread knife and letting the chickens pick out the grain looks pretty darned good! So does husking it out by rubbing it between my hands while wearing a pair of leather gloves. And, yes I have heard of a flail but with my tiny patch I thought the leather gloves sounded easier: I might have been wrong.

I would truly love to have tiny machines to mechanize my grain because I am not up to much physical work any more. But, $1000 will do a lot around this place and with feed at $8 a bag, and me baking perhaps a loaf of bread a week (as well as buying one), it would not pay. So, I will continue to raise grain-when I raise it- in 3' by 3' plots, and cut and shell it by hand.

I think that I would need perhaps 5 acres of grain to justify buying machinery, along with animals to eat it, and I do not have that.

I keep having ideas on how my riding lawn mower could be modified, but I cannot quite do that as the strain on the connecting points would be severe and I do not weld. Neither do my friends. And, so much of the mower is realy THIN metal that I am not sure of the wisdom of welding something to it ayways.

My wish list would be a tiny machine to dig potatos, to harvest hay, and to combine grain. And for it to be inexpensive and good for someone with no machinery savvy. The gravely walk-behind machines come the closest, but the expense is too big for a small homestead like mine!

I grew last years potatos in pearlite over weed barrier with fertilizer, I would have harvested any alfalfa with a bread knife, and I used heavy weed barrier on the garden instead of cultivating. Total cost = $300 or so. Both should last for 10 years or so and so it was perhaps $30 a year? Yield was a great many vegetables, and the potatos were harvested simply by me pulling the stem of the plants and the entire clump came up.

You know, I ALSO think that there would be a demand for tiny combines. It would mean that someone with a job could also handle 5 aces of grain to feed their critters.

Then again, a century ago our ancestors would fence the grain field and turn pigs into it to fatten: they did not bring the grain to the pigs they brought the pigs to the grain. Since the market for pig fat was so good, they simply left the pigs in and fed them skim milk and such as supplements, and when the grain was gone they took the pigs to market.

I just LOVE my century old farming textbooks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fishhead · #43 10/19/10, 03:23 PM

When I worked at the wild rice plant they used a machine that had 2 rubber rollers to remove the hulls. The rollers turned together but at different speeds. That rubbed the hulls of the kernel.

A similar machine could be built that operates by hand cranking.

I think the indians used to walk on the rice and then toss it in the air to get rid of the hulls.

n9viw · #44 10/20/10, 01:04 PM

Would a hand-crank clothes wringer work? I know the rollers turn at the same speed, but as they are adjustable for gap between the rollers, would they 'pinch' hard enough to crack the hulls without crushing the seed?

Alternately, something sort of like that might be possible, with a different-sized pair of gears, or cogs with a chain, to make them turn at different rates.

geo in mi · #45 10/20/10, 01:55 PM

Maybe I've been trying to reinvent the wheel(or mini-combine).............

http://www.ferrari-tractors.com/smallscale.htm

Also, see the their home page for more neat stuff.(Even a mini-baler for Callieslamb). Think Italian! Five acres of grapes, five acres of tomatoes, five acres of wheat. Bread, pasta, sauce, wine...............

geo

fishhead · #46 10/20/10, 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TomYaz

I vacuum pack then freeze my wheat and corn.

Have you grown any after freezing? I wonder what freezing does to the germination rate.

TomYaz · #47 10/20/10, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fishhead

Have you grown any after freezing? I wonder what freezing does to the germination rate.

No I havent. Was told by the corn seed man that it is good to do.

Here is the worlds best known seed freezer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault

fishhead · #48 10/21/10, 08:17 AM

I wonder if anyone grows small quantities of rice in the US.

That is my favorite grain.

There was a program on Nova about rice farmers in the mountains who grew rice.

fishhead · #49 10/21/10, 08:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TomYaz

No I havent. Was told by the corn seed man that it is good to do.

Here is the worlds best known seed freezer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault

It seems safe to say that freezing will improve storage of viable seeds.

IndyGardenGal · #50 10/21/10, 11:09 AM

I did some searching online for information on homemade threshers. Found this PDF which is just the scanned pages on the thresher from Rodale's Build it Better Yourself.

http://www.fastonline.org/CD3WD_40/J...20-%201977.pdf

fishhead · #51 10/22/10, 08:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IndyGardenGal

I did some searching online for information on homemade threshers. Found this PDF which is just the scanned pages on the thresher from Rodale's Build it Better Yourself.

http://www.fastonline.org/CD3WD_40/J...20-%201977.pdf

I can't get the link to work.

IndyGardenGal · #52 10/22/10, 09:08 AM

I will try this link again.
Click Here

ldc · #53 10/22/10, 09:49 AM

Fishhead, American Indians, Cajuns, and other country Americans all often grow small amounts of rice. My dad and I did once in NY State in a bog. Give it a try! ldc

fishhead · #54 10/22/10, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ldc

Fishhead, American Indians, Cajuns, and other country Americans all often grow small amounts of rice. My dad and I did once in NY State in a bog. Give it a try! ldc

Was it brown rice or wild rice?

We've got acres and acres of wild rice here in this part of MN. A friend and his ricing partner harvest 5,000+ lbs in a good year with just a canoe and 2 sticks.

I read somewhere that long grained rice takes something like 5 months of warm weather. Our summer is only about 3 months.