repairing soil - my post barley experiment

This is about repairing the soil I damaged and getting back on track with my no-till experiment.  Since most of the house has gone gluten free and we have a new local brewery, I don't plan to grow barley anymore.  But there are lots of other things we can grow no-till.


A couple of years back, I attempted to grow barley using the Fukuoka method of natural farming.  Only a bad thing happened, the "organic" straw I got was heavy with herbicides.  Several years later and very few weeds or even moss will grow where my would-be barley patch was.



You can see one side of the line has moss and the other has none.  This year there is a bit more than hawkweed, but a lot of the plants in places are deformed.  It's not great to begin with, but the straw made it worse.

I'm still determined to keep trying no-till until it works.  


The first step is to transform this dirt into soil.  The soil tested acidic so we applied a small amount of lime and lightly tilled the soil so that we could seed a mixed cover crop.  



I'm feeling bad about starting a no-till with a rototiller.  I did try it without first.  I'm also reading a lot of permaculture design books right now and they all seem to start with earthworks.  Earthworks disturb the soil.  But it's just done once.  

The second step will be to seed and scythe.  With luck, something will grow and come fall, I can spread a fall cover crop mix on the area and scythe down whatever grew this spring.  If I'm lucky, the soil will be somewhat repaired by this time next year and I can grow something edible on it (I'm hoping chickpeas and/or oats) but it might take another year. But at least my chicken is fertilising while she's digging up my seed.

hau R Ranson, I tried Mr. Fukuoka's method twice, neither time did I have success, probably something on my end, but I have also heard from others that their trials didn't really work.

It is my belief that just as in successful no-till, you have to have a decent base of cover crop already in place for his methods to work their best.

For you plot, to remove any contamination caused by the tainted straw, you might want to consider myco remediation through some mushroom slurries.
Another way to approach it is from the bacteria end by using some fermented leftover juices (the liquid left from the ferment is usually rich in bacteria).
Or, if you have some all natural apple cider vinegar you could take part of the mother from that jug and create a new bottle, allowing the child to grow and then using that to inoculate your space.

Using both bacteria and fungi as inoculants will greatly reduce any effects of the contaminated straw mulch as well as beefing up the soil biota.

You might try a mix of cover crops for your seeding, that way everything will be in place when you come back to give no-till another trial.

Most seeding in the no-till method uses a seed drill of some sort, I use a stick and my foot, takes longer and I don't have nice straight rows, but I don't want to spend the money for one of the push style seeders.

Redhawk

Been a lot of discussion on no till lately.  No till hasn't been successful for me. But I am still hoping one day I'll get it right.  In the mean time I am watching your progress with great interest!

I'm very curious to see how this goes.

The interesting thing is that locally mulch seldom works.  It either keeps the soil too dry by not allowing dew to penetrate, or it keeps it too wet in the winter.  Fukuoka and many no-till advocates come from places that have forests that drop their leaves, the leaves are a mulch which decomposes and creates soil.  We have very few forests like this and those we do have are in very choice conditions like estuaries or places that create their own rain from dew capture.  

But I like the idea of experimenting.  I have sections that we increase the soil fertility with animals, some with trenching compost, some with tilled under green manure.  If we can manage a crop with no-till, then that would be really nice.  

One of the most interesting things about mulches that I have found is that they can be detrimental when not enough rainfall occurs.
In areas where fogs are the main moisture providers they can actually keep that moisture from getting to the soil surface and thus don't work the way they should.
In that type of environment it is a better use of mulch materials to work them into the soil so they form a medium for fungal and bacterial growth while at the same time providing air pathways which can direct moisture down where we need it to be.

The one constant I have found in over 40 years of research is that there is never going to be a singular way to do anything productive to creating soil.
Most of my findings point to multiple methods working in unison to reach the desired end effects.
It is the same fallacy that modern farmers have fallen for, that there is a singular way to grow the most per acre, when the data shows clearly that there isn't a universal remedy.

If we don't approach a problem from every angle we can imagine, we reduce our hope of success.
Nature never uses one particular methodology over all others, instead she hits a problem from all angles, sometimes all at once and other times in successive rounds.

Animals are wonderful tools as are deep rooting green manure crops and leaf litter, since the soil is fueled by decomposition the greater number of options we give those decomposing organisms the better they thrive and the more fertile the soil becomes from the diversity.

Redhawk

I wouldn't get too bent out of shape with regards to initiating your no till system with tilling in my humble opinion.

No-till is a regenerative tool, but the conditions need to be right before the technique is appropriate. If you have a situation where current conditions are preventing progress then you an either wait until those conditions go away (the herbicide reside will eventually degrade and the soil will recover if you are prepared to wait a few decades), or you can intervene and kick start the recovery.

If that means tilling and getting a good solid cover crop established then it's in the best long term interest of the land and everything living in the soil.

r ranson wrote: ...
The first step is to transform this dirt into soil.
...
I'm feeling bad about starting a no-till with a rototiller.  I did try it without first.  I'm also reading a lot of permaculture design books right now and they all seem to start with earthworks.  Earthworks disturb the soil.  But it's just done once.  

The second step will be to seed and scythe.  With luck, something will grow and come fall, I can spread a fall cover crop mix on the area and scythe down whatever grew this spring.  If I'm lucky, the soil will be somewhat repaired by this time next year and I can grow something edible on it (I'm hoping chickpeas and/or oats) but it might take another year. But at least my chicken is fertilising while she's digging up my seed.

First, a huge THANK YOU!! And a big tio of the hat to you, Ranson, for all your work including sharing all this information with us! And what a cute hen <3

I, too, have been hugely inspired by Fukuoka's work and am trying to start a natural apple orchard this year. It will be laid out in a grid basically and the squares of the grid will be open fields about 13m square for growing green manures and grains. But you've absolutely nailed it: You have to build the soil first. I'll spend two full years just growing soil builder crops before I'll plant my first cereal grain crop.

Remember the beginning of <i>One Straw</i>... traditional Japanese rice farming, while labor intensive, at a minimum it maintained soil organic matter content and nutrient levels. Or even improved them each year. It wasn't until after the US restructuring of Japan following WWII did rice farming practices become detrimental. So when Fukuoka began his <i>mu</i> experiments in the grain field he was already dealing with great, fertile, friable soil. You do not have the pleasure of such a starting point! So you must take steps. To paraphrase Fukuoka and Larry Korn: our activities have injured nature. There can be no natural farming until those injuries are repaired. So don't feel bad at all about tilling. For good or ill my first of those fields I mentioned above? I had a friend break the ground last fall with a moldboard plow! =8-0

Cleaning up and preparing the seed bed after the plowing was so much work (I do everything by hand, no power tools) I decided I would never plow again, not even to get started. I'm too lazy! I'm going to occult and use clay seed balls to reclaim these fields. Ask me in the fall if it worked

With your lack of rainfall in the summer you need lots of humus in your soil. LOTS. Once an adequate amount humus is there I think you'll find the right mulch WILL help retain moister in the ground. If you start growing green manure crops you can consider dry mulch (like straw) or a more succulent mulch (e.g. fresh mowed clover, buckwheat, alfalfa) depending on the season/weather/growing needs.

In your barley experiment thread you mentioned your soil is on top of hardpan/clay? First thought: you just found your source of seed ball material

Second thought: is this ground former conventional-tillage farm fields? As in is that hardpan from plowing in years past? If so that hardpan might very well be blocking any groundwater that might be there (especially in summer months) from reaching the surface soils. I know your expenses on these projects are limited, but have you considered growing daikon? Just the cheap seed (not a food crop)- as a tillage radish? I can barely work the surface of my ground with a mattock when it's dry in the summer - and it's silt loam, not clay! I am sowing tillage radish everywhere to break up compaction and drill holes way down to reconnect the upper and lower soils. The tillage radishes left to decay won't leave much organic matter but they WILL leave behind bioavailable NPK, and the PK are scavenged from deep below the normal crop root zones - so they need to be followed up quickly with a "catch" crop.

Fukuoka used daikon and other large taproot type plants (burdock and dandelion are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head) to do this in his orchard. Unlike his grain fields, the orchard had almost completely denuded soil; especially when he reclaimed abandoned land after the war. The "tillage" plants were part of a 1-2 punch to build that soil, the other part being finding a nitrogen fixing ground cover that could eventually compete well with the native weeds that would inevitably come.

For your spots still effected by the herbicide-laden straw, the soil microorganisms WILL get rid of that in due course. You can help them along by growing something ( something not-at-all picky like buckwheat or straw oats), and just mowing it down with the scythe (SO glad you have one - I'm convinced they're one of the most important tools) and then scattering the residue over the plot. It doesn't matter what you grow - simply grow anything that will actually grow! Every bit of green mulch put down on the soil will be food for those microbes that will detoxify the soil; and they will help you by building humus over time without you having to do anything other than sowing, mowing, and scattering the residue.

For other areas that could benefit from increased organic matter content OMC - I have the same challenge.  Here's one experiment (of dozens) I'm trying this year: Around here (Maine) one of the most popular OMC builder is sudangrass. The problem with it is if you just sow it and let it grow it can get 3m tall. When all I'm working with is a scythe that is NOT something I want to deal with. So I'm going to mow it with the scythe any time it's between 2-3 feet tall and mulch with the trimmings. The trick is you cannot mow it shorter than 4-6 inches tall or you'll kill it. My Austrian scythe is SUPPOSED to glide on the surface of the ground so it'll be interesting to see if I can figure out a technique to mow 6 inches high. If I have to, I'll just use a sickle, but I'd rather not bend over that much

Since the soil building is a long-term project I'm not worrying about incorporating residues. I'll just let it sit on the surface. EVENTUALLY critters will get it into the soil. And yes, I estimate I'll spend on average $50 per year in seeds while I'm starting this out. But I hope in 3-5 years to be saving a large amount of seed.

Random: I'm also doing with experiments with N-fixing inoculants. That might not be in accord with some of Fukuoka's techniques, but these little critters (I'm especially excited to try <i>azotobacter</i>) live in the soil anyway. I'm just trying to give them a good home

I'm very excited to hear more results in your ongoing experiments! I'm hoping to document mine in a YouTube series. Though I feel somewhat silly doing so because I have no idea if any of this will actually work. Maybe I'll just document a meticulous, colossal failure

Good luck!!
-HF

EDIT P.S. - If you want to grow your own gluten-free grain have you considered the broadleaf/"pseudograins"? Amaranth, millet, buckwheat, quinoa... I bet you could find varieties that grow well there. Buckwheat is easy to grow but a royal pain to hull. If home-grown grain is something you're still interested in, since you know Carol Deppe's work... you might check out Will Bonsall's <i>Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening</i>. I think he often makes things much harder than he needs to, but what a wealth of knowledge he has growing grain at home and processing them with simple tools.

I just wonder the pasture adjactent to yours looks green and your field looks very barren. And I would not feel bad using a rototiller at the beginnign you have to get things started without breaking your back. I know that woodchips throw the soil a bit out of the equilibrium but they are great for softening the soil, can you get hold of them?

hau R, how is your experiment going? I am curious as to how the test plot is looking now (if it not snow covered).

Redhawk

It's gone terribly.  The seeds germinate and then grow about an inch, then nothing.  It's like they only had enough internal energy to grow that high.  There's not enough neglect to kill them, but there's nothing there to help them grow.

We tried again with the fall rains.  Just a light haze of green from the clover.  Everything else germinated and died.

The soil came from deepening the ephemeral pond.  So, it's not really soil.  The machine shaped it into terraces and compacted it.  This is the only terrace that won't grow anything.  

It really is disheartening.  But I still maintain that with the right crops, no-till can work in our climate.  It might be we need to start with soil instead of dirt.


New plan.  Input fertility from elsewhere and use plants to dig up the dirt.

We're going to put a few beds of woad in because it grew really well on poor soil elsewhere and the roots are supposed to be good at breaking up hard packed dirt.  I'll give them some concentrated llama manure and then some sort of mulch.  Extra nitrogen is supposed to help them produce more blue pigment.  

Good news is that the robins have been hunting for worms in this patch.  First time I've seen that for years.

What I would do is to get either some bales of lucerne hay (not straw since it contains some nasties) and cover thesite lightly with it and wait until weeds grow and when they are high enough slash and repeat or if the soil already looks good enough slash and till and then turn to no or low till. Or I would cover the whole thing with woodchips over newspaper but moisten as you build in and plant some trees or shrubs. It seems that it is because of the machines.

r ranson wrote:It's gone terribly.  The seeds germinate and then grow about an inch, then nothing.  It's like they only had enough internal energy to grow that high.  There's not enough neglect to kill them, but there's nothing there to help them grow.

Your original problem was caused by herbicide contamination. How long has it been since the contamination occurred? Is it possible the contamination is still hanging around? Here in the UK I have hear of people unable to use their allotments for multiple years after such problems.

Have you tried mustard? It seems to be one of the first to colonise poor soil for me. If you can get mustard to grow this spring you might be able to undersow with amaranth (also a hardy pioneer) at the beginning of summer, then scythe the mustard in place. Red clover and birdsfoot trefoil could go in at the same time as the mustard and would rebound from the scything if they're showing any growth by then. These are the main summer legumes in my pasture and they really are tough.

I see, may I suggest you begin with some mycoremediation techniques, mushroom slurries or a mycorrhizae mix from Paul Stamens or any other mushroom guru outfit.
These will do great things for your soil and your trees will love you for the boost of mycorrhizae.
These hyphae will snake through that soil and once they are going, any bacteria you add will travel along the new highways being formed.
The two together will reverse the poison effect from the herbicides and allow plants to grow better root systems.

The compacted soil will begin to get crumbly faster too.

Redhawk

I gave your plot some more thought over this weekend and I may have come up with an easy to do setup that will get you to the point of plants growing.
Let me know if you want the step by step setup to try out R.

Redhawk

Bryant RedHawk wrote:I gave your plot some more thought over this weekend and I may have come up with an easy to do setup that will get you to the point of plants growing.
Let me know if you want the step by step setup to try out R.

Redhawk

I know I would be interested in hearing your suggestions.

I would love to hear more.

I'm hoping to start on that plot in a week or two - once the frosts start to let up a bit.

Rain usually ends May first (and starts up in October) so I need to get to work on that plot soon.  

I would opt for something like an annual rye grass as a starter seed set, this is easy to get rid of once it has done the job of establishing roots and putting some exudates in the soil.
I would next lay down as much spent coffee grounds as I could get my hands on, right over the annual rye grass seed.
This will aid in drawing earthworms to the area, provide some bacteria and fungi along with some beneficial slime molds for a soil building boost.
Next I would try to make a compost tea or even a manure tea to water the area with, this will activate the soil microbes that are present and get them to working.
Once the annual rye shows that it can grow in the plot, you can overseed with a mix of buckwheat and vetch or any combination you have or want.

As you work on this plot, the more biological activators you can add, the faster the soil will remediate from the herbicides that came with the straw.
Things that help with this, besides the obvious mushroom spawn/hyphae are minerals applied in small quantities several times (around once a week to start then cut back to once a month).
Even things like DE, unbleached flour(both are used as light dustings) will bring items to the party that the soil microbes like to eat.

Redhawk

Interesting set of threads.  I am starting to work on 40 acres of clay that has had a fescue based hay pasture on it for 40 years.  Before that was also a fescue based pasture, for probably 40 years.  It was probably only broke 20 years or so before that, and what was here then was largely a huge colony of trembling aspen.  But, no tillage equipment, which is what caught my attention.

Herbicide.  The first thing that caught my eye was articles talking about "tying up" herbicide.  Tying up does not (in general) destroy herbicide.

Ultraviolet light will break down most organics, it can take a while.  Bacteria will break down organics.  Fungi (as mentioned earlier) probably will as well.  Bacteria and fungi may work together, UV will kill bacteria or fungi, so not likely to be part of a bacteria or fungi process.  If you knew what herbicide family was involved, there might be a way to speed things up.  Without that knowledge you probably want pH near 7 and involve lots of compost and mulch.  I think this is mostly so that the bacteria or fungi spend most of their time chowing down on the compost and mulch, and only occasionally eating the nasty chemicals.

I think among the superfund EPA sites, are a couple that are using bacteria to clean up organics.  So there should be literature on this.

Tying up herbicides.  If people dilute herbicides with hard water, the double charged calcium and magnesium ions will "tie up" herbicide.  Iron (typically doubly charged as an ion) will tie them up as well.  Particles with a high specific surface area (like clay and activated charcoal) will tie them up.  Zeolites probably tie them up as well.  This does nothing to destroy the herbicide.  At some point, the herbicide may get loose, and then be its usual toxic self to plants nearby.  So what tying it up does, is to reduce how much active herbicide is present.

Some of the titanium dioxides (the white ones as paint pigments) can absorb UV light in the presence of water, and generate hydrogen peroxide.  You can get tiles with this, and they are nominally self-sterilizing.  Nano-silver will also generate hydrogen peroxide (but who has extra silver sitting around?).

In terms of mulch, if you happen to be coming through Dawson Creek you can have as much hay as you want.  Fescue, alfalfa (aka lucerne), white/red/alsike clover, wild rose and every weed known to The Peace.  I don't think any of the fields have seen pesticides, and I think the only fertilizer they ever seen was manure.  I have no proof of that, just suspicions.  On the lawn, I briedly pulled a wax weed strip (2,4D?), but there was hardly any wear on the wax before I gave up on that.  So, that little pesticide applied to a few acres of lawn is not much.  And that would be maybe 10 years ago.

Good luck remediating your soil.

Buckwheat has been my favorite , fast growing cover crop for 30 years, & it is short season, 30 to 45 days to knee to waste high, depending on what you are starting with, frost sensitive, 50 to 60 lbs does an acre & if you do it right , waiting for blossoms & a few seeds to form , can be lightly worked in the soil & reseed itself without buying more seed,for a second successive crop, it is the best , & I have tried many over the years ! Just do not let it go to seed if you intend to plant a food crop after , as it can & will volunteer ! I am in SW Wisconsin

Did you know that humus can last a whopping 1,000 YEARS!

Bryant RedHawk wrote:One of the most interesting things about mulches that I have found is that they can be detrimental when not enough rainfall occurs.
In areas where fogs are the main moisture providers they can actually keep that moisture from getting to the soil surface and thus don't work the way they should.
In that type of environment it is a better use of mulch materials to work them into the soil so they form a medium for fungal and bacterial growth while at the same time providing air pathways which can direct moisture down where we need it to be.

The one constant I have found in over 40 years of research is that there is never going to be a singular way to do anything productive to creating soil.
Most of my findings point to multiple methods working in unison to reach the desired end effects.
It is the same fallacy that modern farmers have fallen for, that there is a singular way to grow the most per acre, when the data shows clearly that there isn't a universal remedy.

If we don't approach a problem from every angle we can imagine, we reduce our hope of success.
Nature never uses one particular methodology over all others, instead she hits a problem from all angles, sometimes all at once and other times in successive rounds.

Animals are wonderful tools as are deep rooting green manure crops and leaf litter, since the soil is fueled by decomposition the greater number of options we give those decomposing organisms the better they thrive and the more fertile the soil becomes from the diversity.

Redhawk

Soil building in nature takes 100's if not 1,000's of years to create 1 inch.

Soil building requires a system or items working together to create such soil.

We can artificially create soil through compost and soil amendments.

Example: you take a 5 foot high pile of leaves. Let them disintegrate.
You might get about an inch left when all is said and done.

Then wind and water erosion takes it's "rake" from the resultant (Rake is a gambling term and meant to be a pun lol).

I have piled up 12 foot high piles of tree trimmings, leaves, grass clippings. 2 years later the ground looked like I never built the pile.

So some patience and perseverance is required. That along with a LOT of elbow grease.

Kai Walker wrote:Did you know that humus can last a whopping 1,000 YEARS!

Did you know that humus is a liquid? most people (and this includes some with scientific backgrounds) think that what you get at the end of a composting cycle is humus, it is not, that matter is detritus not humus.
Humus occurs from leachates mixing with bacteria and those bacteria then exude enzymes that break down the components of the leachate and those individual atoms recombine to form humic acids which then react and combine into long chain molecules that is humus.
Humus does last a long time, especially at the clay line horizon since the clay acts like a barrier to downward movement of both detritus and humic acids.

Last spring, we made massive piles of the animal bedding (mostly spent organic hay and sheep dung) and left the piles to mature over the summer and winter.  A few squashes grew in the manner, but still nothing on the ground.  Over the year, the chickens and ducks worked hard to take apart the piles, and it didn't take much to finish the job this spring and till the manure into the dirt.  

We spread a mixture of pasture grass and clover seed and lightly raked it in.  

So far, it's growing!

But not well as the blades of grass are thin compared to healthy soil.  But we finally have signs of life!  

Not sure what we are going to do with it from here on.  I'm the only one in the family that still consumes gluten so we would need to rethink the grain experiment.  I would still like to do some no-till experiments on this area but I don't think the soil is recovered enough yet.  Probably this year, we'll treat it like lawn, then maybe this fall pile the manure on it again.  

hau R,

Unless people have the rare imuno defect that causes allergic reactions to Wheat proteins (gluten) then leaving them out means less dietary fiber is being consumed by that person needlessly. Wolf went through a period where she thought gluten might be a cause of her problem but the tests showed she was not in that minority of folks that can't digest gluten.

Currently there is a huge number of people depriving them selves because it is "trendy" to be gluten free. This is similar to the big Egg and Butter episodes that bad or incomplete science caused back in the 1970's and continues with many. As it turns out eggs are good for us, and only bad if you over indulge, same for butter, butter is less fattening than the margarine (hydrogenated vegetable oils) which will indeed clog your arteries far faster than using real butter will.

If you have the allergy, then by all means don't eat gluten breads or other flour based items. If you are just leaving it out to be "one in the trend" then you might want to rethink that decision, it might just turn out to be one that bad for health.  Fiber in the diet is very necessary, one of the things it does is keep plaque from building up in the arteries, and most know the other really important thing it does for the digestive system.

I worry about that too. It's confusing to me why wheat is suddenly seen to harm humans when some populations have been eating it as the main source of nutrients for thousands of years.

Crohns means we're on a low fibre diet anyway. But I am worried about missing out on some of the other main nutrients that wheat gives us.

Wheat is a trigger food in our family, but this is only in the last 12 years or so. We don't know what the trigger is in the wheat, but it doubtful it's the wheat itself. Probably something to do with how it is grown or how it is processed. I can handle wheat grown in Europe and local wheat that is ground then sifted (instead of separated then ground like the commercial stuff). It's hard to go wheat free without going gluten-free. On the doctor's orders, the family members are cutting out anything related to wheat in hopes that the body can heal up and we can start eating it again.

The thing is, we should be genetically suitable to eat wheat, barley, and oats since these are the ingredients of my ancestors. I think it's something in the way wheat is grown in China and North America that causes the symptoms. Or it might be the added vitamins we are sensitive to.

I truly understand, I think the wheat varieties now grown on the large commercial scale in the USA have been bred to have higher protein content (thus higher gluten than even bread flour or pasta flour).
It does make good sense to cut out one thing at a time to get to what the issue is being caused by.

There are flour types that are no gluten (Bob's Red Mill has more than five available). Oats don't have gluten at all in case you didn't know that.

I'd be willing to bet it is the way wheat is being processed today over the kernel proper, most of the older methods didn't get rid of the germ prior to grinding and that might have something to do with it.
Mostly (for the overall population) I think it is more of a trendy thing than a real health issue such as your family is having to deal with.

We are thinking seriously about growing some of the ancient wheat varieties, especially if I can get more than 50 seeds for a starter crop.
Einkorn is one of the European ancient wheat varieties that has low gluten and what gluten it contains is far easier to digest than any modern wheat gluten.

Good luck Kola, I wish you great success in this battle.

Redhawk

Long over due update

This is now a lush bit of lawn/hay.  

Each spring we leave it long and I use my scythe to gather green hay for the critters.

The rest of the year we might mow it once or twice leaving the clippings in place.

There is now a lot of variety of pasture plants growing there.  Most of how we got there was by asking the animals to poop.  The geese have been especially helpful and the soil is starting to hold a decent bit of moisture.  

r ranson wrote:I worry about that too. It's confusing to me why wheat is suddenly seen to harm humans when some populations have been eating it as the main source of nutrients for thousands of years.

Crohns means we're on a low fibre diet anyway. But I am worried about missing out on some of the other main nutrients that wheat gives us.

Wheat is a trigger food in our family, but this is only in the last 12 years or so. We don't know what the trigger is in the wheat, but it doubtful it's the wheat itself. Probably something to do with how it is grown or how it is processed. I can handle wheat grown in Europe and local wheat that is ground then sifted (instead of separated then ground like the commercial stuff). It's hard to go wheat free without going gluten-free. On the doctor's orders, the family members are cutting out anything related to wheat in hopes that the body can heal up and we can start eating it again.

The thing is, we should be genetically suitable to eat wheat, barley, and oats since these are the ingredients of my ancestors. I think it's something in the way wheat is grown in China and North America that causes the symptoms. Or it might be the added vitamins we are sensitive to.

Non GMO wheat is generally OK. It is the GMO variety that typically can cause people digestion problem.
Same with Oats, Barley, corn, similar grains.

Carbohydrates cause inflammation in your arteries. That causes them to coat themselves internally to protect from the carbs (actually it is glucose the carbs make). Result - hardening and clogging of your arteries.
Excess glucose can cause fatty liver disease, similar to liver disease alcoholics can get.

Glucose in your blood stream acts like tiny shards of glass, scraping your arteries.

Fiber can be obtained from other sources other than grains.
Fiber is needed to offset (aka reduce re-absorption of) bile.
Not enough fiber and you can have other liver and gallbladder issues.
Bile is needed to metabolize fats both good and bad ones.
Just a few things my doctor told me...