Plonking wheats through the shredder.

Couple of years back, looking in despair at a heap of rye i had to zip off the stalks my hands hurting after a few i cracked and did a ruthless thing. I plonked them into the electric shredder i bought to make wood chips with of smallish branches. I was extremely bemused when after inspection i learned that most rye seeds seem to just severe of the stalk intact.
Since i've learned wheat does just fine and lately i've had a go at spelt wheat.
That was more challenging, because it seems to have two small seeds in one pocket of which the smallest seemed to break in two. As i didn't know what else to do with the harvest i carried on. After some sifting i'm left with the chaff and seeds. Which i seperated in water to just see if i could. And yes the heavy seeds sank and the chaff which sometimes contained seeds floated. But i decided to just keep it together, the chaf and the seed in a container. I hope the chaff functions a bit as a condensation sponge if weather turns funny so my seeds will be kept save. I've done a little sprouting test to see if i hadn't damaged the seeds, but they seem fine, see photo.
Come rains this autumn i can just seed an area with it. I've got a lot more than i started with and a neighboring cattle ranger seems keen to try some as well for calves with start up stomach problems. It's a landrace grex consisting of 4 ancient varieties, so naturally it will over time adapt to the bad soils i grow on.
Without further mutterings and elaborations i leave this topic to the odd wanderer of the interwebs who happens to stumble upon this topic somewhere in this space-time continuum. And i hope you will have a lucky shredder too one day, because it's a time saver i am very fond of.

That's pretty nifty - thank you for sharing your experiment! What sort of blades/grinder does your shredder have Hugo? I do have an electric shredder somewhere about that I never use for it's intended purpose (too much labour moving sticks around, I'd rather have a pile in an out of the way corner; although the mulch would be nice).
I'm not at the stage of processing much grain. I only managed to sow my rye this year , but my oats are not hullless, and my bere barley also will take some threshing in the future.

Hi Nancy, i know what you mean, not using it for shredding wood into woodchips. Mostly i use it for now is wheatseed work.
Are these pictures sufficient for what you want to know about this machine?

Hugo Morvan wrote:Are these pictures sufficient for what you want to know about this machine?

Thanks Hugo. Yes. It's not the same as mine (which is more like a massive food blender). I might give it a go with mine though, just to see whether it might work ( try 100 things...)

Thats very interesting, thanks for the idea! I sowed a little experimental winter wheat patch on a quarter UK allotment (around 50m sq) and had a good harvest, but thats when my problems began as I hadn't dome much research into the processing, so I found a very heath-robinson method of rubbing the wheat grain heads between two boards covered in chicken wire which kinda worked but was very labour intensive and still left a lot of individual grains with a covering, (not sure what they are called, but like two little dried leaves around each grain) and I still don't know how to deal with them! Any ideas of how to get those last little flakes of chaff off the grain? Can't wait to process the clean grain and make bread, next question is best way to grind small amounts into flour...

Update. I broke the machine. I tried to fix it but couldn't do it. The motor burned, i think it was the dust that did it.
Martin, yeah it's a problem to get it to flour. I'm not there yet and might not ever get there, i will need community.
I can imagine using it to feed chickens. I like eggs more than i like bread, personally.
But the thing is, it's just great to experiment and try things. Get to talk to people. my neighbor said they used to get into an empty room and hit the stalks on the floor or wall. Another friend has a lot of wheat and maize and a solar set up with machines and separates it from chaff and seeds and grinds it to flour. He said he'd help. But it's too far away for the tiny bit i grow. I'd spend a day and 25 euro on diesel to have enough flour to make 2 breads. It would be fun though, but it's not serious.