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A grain that is easy to grow and easy to process/harvest

Denise Cares

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Location: USDA Zone 7a

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posted 3 years ago

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Faye Streiff wrote: Hull less buckwheat is easy, grows in poorer soil, but have to harvest a few every day because it does not ripen evenly. I use that to make lasagna noodles with no other flour.

Would you be willing to share your recipe, method & equipment for making these noodles for us gluten intolerant folk? Thanks!

Joseph Lofthouse

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Location: Cache Valley, zone 4b, Irrigated, 9" rain in badlands.

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posted 3 years ago

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Mike Lafay wrote:Wheat will be there for the winter. Honestly I think I'm just going to accept the fact that it takes some work to process. I'll also try a few other winter grains, like barley and rye.

Wheat is easy to harvest, and clean. For an hour's labor, I can feed myself for a week. For a week's labor, I can feed myself for a year. And it's shelf-stable. Western civilization was only possible because people started harvesting wheat by hand.

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Mike Lafay

pollinator

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Location: France, 8b zone

posted 3 years ago

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Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

Mike Lafay wrote:Wheat will be there for the winter. Honestly I think I'm just going to accept the fact that it takes some work to process. I'll also try a few other winter grains, like barley and rye.

Wheat is easy to harvest, and clean. For an hour's labor, I can feed myself for a week. For a week's labor, I can feed myself for a year. And it's shelf-stable. Western civilization was only possible because people started harvesting wheat by hand.

Do you have some approximate quantity of how much wheat you consume in a week/year ?

Joseph Lofthouse

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A pound of wheat per day equals 1500 calories per day.

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Open Source Plant Breeding Forum, founder
Adaptation Agriculture: Video Course, Community, and Seed Share

Lexie Smith

Posts: 169

posted 3 years ago

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I think this is the video I mentioned or perhaps another with the same speakers. They have lots of good information at the Urban Farm site.
https://urbanfarm.lpages.co/grains-in-your-gardens-aug-24-2022/

Thekla McDaniels

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Location: Western Slope Colorado.

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posted 3 years ago

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I have nixtamalized corn, hard corn, I don’t know the difference between dent or flint so I can’t say what it was…. just home grown multi-colored corn. I think I was making posole. I just soaked the kernels in a solution of baking soda and water. After about a day, the hard seed coat would slip off when rubbed. Then the seed coats floated away with rinsing and stirring. Then I cooked it in the soup.

It worked fine, the posole was good 😊

Likely you could make masa….

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Lexie Smith

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posted 3 years ago

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Interesting! I had never heard of that dish but it sounds delicious! How do you preserve it, by drying or freezing perhaps. Also, during the soak, do you ferment it slightly before use or do you soak it in the fridge? I have read about how much better it is to feed your animals fermented foods (as well as eating them ourselves) and experimenting with that in the past, kernels taught me that corn ferments really quickly.

Thekla McDaniels

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posted 3 years ago

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Hi Lexie,
Likely I can find my recipe for posole, I think you could dry the nixtamalized corn, then grind and make it into dough, but for all of that, I would need to do a web search, then test what the web says.

Once you make the posole (soup/stew ) you would have to refrigerate it, or after a couple days at room temperature, then bring it to the boil, simmer it awhile to discourage microbial growth… just do what you’re comfortable with.

I am always glad to get even scant instructions on a folk-way type recipe, but I often have to try a set of instructions several times measuring and making careful notes before I feel confident enough to invite my friends….

If you try anything, let me know the results 😊

I just put the bowl of corn on the counter with the soda and water solution. I never thought about whether it might ferment. It probably does, why not?

Best luck: satisfaction

Greatest curse, greed

Tereza Okava

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Location: South of Capricorn

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Thekla McDaniels wrote:I think you could dry the nixtamalized corn, then grind and make it into dough,

I boil it in lime solution for an hour, turn off heat and top off the pot with cool water (a bit boils off during the process, but I don't dump off the lime water just yet) and let sit overnight. Next day, after rinsing/rubbing the skins off I grind the cooked, nixtamalized corn to make masa. If it's too much for one use, I'll freeze some of the ground masa for use later.

Michael Moreken

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Posts: 485

Location: On the plateau in crab orchard, TN

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posted 3 years ago

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I grown buckwheat and sunflowers without a problem in TN. I hope to buy a 2 wheeled tractor $$$$ (over 5k) with flail to tame the last back park of yard. I like rye... The golden finches finished off the oil sunflowers I planted. So maybe try a hybrid sunflower to eat for humans.

Bless your Family,
Mike

c. mcdonald

Posts: 13

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posted 4 months ago

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Faye Streiff wrote: Wish we could grow millet, but without a thresher would be impossible to winnow. Made some killer pancakes yesterday with leftover cooked millet, half cottage cheese, eggs, roll into other flour to dry out enough to cook by sautéing in coconut oil.

Winnowing millet is easy, from what I've heard. Just use a rolling pin and then sift, or better, grind coarsely and sift out the hulls before making flour. Hitting or rolling stiffly over with a rolling pin or putting in a large mortar and pestle to crack them preserves the grain but separates the hull, apparently.

Thekla McDaniels

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Location: Western Slope Colorado.

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posted 4 months ago

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I knew some people who grew dried beans. They stacked the bean vines with adhering pods put it in a tarp and drove over it. Maybe more than one pass. Before they could market the beans they did hand sort the beans. There were some broken ones. I think it would be pretty hard to break millet grains, though. Just a thought, it might work!

A seed sorting screen set might be very handy to separate the grain from everything else. Again, it is just conjecture, I have no experience in this.

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