I always get a good feeling from putting a meal on the table that comes mostly from the farm. All this recent talk about eating local is something we've been doing for years. But if we are going to eat mainly off the farm or at least locally the one thing we would definitely miss would be bread. We can grow lots of potatoes, squash, vegetables of all sorts, raise chickens for meat and eggs, raise sheep, etc.. But this year Joel and our neighbors from Nootka Rose Farm are experimenting with growing wheat and other grains. This isn't an area particularly suited for growing wheat, though oats and barley usually do okay. So they are growing a number of grain cultivars to see what might do well here. Trying to find equipment to process grain from less than 1000 acres has also been a challenge. One of the farm's partners is from Japan and found a small foot operated thresher and a hand winnowing fan in Japan and had them shipped here. They arrived last weekend and we got together to try them out. Above is a bundle of wheat being threshed.
There is definitely a learning curve involved, but we did manged to thresh and winnow several pounds of wheat grains
which was then ground into flour. We made pizza last night from that flour. I used pesto from our basil, onions, peppers, and tomatoes from the garden, hamburger from home grown beef and only added non local cheese. What a yummy treat.
I always get a good feeling from putting a meal on the table that comes mostly from the farm. All this recent talk about eating local is something we've been doing for years. But if we are going to eat mainly off the farm or at least locally the one thing we would definitely miss would be bread. We can grow lots of potatoes, squash, vegetables of all sorts, raise chickens for meat and eggs, raise sheep, etc.. But this year Joel and our neighbors from Nootka Rose Farm are experimenting with growing wheat and other grains. This isn't an area particularly suited for growing wheat, though oats and barley usually do okay. So they are growing a number of grain cultivars to see what might do well here. Trying to find equipment to process grain from less than 1000 acres has also been a challenge. One of the farm's partners is from Japan and found a small foot operated thresher and a hand winnowing fan in Japan and had them shipped here. They arrived last weekend and we got together to try them out. Above is a bundle of wheat being threshed.
There is definitely a learning curve involved, but we did manged to thresh and winnow several pounds of wheat grains
which was then ground into flour. We made pizza last night from that flour. I used pesto from our basil, onions, peppers, and tomatoes from the garden, hamburger from home grown beef and only added non local cheese. What a yummy treat.
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