Hulless oats

One of the goals we set for ourselves in 2008 was to grow grains. Growing our feed grains was a priority, to cut our expenses in producing eggs, dairy and meat. Every time we cut out a major expense, it allows us to use the money we would have spent on purchasing grain, to invest in a tool, like a bicycle generator, that will again, allow us to cut out another expense, like gas for the generator. This is the way that we gradually step down our dependence on "making" enough money to buy the things we need. This approach to "earning a living" is what keeps us both at home. With most of the jobs we do at home, we are able to "pay" each of us $20 an hour, when we compare what we produce, with the cost of buying it, and transporting it home. We pay close attention to the time we spend on jobs, like harvesting grain, and if it is taking too long so that our "wage" drops below $10/hour, then we make changes, and experiment with different techniques and tools to improve our efficiency and bring our "wage" back to a "living wage".

This wage analysis is a part of how we prioritize our goals each year. Our health is the true measuring stick, if we need to make a change to improve our health, lower stress levels, or improve the quality of our food (including improving the health of livestock and soil), then it becomes a priority goal for the coming year. Second to our health, we tackle our largest expenses. For 2008 it was feed grains, along with some of our house grains. For 2009 we will continue to improve our feed grains, by growing millet and peas for the chickens and the goats, and we will focus on growing more of our house grains.

No one can do everything, all at one time, but we can learn to do a lot more than we think we are capable of, by taking on one thing at a time. This builds skills, confidence and experience so that each year we can take on more. Growing all of our house grains is a pretty big goal, and we were not sure exactly how the harvesting and threshing would work out, so we prioritized growing wheat kernels for 2008, and experimenting with our techniques and tools. Now that we have gained skills, tools, experience and, not the least important, confidence, in small scale grain production, we can add more grains to the list, like hulless oats, quinoa, chickpeas, lentils, etc.

Anticipating this two or three year plan toward growing our grains, in the spring of 2008, we purchased packets of seed to plant experimental and/or seed crops of hulless oats, quinoa, millet, amaranth, and chickpeas. With these experimental plots we could work out the needs of each crop in our climate: growing conditions, nutrient levels, spacing, types of pests, planting and harvesting dates, harvesting and threshing techniques, and expected yields. This way we do not make a large investment in the first year, risking a failed crop due to lack of knowledge, or a crop we cannot harvest for lack of time or tools. This summer I was able to record the length of maturity and frost hardiness of each of our experimental crops so that next spring I know planting dates, I recorded yields so that we know how much to plant, and we experimented with threshing techniques so that we can plan ahead if we need any tools.

This spring we planted a 3' x3' plot of hulless oats. Compared to the feed/hulled oats we grew for the animals, they had similar requirements. The thing we wanted to know is how easy they are to thresh, and which technique would work best.

When the grains were fully ripe, I simply stripped the seed heads into a bucket to harvest this small plot, but we could also harvest a kitchen plot, about 30' x 100' with a hand sickle in an afternoon. We have found that harvesting the heads, instead of cutting the stalks, makes it easier to thresh, although it takes longer to harvest. But if weather forces us to take the crop off in a hurry, we can do so with the sickle or scythe, and spend the time we would have spent harvesting, threshing the grain instead.
We have been threshing our wheat with this meat grinder with great success. The design of the latest harvesters use the same principle of a turning screw to thresh the grain. We have made one improvement to the hand-cranked grinder, by attaching the drill to drive the auger. It makes the job a bit smoother. Why not a motor? A motor uses more power, and it is running the entire time, like brushing your teeth with the water running. With the drill (which by the way is also the way we "motorized" my hand crank butter churn), Mr. Fritillary has more control. We will be building a removable hopper as another improvement.

Oats are a softer grain than wheat, so we wondered if the meat grinder would chop too many of the oat groats (or seeds). We tried it without the blades, but it left much of the oats unthreshed. So we put the blades back in, and ran the oats through, not a one was chopped, and all of the heads were threshed.

So here you can see the oats in their hulls, the groats threshed and winnowed, and finally, the rolled oats.