Threshing

I really didn’t have a good idea about how to do this step. I had the lovely ears of wheat (ok, maybe not so lovely as they has spots of mold on them) and they were all stuck together with their long awns poking out and their thick husks. I needed to get rid of all that -- get them separated and lose all of that chaff.

I of course, could do it by hand. It’s not that hard. Tear off a kernel from the ear. Squeeze/roll it between your fingers until the husk falls away or the wheat seed falls free. Easy to do, takes forever. Really only feasible when sampling to see if they’re ready to be harvested.

Do I do it the medieval way? Lay it out on a large tarp or clean floor and beat it with a flail? It would work I supposed, but I really only had a small amount. I was very worried about being too violent and loosing some of what I had.

So, with a little hint from our old friend the internet, I compromised. I feel that it has a medieval spirit but is better suited for my small harvest. I took an old pillowcase (a modern concession, it should have been a linen sack or something) and threw the wheat ear into it. My original intention was to beat the bag with a stick, and thus feel like I was threshing properly. But it was immediately apparent as I tried to find a good way to seal the open end of the pillowcase, that the easiest way to do it was to bring the wheat to the stick, rather than the other way around. So, holding the bag closed with hand and wielding it like a blackjack, I beat it against the side of my porch for a few minutes. To excellent effect!

Large pieces of stalk and chaff were easily removed by hand, the grains being heavier they rested at the very bottom of the sack. Once these large pieces were removed I poured what was left into a pan and considered winnowing. I was still worried about losing anything, so I didn’t want to take it outside and throw it into the wind. I also didn’t want to go through the laborious task of doing it by hand.

I eventually came up with the plan to float the chaff off. I filled the pan with water. The light chaff floated tot he top and I scraped it off, leaving fresh, clean wheat kernels at the bottom. After three goes with this to get every last bit I laid the berries out on a towel to dry so that they would not sprout -- no malting yet!

Here it is -- the fruits of almost a year of watching this grow in my little pot: