Planting Day - 21 Weeks in

Like in the last picture, some of the wheat is a nice, harvestable, tan, straw color, while some of it is still very green and growing. So all of it was certainly not ready to be harvested. But there were two issues.

First, I was worried about mold. I’d gotten sooty mold on my winter wheat from letting it sit out on the stalk longer than it should have. I didn’t want that to happen here and some of those dry stalks had been ready to harvest for quite a while.

Secondly, some of the stalks, especially those that had fallen over after the rain storm of a few weeks ago, were missing some or all of there wheat berries. Under them was the chaff that belonged to the ear, and I first thought that the seeds were falling off the stalk. But when I looked more closely, there were no seeds on the ground. So I immediately blamed the squirrels that are always chittering around the back yard and even came inside to rant to the wife and kids about how those damn squirrels were eating all of my grain. When I went out the next morning to go to work, however, there was a flock of little birds (wrens?) sitting on the fence above the field. They were easy to scare off, at least temporarily, but I think they are the grain-eating culprits.

So I wanted to harvest those ears of wheat that were ready. I’m not sure if this phenomenon is normal or not. Gies and Gies in Life in a Medieval Village make a big deal about the September harvest and about how quickly it had to be done and the labor shortages associated with the harvest. You think of people out in the fields with scythes, mowing down all the wheat, not taking time to select some stalks and come back to others. So I wonder if this particular harvest is a bit odd because of the dry summer and the hard rain about 2/3 through. (I also have some questions about the Michelmas harvest, but I’ll save this discussion for a later date.)

Following the technique I used successfully on the winter wheat, I went out there with a large plastic bowl and my kitchen shears and snip, snip, snipped. I quickly determined that for an ear to be ready for harvesting, the entire ear had to be tan with no bits of green. Otherwise the wheat berries were soft and unready.

Once I had all of the ears that I could get, they went into the old pillowcase. The red wheat needed more beating than the white, winter wheat did, but they did eventually all separate from the stalk and husks.

Then I got an old bed sheet (that matched the pillowcase!) and poured the contents of the pillowcase onto the center of the sheet. I recruited my reluctant daughter and we spent 10-15 minutes tossing the wheat and chaff into the air. I was downwind, so all the chaff blew in my face, and it all worked surprisingly well. The hard seed kernels fell straight back onto the sheet, while the stalks and husks were whisked away into my hair.

That all actually happed about a week and a half ago, on August 23rd. I went out again yesterday and harvested more, though it is still sitting in the pillowcase. There is still quite a bit left green in the field, and I have probably only harvested about half.

I forgot to take pictures of any of that, so I will make sure to take pictures next time I harvest.