Friday, June 23, 2006

Wheat Harvest Part II

The wheat harvest is done. The second time around, I got smarter - I packed the entire second container into the bucket, beat out the grain, then poured in out, getting rid of the gross chaff and pulling out the partially threshed heads, then starting over with those, then putting the mass in.

Then came the removal of the chaff. You need wind to do it effectively, and there seems to be a right distance to pour the wheat so that the distance allows the chaff to blow away. I got out the fan, and experimented with distance. I finally managed to get it down, about twice as much as before in about the same amount of time - 2 hours. My sum total was about 4-6 cups of wheat. I 'll keep one or two cups for next year's planting, and grind the rest.

Also, today was the first harvest of cucumbers and squash. My tomatos have not yet turned, but my soybeans are putting on pods and the chick peas are blossoming.

To cover my experimentiaton in agriculture, I close with a quote from Marcus Terentius Varro, a 1st Century BC writer:

"Imitate others and attempt by experiment to do some things in a different way, following not chance but some system" - Marcus Terentius Varro

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