Threshing Wheat

So today, as part of the general goodness that is Father's Day, the vivacious Mrs. TB allowed me to thresh my wheat as part of my "time".

I wil never look at bread the same way.

Intially, I got a towel, put it on the back lawn, put some wheat heads down, and started whacking with a child's aluminum bat. The bat worked fine, but the towel was obviously too small, scattering wheat chaff and berries everywhere. Then I moved to a sheet, which worked better but the grass is too yielding, so you don't crack all the chaff releasing the wheat - which I had to do by hand.

Then one has to remove the chaff. Ideally, this happens by moving the wheat berries and chaff into the air, where the breeze while blow the chaff away while leaving the wheat. Again, this works if a) You have a fairly short drop (i.e. one can't hurl it into the air) and b) you have a breeze. I moved from sheet to paint tray to small Tupperware to try to get the right thing, which is moving the chaff away from the wheat - and even then, you lose some berries and keep the chaff.

In the evening, after dinner, I got a little more advanced: using a cat litter pail (I had to try it twice - the first time I had a raised bottom, which tended to drop the heads into the trough around it), I used the bat - which did get most of the berries off the heads and released much quicker. I had a bit of a breeze, so by shaking (similar to gold panning), dumping the wheat from bucket to paint tray and back again (multiple times), and simple blowing, I got most of it removed - but again, not all.

Two hours for maybe 1.5 cups of wheat - and I've got half again as much to do.

It certainly makes me appreciate what it really takes to make bread - let alone a civlization. How long and how much would anyone have to thresh to provide enough for a day? a week? a year? And that's not including other ingredients.

The other thing I learned is the patience of the thresher. You need to do it muliple times. You need to be careful, lest you loose the fruit of your labors in your haste to be done - several times, I picked individual wheat berries off the cement or ground, because I don't want to lose them now, after 8 months of work! And even then, one must sift and clean again, to remove the final chaff. It brings to mind Luke 22:31-32, where Jesus says "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he mike sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen the brethren". I always thought of sifting as a gentle shaking, or running your fingers through. What I did tonight was violent, lengthy - and not yet done.

The other other thing I learned is that chaff is worthless. It sticks in your hands, it goes in your nose, it flies everywhere, and it has no function. When David refers to sinners as "but are as chaff which the wind drives away" in Psalm 1:4, I now have a mental picture. Chaff cannot resist the wind: it has not weight, it has little substance, it is dry and brown and flies at a gentle puff of breath. And to the chaff of Matthew 3:12 where John the Baptist compares the wicked, I can now see how flammable it is, and how easily it would burn - let alone with unquenchable fire.

Do I fill my days with wheat? Or chaff?