The Collapse CLVI: Ripening

12 August 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

The wheat is starting to turn.

I write this with not quite the sort of enthusiasm that I might have written this with only a few days ago, not so much from a lack of excitement (I am always excited about wheat ripening) as I am about managing my focus on the matter.

I have enjoyed growing grains for years, although the growing of such grain has mostly been in small quantities to perhaps make a loaf or two of bread and seed grain for next year. I cannot tell you why I love it so much; there is just something both about the nature of the growth itself as well as the play of watching the grains riffle and swirl in the breeze. More than once since moving here I pulled over at the place near Big City and just watched the grain move and blow.

Over the years I have grown any number of grains: Wheat (Winter, Spring, Emmer), Rye, Barley (Black and Regular), Sorghum, Buckwheat, all with varying degrees of success. Climate had a lot to do with it: where I grew up, I could get almost anything to grow to maturity. In the place where my wife and I had lived for years and raised a family, my go-to’s – wheat, barley, rye – almost never did well because the rain extended out through the Summer, which often introduced mold and a failure to ripen long before I could get to them. There, the most successful were either the ones that finished early (some strains of rye and barley or Emmer wheat) or Sorghum in the Summer (which was wildly successful, if I could keep the birds away). For some reason, Buckwheat and Oats have always been a total loss for me wherever I have lived (unfortunate as I eat a lot oats – or at least did so, in the past).

The processing of my own grains is not difficult; an afternoon with a hand scythe is enough to pull everything down and put it into small shocks to finish the drying process. Threshing is a pretty primitive affair: it is me, a plastic bucket, and a bat. After the initial thresh I drop the grains from one bucket to another, allowing the breeze to take most of chaff. I rinse and repeat once or twice and then move to hand sorting before rinsing everything and allowing it to dry. Ovens in the past worked well for that; I suppose now covering it directly in the sun will have to do.

Thankfully the grain mill I purchased years ago is not dependent on electricity; a small hand crank model, it does the job when one is grinding grain down at need for baking. It is a pleasant enough task, although one that requires two or three passes to reach the right consistency.

I know you did not ask, but all things grain are covered in Gene Logsdon’s book Small-Scale Grain Raising. We have talked about Logsdon much in the past and how much I admired his view on life and agriculture. His practicality, clarity of opinion, and sheer cussedness (A term that is used, I believe, for stubborn endurance) are things I have tried to emulate.

I passed the information on the state of the wheat along to Young Xerxes in the presence of Pompeia Paulina to clearly and concisely communicate the information – not commit. The information itself was straightforward: the Wheat is turning, I would likely give it the earliest of two weeks, someone should let everyone including Epicurus know.

Young Xerxes shot out the door. My wife seemed happy that nothing more was conveyed than information.

In the back of my mind, Lucilius, I know this is the best course, even as part of me chafes to do more. But the value of a thing is not just its inherent value, but the value with which we treat it. And I am at least able to recognize a very good thing when I have it.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca