threshing and winnowing

i harvested the winter wheat on campus eleven days ago and most of the winter wheat here at home on the first of the month.., some of it was still a bit green so i let it dry for another week or so to make it easier to work with and waiting to find a moment to do some of the work...home alone and with time on my hands i began to experiment with the process...i didn't use a threshing board and i didn't spread it on the floor and walk the oxen over it...i simply stripped the spikelets off the rachis into a container ( it took a bit of effort to dislodge the spikelets..a lot like the spinach seeds that won't detach readily either...seed heads that resist shattering are a sign of a domesticated plant...i think i pointed out the difference in the behavior of the spinach seeds [domesticated] and the gamagrass seeds[non-domesticated] in the blog rom four days ago) and rolled them between palms to break the hulls loose...after i had loosened the hulls for what seemed a suitable time ( somewhere around ten minutes) i took the container with the seeds and hulls and an empty container outside, stood in a breeze, and poured the chaff and seed from one container to the other letting the wind blow the hulls away...hulls with awns left in the seed indicated hulls that were not yet detached...a bit more rolling and the seed was free of the processing debris...all told forty minutes of work netted me 1 1/8 ounces of plantable seed to use in the nitrogen preservation program i am working on with the cowpeas and winter wheat...the single seeds i planted last fall are producing plants with seed heads averaging from fifteen to twenty seeds a head...not a bad return and i think i can thank the bird tape for that...there's still spring wheat on campus and in the back yard but that has no bearing on the nitrogen project...i believe it will be ground and used to make some bread...just for the experience of seeing the cycle of growth and utilization through to the end