threshing

threshing grain by hand is a fairly tedious business...i can see why oxen were inopportuned to walk on the seed heads in the threshing room and, at least in the case of wheat, no real effort was made to separate seed into different varieties...wheat was wheat...if you want to separate seeds go right ahead...the seed heads come in different sizes and some are more compact than others with the seeds more tightly bound to the central stem by so fairly tough rachis...others are more open and easily threshed...i found that rolling the seed head between my thumb and index finger pops the looser grains out and i can dig the more recalcitrant ones out with a thumbnail....( i use both hands...but i had to take the photo )...the third photo is what the seed head on the left in the top photo looked like after it was threshed and the bottom photo is the fifty-eight grains it yielded which weighed in at one eighth of an ounce...winnowing is another interesting process and one i cannot realistically do and photograph at the same time...a posting on that will have to wait.