winnowing

throughout the day as i wandered by the box of rye ears i'd thresh a few and dropping the grain into a container...in the course of threshing some awns and some pieces of husk would wind up in the container along with the grain which is both inevitable and requires the grain be winnowed to remove them before it can be ground into flower...i had collected three and an eighth ounces of this and i was curious about how much of it was usable grain and how much was waste so i decided to winnow it and reweigh...there isn't much of anything like a breeze to facilitate a traditional winnowing so i passed the grain through a soil sieve ( several times ) allowing the grain through and separating the chaff....after a half hour's or so of work i found that, minus the waste, my day's threshing had yielded two and seven eighths ponces of grindable grain...a shade over an eighth of a pound...haphazard threshing will continue...winnowing may wait for an auspicious breeze