you may recall the bag of wheat ears i cut off the stems in phase two of this project...that has led me to begin phase three and it has had its moments...
weary of teasing the grain out of the ears one at a time by hand, being stabbed repeatedly by awns, and arguing with stubborn rachis, i did some research on methodology and, adding a twist or two, found a much quicker way to process the grain...
i dug out a burlap sack and put about half the remaining ears in it...
i took it out on the deck and began to...what's a good word? slam it into the deck to loosen the grain...after a few minutes awns began to poke through the mesh and litter the steps ( which i swept off thus defusing possible recriminations )...
the next step was a cinder block and a chunk of wood in the back where a few more minutes of battering the ears...
rendered the ears into a much more tractable form...there was still some cleaning to do before winnowing however...
i cleaned the remaining unbroken ears and created something of a midden behind the compost bin...looking for volunteer wheat soon...
ready to winnow but lacking a consistent summer breeze i set up a small fan...got out a five gallon "food grade" bucket...
and let the fan blow off the chaff...
yesterday in about two hours of work with the old method i processed seven eights of an ounce of grain...in approximately half that time today i cleaned three times as much...i am sold...
if one cup of grain renders a cup and a half of flour i will need to fill this container fully ( and this would include seed grain for the next crop )...this may be iffy...
the good news is the rye is finished so if we cannot have whole wheat we will have pumpernickel...either way...bread is bread...i will have the wheat done by the week end and then it will be time to bring in and process the rye...we will see how this system works with that
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