einkorn

"at first people adjusted to drier conditions by turning to small seeded-grasses and other stand-by foods. in about 10,000 b.c. they took the next logical step, attempting to grow grasses to expand the wild harvest. the first domesticated seeds appear in the village, rye, einkorn ( a variety of coarse grained wheat ), and lentils..."brian fagan. "the long summer:how climate changed civilization"

an early run to the campus garden showed...

that the asparagus was upright...

and that a fair amount of the einkorn was ripe enough to harvest...

so i brought in a small sheaf ( not that the harvest of all the grain would have rendered a large one )...

einkorn is nearly as ancient as agriculture and it retains numerous "wild and weedy" qualities...true it turns amber when ripe...however the "waves of grain" would be rather short...the tallest of the ones i brought in measures...

a shade over twenty-nine inches from its roots to the tip of its awns...

the largest ears are around two inches long...

the smallest ones are not...

the larger ear produced a dozen tough little husks...

which produced nine grains of wheat ( three were empty duds )...

the smaller one just one...it took me three minutes to extract the grain from the larger ear...and these are recent arrivals...the husks only become more difficult to remove as they dry...that should provide enough information to estimate how long it will take to process the sixty-one ears i have...like most agricultural work einkorn is labor intensive...conditions must have been dificult ( if not desperate ) to try to utilize it as a sort od staple...humas are adaptable however adaptation isn't always simple...

in other garden news the hopi turquoise is looking robust...

the alfalfa is still blooming away...

so is the carolina horse nettle ( in a quick, unscientific survey i counted more than one hundered plants )...

the bumble bees are still mugging it...

they will bear more fruits.