bread: phase two

today is a day off so i brought the two sheaves of wheat i harvested five days ago up out of the basement to begin the...there is no other worjd for it ...laborious process of utilizing the harvest and the first step is separating the ears from the stems...

which i did utilizing a pair of scissors and a paper bag...cutting off each ear...

which left me with a bag of eight hundred and sixty-six ears of wheat...which incidentally dwarfs my last winter wheat harvest by more than double the number of ears...

and a pile of home grown straw i can use for mulch come autumn...in conjunction with thre straw i already have it eliminates a trip tot he feed store this year...a bonus...

wandering off into the rest of the yard ( but still on topic for a minute ) the einkorn and emmer wheat are moving their season along well...mostly grown a s a seed crop to propagate another generation next march...

bush beans, zucchini ( there is no stopping them ), and spuds are blooming...

there is good new growth on the yacon...

and it appears there will be tomatoes and grapes ( despite the appearance of japanese beetles...no worries...i have neem oil )

finally the grain workload shows no sign of easing...one reason for starting on processing the wheat today is that the rye is about due for harvest and that means more threshing and winnowing...i heard some british academic holding forth on the bbc yesterday about the "midden heap theory" of the origins of agriculture ( interestingly he maintained that the development our system of social stratification had nothing to do with the advent of agriculture...remind me to avoid his books and views )..and the midden heap may have given neolithic peoples the idea that they could actively plant seed to grow food however they were not doing it as hobbyists ( which you could say is what i am doing...even thought the work seems more serious than that at times )..one supposes some other sort of dire circumstance ( perhaps the diminution of carrying capacity by population growth ? ) was involved in the acceptance of so much labor by formerly foraging communities...more on the bread from scratch project as it moves along.

late winter losses, gains, staus quo

the spuds i transplanted into five gallon containers eighteen days ago have all pretty much gone south and i haven't a clue why...

the bisons...

and the blues i found chitting away and planted at the same time are all doing just fine..so i consolidated them under one light to give the better exposure and we will be trading carefully when transplant time crops up...loss is expected, not condoned...

the yacon and mashua are well...

puddles' kids are still green, leggy , and taking after mom...they will be seeing sunshine in the flesh in a month or so ( in fact all these plants will be...the basement season will shut down soon )

even the viny house plant has taken to the light and is exhibiting new growth...

out back the depths of winter would seem to be fading and a seasonal change brewing...

warm as the ambient temperature is, the ramp bed is still frozen solid under the leaf mulch...look for stirrings later this month...

stumpy's dryad's saddle has seemingly wintered over successfully...

the new york imports haven't been exactly inert all winter but they are greener today that they were in say, january...

the clusters of aerial bulbs the egyptian walking onions left behind haven't bee still either and the shoots seem a bit longer today...

poking around in the winter vetch that served as onion cover this past winter i discovered a less social bulb all on its own...still doing what comes natural...

and last but certainly not least, the winter rye...

and to a lesser, but still infinitely better degree than two years ago, the winter wheat, have come through the sub-zero ( with snow cover ) and single digit lows ( without snow ) and will, hopefully, be productive and done by late june...so we are good if wondering about the spuds...things will be moving outside...ramps will be up...and it will be time to dig the bed for the crop of teocintli soon enough...the move outside is near..and about time too.

into the void

puddles' kids are acting just like mom did last winter..it must be genetic...

the yacon and mashua are evincing new growth...

and the january spud is happily filling its side of the container...

six days ago the spud on the left in this photo...

looked like this...

and the one on the right had this look about it...there has been progress here...

cohabiting with garlic hasn't harmed this spud over the past week either...i am uncertain as to whether it helped...but i don't see a need to shuffle the population around either...

and now we move on into the post-organic arena...there was a bag of "america's #1 finger hat" aka bugles lying about...a close personal friend...and big fan of puddles and the kids...called it a "colorful bag" which is a true statement...colorful and very busy with the promise of fun ( what else could a "finger hat" be but fun? )...someof us are killjoys however andf i just had to take a look at the nutritional ( or, in this case, non-nutritional ) label...

there's fat..but no trans fat or cholesterol..okay...also more salt than you can shake a stick at...a touch of protein and barely discernible vitamin d, calcium, iron or potassium...one would presume there would be some nutritional value to something that is a "crispy corn snack"...a supposition until you take a shufti at the bottom of the label where it boldly states "ingredients: DEGERMED YELLOW CORN MEAL...and the nutritional mystery is solved...general mills removed it...probably because it complicated the process of extrusion...and to add insult to injury the very bottom of the label tells us we are eating gmo...the fine print says "learn more at ask.general mills.com"...any of you who has the desire can go there...i do not especially care to be propagandized at the moment...maybe later

expansion and progression

for as much as things change down in the basement there is still continuity...puddles' kids for instance...still green..still leggy...still looking remarkably like mom...and they continue to send up new sprouts that fall over...

the yacon is evincing new growth...albeit slowly...slow is what yacon does...and the cohabiting mashua has vines everywhere...

the two mashua plants across the room continue to fill the trellises and vine over the sides of their containers as well...

the garlic is getting leggy too...there will have to be some rearranging of location and lighting soon...

all three of the spuds i planted eleven days ago and that are the reason the season is "expanded" have now deployed leaves...i am assuming there are roots involved as well...more containers and rearranging to compound the complexity of limited space and lighting ( there was a reason i wanted a "simple" season down there...desire and intention are often frustrated )..it is the way of things..added complexity and increased energy always attend expansion...

and thirty-eight days into its season the spud i planted in january is a green and robust nightshade that needs to be back filled a bit more...not "leggy" in the least...compact and leafy...both indications of the possibility of good tuber production...we will see in a couple of months...although these are blue potatoes which are notorious ( in my experience ) for just going on and on...we may need to intervene eventually...as if we haven't already.