The Wheat and the Snares - 2020

I knew it was crazy to grow wheat in a residential garden plot. Yields are so small and so labor intensive that it would seem foolish. Yet I wanted to do it for the experience. Wheat is mentioned many times in the scriptures, and I wondered what insights I could gain from first hand experience. 

My garden spot is about 10 x 20 feet, divided into four rows. 1.5 rows wheat, 2.5 rows corn, and half rows filled in with beans and sunflowers. A cucumber and tomato joined a little later. 

 

May 28

June 25

July 18

When the wheat was small it was very easy to identify and pull weeds around the wheat - so I thought. As the grain head started to peek out of the stalk, it was easy to see that not everything growing in my wheat was wheat. 

Grass, Grass, Wheat

There were two types of grasses also growing in my wheat. One had a fuzzy head, and the other a more wispy-space-alien-antennae kind of head. They were everywhere in the wheat. I tried to pull some out, but they would bring wheat plants with it. I had such a limited supply of wheat already that I didn't want to pull any more grass out. I noticed that the wheat grew straight up - one stalk per plant. The grasses had many stalks per plant. At the time of harvest there was nearly as much grass as wheat. 

A friend told me not to harvest the grain until the heads started to bow over, and to test a few to make sure the grain was hard. As the heads started to bow, I tested a few and the grain was hard, though I couldn't imagine grain that wasn't hard. 

Harvest Day- Sept 5, 2020

Harvest day was September 5. The wheat was golden and bowed. There was a good portion of grass and weeds in the wheat. In this photo you can see a bucket trap and a cinder block, which is another story about mice.  (More about the mice here.) 

Harvesting

Anciently and not so anciently, a scythe or sickle was used to cut down the grain stocks which would be tied into sheaves. I used a pair of pruning shears and cut the heads, one by one, off the wheat and put them in a bucket. This was a time consuming process. After I did a section, I would pull all of the stalks and grass out and throw them as a clump behind me to clear the ground. I ended up with a full bucket. 

Threshing

Threshing is the process of removing the grain from the seed head. Traditionally this is done by beating it with a stick. I put on some leather gloves and grabbed a big handful of the grain heads, and rubbed my hands together to break it into small pieces. I did this over and over until no big pieces were left.

After threshing

Winnowing

Winnowing is the process of removing the wheat kernels from everything that isn't wheat kernels. Everything that isn't wheat kernels is called chaff. The grain is much heavier than chaff. Traditionally winnowing was done by throwing the threshed grain into the air. The grain would fall straight down, while the chaff would get blown away. I placed a fan on a bucket, and a container on the ground in front of the fan. I could then pour the grain from the bucket in front of the fan and into the bin. 

I didn't trust that grain wouldn't be blown much as it dropped through the airflow, so I oriented the catching container lengthwise with the airflow. It turned out to be unnecessary. The weak airflow blew most of the chaff outside the bin, but not all. It was exciting to see more grain and less chaff with each successive pass though the airflow. 

 Some of the wheat wasn't winnowed enough -- the grain was still inside the hulls. I picked up handfuls of wheat and again rubbed them between my gloved hands. More chaff blew away. Still, it wasn't perfect. And as I looked into the bin, I could see, amazingly enough, DIRT and ROCKS. How did dirt and rocks get into the wheat? I recalled that I had been careless when pulling out the wheat stalks, and had just been tossing the clumps behind me -- right over the grain bucket.

Cleaning

This last step could have been avoided if not for my carelessness. I took the wheat to a table and put it, one handful at a time, on a cutting board where I could separate out the wheat from the dirt. This process took hours, but it was still enjoyable. I knew that skipping this step would mean bread with dirt and rocks in it.  

Soft Grain

In this cleaning process I also learned about soft grain. Soft grain had more of a yellow green tint to it, and was usually larger than the hard grain. These were kernels that didn't mature long enough. Soft grain, when squeezed, pops like a pimple. I didn't want that in my eventual flour either.  

Yield

After the planting, nurturing, watering, harvesting, threshing, winnowing and cleaning, I ended up with about 2.5 cups of wheat. That is much more than the 1/2 cup I anticipted. 

Final yield

Reflections

My purpose in planting the wheat was to gain insight into the scriptures. I suppose it will take years to unpack all of the lessons. These are some of the thoughts that I have had through the process

• By their fruits ye shall know them - it was easy to determine what was wheat after the plants started exposing their fruits. 
  
  
• The same soil that grew great wheat, also grew great weeds.
   
• Weeds sprawled more than wheat, and would often wrap around wheat.  
  
  
• Weeds had multiple seed heads. 
  
  
• Harvesting was a slow, plant by plant process. 
  
  
• Harvesting with a scythe required cutting low on the plant, so as not to disturb the seed head.  If the scythe or sickle were to cut close to the seed head, many grains would have been dislodged. Yet, the extra material with the seed head meant extra work threshing and winnowing. It is better that the grain fall on the threshing floor rather than in the field. 
  
  
• Threshing is a brutal, uncomfortable process for the grain, but is necessary to separate the grain from what isn't grain. Growth comes when we are uncomfortable and when life is hard. 
  
  
• I didn't trust the winnowing process at first but it was amazing to watch. Most of the grain was easily separated. In the end I wished I had a more powerful fan to more easily separate the wheat and the chaff. How attached am I to stuff? 
  
  
• At the time of harvest, some wheat was still immature. Though it looked mostly like wheat, and behaved through the threshing and winnowing processes like wheat, it couldn't withstand pressure. In the end it was discarded the same as chaff. 
  
  
• Through my own carelessness I introduced contamination to the wheat which had to be meticulously removed. 
  
  
• I did very little in this process. I gave space for the seeds and I planted, but God grew.
  
  
• Growing wheat is not monetarily rewarding, but it was worth my effort.

There are many gospel messages in each one of those reflections. It has been an educative and thought provoking exercise. Will I do it again next year? Probably.