Fodder For Feed

I sprout grains regularly for our chickens and goats. (See "Sprouting Grain for Goats" for why.)

Sprouted wheat, oats, and black oil sunflower seeds.

But until recently, I'd never tried fodder. And what is fodder? In this context, the term is popularly used to describe sprouted grains that are allowed to grow leaves to several inches in length. Since they are grown without soil, it is a clean feed for poultry, rabbits, and ruminants alike. Here's my first attempt at growing it. 

I used the same seed mix as for sprouts.

After soaking in warm water overnight, I spread
them out about ½-inch thick in an old nursery tray.

It's watered daily, and after about 5 or 6 days it's showing good growth.

After about 8 or 9 days.

The sections lift right out of the trays. 

The critters love it! They especially appreciate fresh food during winter.

Mine took a little longer than most people said because of our cooler house temperature. It took off better when I put the tray outside on a sunny mild day. That being said, I probably wouldn't do this if the weather was too warm. One problem people face is the grain souring or getting moldy. Because of that, many use diluted bleach water for their soaking and daily rinsing. I'd rather not use bleach if I can help it, because I prefer to minimize inputs to make the process as simple, and as economical, as possible. Plus, it would restrict what I could do with the rinse water.

This was just a first-time experiment, but for an ongoing fodder supply, most folks set up a series of trays stacked on shelves. The trays are tilted slightly, so that when the top tray is watered, the water drains onto the tray below, which drains onto the tray below, etc. The best set-up I saw was in a greenhouse, where the bottom tray emptied out into a greenhouse bed. Otherwise the drainage water has to be caught and removed to wherever one wishes. 

I see two huge benefits from a fodder growing system.

1. It richly increases nutrient value of the grain as a feed.
2. It cuts the feed bill by (an estimated) 50-75%.

I felt like this experiment was quite successful. So now, I have to work on a system similar to what I described above. One more project to add to the to-do list!

Fodder For Feed © Dec 2020 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Summer Grain Growing: Rice (I Hope)

In my last blog post, I shared our winter wheat harvest with you, plus some about the cutting and threshing process. Wheat yields quite a bit of straw, and we have a plan for that too.

First load of wheat straw.

The plan is to follow the wheat with a rotation of rice. I got this idea from Masanobu Fukuoka's book on natural farming, The One Straw Revolution. He alternates a rice crop in summer with cool weather grains in winter. He adds clover to the seed and mulches it with the straw from the previous crop. With this method he has very few problems with weeds and has developed rich, fertile soil with no other additive than a scattering of chicken manure over the straw to help it decompose.

My rice seed came from last year's rice growing experiment which, unfortunately, I harvested too early (the same mistake I made the first time we grew wheat). So I have some doubt as to whether or not the seed is mature enough to grow (hence, the "I Hope" in the post title.) Doing nothing will produce nothing, however, so I decided to go ahead and give it a try anyway.

I broadcast the seed and then Dan cut the wheat residue (and weeds) with our mulching mower.

He's cutting the remaining stubble, weeds, and a patchy spot where I
removed the heads from the standing plants. Made a good mulch layer.

Ordinarily, I would let the goats into the patch after harvesting to eat down the weeds and glean any seed heads they could find.

The little patch of grass in the corner is spring planted wheat (another experiment).

Impending rain and shortage of temporary fencing nixed that.

The idea with the straw is to spread it as a covering mulch, not a smothering mulch. To do that it must be spread in a scattered fashion rather than aligned as a mat.

I started with the barest corner of the patch. As we continue threshing the wheat and making more straw, it will cover the rest of the field.

So there it is at present. It's an experiment, so I don't know what to expect. We'll learn something from it one way or another, that I know for sure.

Summer Grain Growing: Rice (I Hope) © June 2020

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Wheat Harvest

June is wheat month. I plant our wheat in the fall (winter wheat) and it's ready to harvest in June. Cutting and gathering takes the good part of a day, and once harvested, processing takes up the rest of the month.

Wheat is ready to harvest when most of the plant has turned golden brown and the grains in the seed heads are hard. If they can be squished between one's teeth, they aren't ready yet. From  experience, we've learned that harvesting too early makes it difficult to thresh. Wait too long and the heads shatter, i.e. the seeds fall to the ground on their own. The trick is getting a patch of nice weather at the right time to do the job. Because we only get to do this once a year, we're still learning.

The stand was patchy but the seed heads were the largest and fullest we've ever grown. Not all of them, but most of them.

Processing is easiest if the grain heads are lined up, but scything leaves cutting helter-skelter. To cut grain for threshing, a grain cradle is traditionally used.

Trouble is, no one makes these any more, so it has to be a DIY project. There are lots of ideas out there, and Dan has experimented with some of them, but none with satisfactory results. Scything with a cradle takes a slightly different technique, and since we only get to try a new idea once a year, it's a slow road to figuring it out.

One problem we had this year was that the ground was still very soft from recent rains. Many of the wheat plants were pulled out by the roots. Another problem is that not all of our plants were the same height, so getting the heads lined up in neat bundles was near impossible. We end up removing most of the heads by hand. You may think that's an awful lot of extra work, but it's actually a matter of where we put the work; either in separating the heads or in extra winnowing because there is more chaff in the grain from the stalks.

We've tried a number of methods for threshing, but so far have had the best success with our thresher converted from a small yard mulcher. You can see that in this post. The only drawback is that it tends to break some of the grains. This year Dan tried something different.

It's two short lengths of chain on a paint stirrer. The seed heads are put into a 55-gallon food grade barrel, and the chains beat the seeds out of the heads.

Winnowing is next. That's the process of blowing away the chaff to get the wheat berries. I do this with a box fan, as you can see by scrolling down toward the bottom of the threshing post. Winnowing is quickest with the least amount of chaff. By only threshing the seed heads, we have less chaff to winnow.

So, we're still threshing at the moment. I'm anxious to get on with the rest, so we can make some flour and taste our new wheat!

Next time, I'll show you what we're doing with the wheat patch, now that the wheat has been harvested.

Wheat Harvest © June 2020 by Leigh

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Winter Wheat Update

Wyomingheart asked how our wheat is doing.

So far, so good. I say that because last year we lost our winter wheat to lodging. That's when the plants fall down, for often mysterious reasons. In our case, heavy rains flattened it, but it can't be cut lying on the ground, so the crop is pretty much a waste. We salvaged what we could by harvesting it for hay, but it meant no homegrown wheat last year.

We don't plant a lot. This patch is roughly 30' x 62', with enough room to expand it about 5 more feet both ways. Depending on how this harvest goes, it should be enough for our needs until next year.

Wheat flowers.

It just finished flowering, and the plants range from 2 to 3 feet in height. In some places, the stand is thick, in others it's pretty patchy.

In the above photo, what you see on the ground is wood chip mulch. I wouldn't ordinarily mulch wheat, so this is where I should tell you about another of our soil building experiments. (See the end of this post for links to the others.)

The whole area used to be our garden, but we (I) found it too large to manage mostly by myself, so we divided it into a canning and kitchen garden at the top and a grain growing patch at the bottom.

Detail from the 2020 Master Plan

This new arrangement invited another soil-building experiment, but this one was different from the others. And unconventional. But like the others, I started by digging a soil sample for the record.

Then my experiment.

First, Dan mowed it short with the mulching mower. Then I started laying down waste boards and planks from Dan's sawmilling. Many of the cuts are too thin or irregular to use for other projects, so they are basically waste wood. I laid them down on the ground and covered them with subsoil from my hugelkulture swale bed digging project. That was topped with wood chip mulch.

I seeded it for green manure, even though I didn't think much could grow through the wood chips. That was autumn of 2018 and last summer I got scanty growth.

Photo taken May 2019, when I allowed the goats in to graze it. 

Last fall, I broadcast wheat and clover seed and Dan scythed what growth there was there. That was  left as mulch and green manure. Almost none of the clover came up, but I'm pleased with the wheat we've got. It will likely be ready to harvest for grain in June.

I also want to show you the heritage wheat I planted last fall.

It's a landrace wheat from northern Jordan and Southern Syria called Hourani. It was advertised as being of excellent quality and lodge resistant!

Hourani wheat seed head.

Unfortunately, germination was extremely poor, probably close to only 10%. Even so, I'll collect and treasure what I get! The goal is to eventually switch to this type instead of commercial wheat seed.

So that's my wheat report. Here are the soil-building links I promised.

Soil Building Experiment #1
Soil Building Experiment #2: Pastures
Soil Building Experiment #3: Hay Growing
I recently posted some results, here → Pasture Soil Building Update

Winter Wheat Update © April 2020 by Leigh

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Upland Rice Threshed and Rough Yield

A couple weeks ago I told you about harvesting my upland rice.

My first ever rice harvest!

After harvesting, there are three steps to processing rice: threshing, dehulling, and winnowing. Having hulls makes it a bit more complicated than processing wheat, but I plan to take it one step at a time. Threshing was my first step. My question was, how?

The first thing that came to mine was our yard-mulcher-turned-grain-thresher.

Our first little mulcher was inadequate for that task, so Dan turned it
 into a feed processor (how-to here). We also use it for threshing wheat.

Made from an old Yard Machine brand chipper/mulcher, we've been using it to thresh our wheat for several years. The rice harvest was small enough that a simpler method seemed more in order.

Threshing screen on top of the wheelbarrow. 

My threshing screen is a frame with quarter-inch hardware cloth stapled to the bottom. The grain heads are rubbed on the screen and fall through into the wheelbarrow. It's a slow method, but good for smaller harvests. This worked fairly well, and also taught me something about harvesting rice. Even though I cut it when the heads were golden brown, I should have let it dry out more before cutting it. I say this because the grains were stubborn to be loosened from the stalk. Proper ripeness is the fine point between green and shattering (which is when the seed falls on it's own to the ground). I had to figure this out for wheat, so I'm not surprised I'd have to learn for the rice too.

The result.

I planted a quarter of an ounce (7 gram seed packet) and yielded just under four pounds before dehulling and winnowing. Not as much as I had hoped, but considering how hot and dry our summer has been, I'm still pleased. I will definitely grow upland rice again next year.

The next step will be learning how to dehull it. (Another learning curve new adventure!)

Upland Rice Threshed and Rough Yield © Sept 2019

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

My First Rice Harvest

I can't help but take a pause from my Solar Pantry Series for my very first rice harvest. I've never grown rice before so this small patch has been an experiment; an experiment on which I've pinned great hopes.

I planted two varieties of upland rice last May (blog post here). Upland rice is different from lowland or paddy rice because it doesn't have to be flooded. It can be grown without a rice paddy.

My bed of Cho Seun Zo Saeng, a short grain brown rice.

The Cho Seun variety is said to be ready to harvest somewhere around 125 days after transplanting or whenever the heads are golden brown.

Brown rice ready to harvest.

 I cut mine at day 123 with my hand sickle.

My hand sickle is a handy tool.

The patch was small so it didn't take long. It filled my wheelbarrow.

My first ever rice harvest!

My next step is to thresh it. This variety is supposed to be relatively easy to thresh because it is awnless. We'll see!

The second bed of rice, Loto, still has a lot of green seed heads.

My bed of Loto rice, a shorter variety.

So I'm still waiting on that one.

My seed packets contained 7 grams of rice seed each, so I'm curious about my yield. We'll try some of course, but I plan to save most of it as seed for next summer's crop. Hopefully, homegrown rice can become a regular part of our diet.

My First Rice Harvest © August 2019

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Grain Growing: Upland Rice

Dan and I enjoy brown rice, but until recently it didn't occur to me to grow it. That's because I always envision rice in paddies, which I couldn't imagine myself doing. Then I learned the difference between lowland and upland rice and changed my mind.

Lowland rice is paddy rice, i.e. grown in water. This is always how I assumed rice is grown. Upland rice, on the other hand, doesn't require flooding. It needs about an inch of water per week, but doesn't need to stand in water. That makes it a good choice for standard garden beds. I found the seed at Sherck Seeds and ordered two kinds.

Loto rice is an Italian variety, a risotto type. I chose it because it is said to have excellent flavor and is one of the easier kinds to dehull. That, plus it isn't supposed to lodge (fall over) easily.

The second rice I chose was Cho Seun Zo Saeng. It is a short grain brown rice grown in China and Korea. It too, is lodge resistant, easy to hull, and a heavy producer; all of which sounded good to me.

The recommended way to plant rice is in plug trays for transplanting. It can also be broadcast into a prepared bed, but I went with planting plugs. It's a little more work this way, but at least I'll know where they are after they're planted and not mistake them for plain grass!

Each packet contained 7 grams of seed. The Loto grains were larger and heavier, and I got about 280 seeds in the packet. The Cho Seun had about 345 seeds per 7 grams. It is recommended to soak the seed in water for 24 hours before planting.

Germination was good. Most sources say to transplant the seedlings at four weeks. However, on his website, John Sherck recommends transplanting them at three weeks, because after that they start to become root bound. I started transplanting at three weeks and found well developed roots that hadn't started growing through the drain hole in the bottom of the plug cells. I started by soaking the ground well first.

The book you see in the above photo is Sara Pitzer's Homegrown Whole Grains: Grow, Harvest, and Cook Wheat, Barley, Oats, Rice, Corn and More. It's a book I would recommend to anyone interested in growing grain. I also have Gene Logsdon's Small-Scale Grain Raising, and recommend it too. Sara's book is more reference-like in the way the material is organized, so it's the one I grabbed for planting details.

Planting distance is 3 to 4 inches between plants in a row, with 9 to 12 inches between rows. From knuckle to knuckle my hand measures 3 inches, so it makes for a handy way to space the plants.

The spacing of my rows is a little narrower, though, because I wanted to get all the plants into the same bed. After the rice seedlings were transplanted, I sprinkled the beds with Dutch white clover seed and watered the beds.

The timing for planting worked well. We had an overcast sky (best for transplants) with rain forecast. Dan helped me and we finished by mid-afternoon. At chore time it poured and tomorrow (Sunday) there should be clouds and more rain. Perfect for the seedlings to settle in.

Harvest should be about 105 days from transplanting for the Loto, and 126 days for the Cho Seun. Hopefully, it will grow well and I'll have something to harvest! In the meantime, I'd probably better look into some sort of de-hulling tool. Brill Engineering has videos and instructions for DIY de-hullers, which sounds like the best way to go.

Anyone else giving grain growing a try this year?

Grain Growing: Upland Rice © May 2019

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Wheat Processing

Continued from "Wheat Harvest."

You'd think that after doing something for a number of years we'd have it all figured out. Not so and processing wheat is one of those things. It's a traditional skill for which many of us have some knowledge, but for which finding the equipment and developing the skills are a challenge.

Wheat processing is a two-part job. The first part is threshing, i.e. removing the wheat grains (berries) from the wheat heads. The second part is winnowing, which is separating the chaff (plant waste) from the grains.

The modern industrial-scale way to harvest and process wheat is with a combine harvester. It does it all-in-one (video of one in action here.) That's obviously beyond our scope, so we've looked at the more traditional methods, such as threshing wheat with a flail. The photo below shows two men with flails.

Photo by DEXTRA  [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

Here's a good video of flailing in action.

George Washington designed a 16-sided threshing barn. We had the opportunity to see this on a field trip to Mount Vernon a number of years ago. Here's the threshing floor.

By Galen Parks Smith (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

The freshly cut wheat was placed on the floor to be treaded by a team of horses. The grains and chaff fell through to be collected below for winnowing.

Flailing was one of the first methods we tried, with a flail Dan made. The major plus with this method is that the heads don't have to be separated from the stalks (straw). The major negative is that it is very laborious and time consuming. Working with a team (as seen here) would definitely be faster and more fun, but it would require four very coordinated people.

Besides flailing, we've tried a number of other methods over the years as well. The links will all take you to videos to see these in action.

• By foot (kinda like stomping grapes)
• Chain and bucket
• Blender (slow due to small amounts)

Some methods we haven't tried:

• Grain threshing with a lawn mower.
• With a converted clothes dryer, AKA "Urban Threshing Machine." Very nifty as it threshes and winnows. 
• And if you think the price might be worth it, there's also a foot-powered thresher available (scroll to the bottom of the page for a video). $900 plus shipping keeps it out of reach for us.

There are a ton more ideas, just check out YouTube!

What we decided to try this year, was to use the chipper that Dan turned into a feed processor for me. Click here for photos about how he did that.

Whole heads are tossed into the hopper . . .

Best results were obtained by throwing in a handful at a time.

and end up in the barrel...

This works very well, and you can probably see the advantage of not including too much of the stalk. That would mean more debris and chaff to clean out.

The seed heads are now flat and empty, so the next step is to separate them (and any straw) from the small berries and chaff. I did this with my compost sifter / sunflower seed separator...

This is with 1/2" hardware cloth, but 1/4" would be better.

That left wheat and lightweight chaff...

The next step is winnowing. In lieu of a brisk breeze, I used an electric box fan.

Berries and chaff are poured from one container
to another in front of the fan on high speed. 

This is repeated until all the chaff is blown away,

and only the wheat berries remain.

Then it can be ground into flour

Did this the quick way with my WonderMill rather than my hand mill.

and baked into bread!

Bread from our own homegrown wheat: sliced,
toasted, & topped with homestead raspberry jelly.

Besides making a sifter with a finer hardware cloth, there is one more improvement we'll make next year - to add a cradle to Dan's scythe. The advantage of the cradle is that it causes the cut wheat to fall neatly head to head, making it easier to cut the heads from the straw. There is an excellent video here, which shows how to make a grain cradle, adjust it, and use it.

The only other thing to add is that the bread has the most delicious flavor! The wheat seed wasn't anything special, just seed wheat from the feed store. Maybe it's the freshness, or maybe just the fact that we grew it ourselves, but it's the best bread I think I've ever made.

Wheat Processing © July 2017 by Leigh

 at http://www.5acresandadream.com/