Originally Posted By: dweste
Re the wheat: how intend to harvest, winnow out chaff, clean, etcetera?


It's not a large amount; I doubt there'll be more than a couple of pints of cleaned wheat.

I'll just pick off the heads that I want to experiment with. They have to be really dry for the hulls to come off easily; so they'll sit in a tin can either by the woodstove or on the dash of a car.

I'll hull them by rubbing between my hands to break everything apart, dropping the works into a big shallow bowl. Then I'll just agitate and blow to get rid of the chaff (compressed air if I'm lazy). The wheat kernels are much heavier and will sink as I shake the bowl.

I'll do a crude grind with the back of a hatchet, and boil the result up as porridge with salt (okay, with brown sugar and milk on top). You can eat the stuff raw, but you don't get all the food value; heat cracks the starch molecules and makes them digestible to humans.

I'll leave the school kids to figure out their own solution. That's where the fun is.