Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pat Meadows <pat@meadows.pair.com>]

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:09:11 -0500 (CDT), you wrote:

>Pat,
>
>To nitpick your nitpick... :-)
>
>The author is stating the literal with regards to "unprocessed," while you 
>qualify it by saying "wheat berries."
>
>Techincally the author is correct, as wheat as it's found in the field is 
>encased in hulls and is not consumable in such form by humans.  Wheat 
>berries is what you get from the de-hulling process. NOTE: I don't know 
>about sprouting wheat with hulls; I would suspect that it's possible as how 
>else would wheat propagate in nature?
>
>You are correct, however, on the point about the author's error about 
>protien extraction; but only if we are talking about "processed" (de-hulled) 
>wheat, otherwise HE is correct.

The word 'processed' (as I understand it) when applied to
foods (in recent, modern times) generally means 'processed
in a factory and made into a food far removed from its
original form'.  This would *not* include threshing grain or
other processes easily accomplished at home without special
machinery.  

I can thresh grain on my garage floor using a homemade flail
or a plastic baseball bat.  

I don't believe this is what is generally meant by
'processed' when it is applied to food.  

>To perhaps further muddy things, there are hulless varieties of some grains, 
>though I do not know whether there's a wheat variety.  If there is, then the 
>argument can be, in the case of that variety anyway, reversed back to Pat's 
>corner :-)
> 
>NOTE: If anyone has any info on the de-hulling process for wheat let me know.
>

On a homestead scale, you put the unhulled wheat on a clean
sheet spread out on your garage floor or driveway, and you
beat the wheat with a homemade flail* or a plastic baseball
bat.  Then you pour the wheat from one container to another
in front of a fan (or outdoors on a breezy day) to blow the
chaff away.  Then it's ready to cook and eat.  Or to grind
for flour, or to sprout for wheat grass (to eat), or to
crack for cracked wheat cereal.

*Homemade flail:  drill a hole in the end of a broomstick.
Drill a hole in the end of a piece of broomstick about 18"
long.  Fasten the two together with a piece of strong cord,
so that the end can flop around loose.  

You can read all about how to grow and prepare many grains,
on a homestead or small scale, in Gene Logsdon's book 'Small
Scale Grain Raising'.  This book is available online, free,
in its entirety, from an Australian website.  You can Google
for it if you wish to download it (I forget the URL).

Carla Emery's 'Encyclopedia of Country Living' also has lots
of information on growing and threshing grain on a homestead
scale.  

Pat
-- 
Gardening in northern Pennsylvania.  

Eat local food, change the world for the better!