Flour Making Time

Last fall I planted a small patch of wheat, and this summer Danny helped me harvest it and Brian helped me thresh and winnow our first batch of it. This fall I plan to plant more wheat, as well as oats, barley, and rye. All three will be ready for harvest early next summer.
In the meantime, we have our wheat, and in order to turn it into whole wheat flour we invested in this here GrainMaker grain mill. It comes with a handle that attaches to the big flywheel on the back. You dump the grain in the top, start cranking, and flour comes out the front. The big shiny knob on the front allows us to adjust the fineness of the flour.
Our initial attempts at grinding were not good. It's a true test of stamina to turn the crank long enough to produce a usable amount of flour. After Brian and I took turns cranking this beast for an hour we were both worn out and had only made about 3 cups of flour; a combination of whole wheat, brown rice, and oats, to be exact. I decided right then and there that this thing would be motorized.After a brief search on eBay I scored a new 1/2 hp electric motor. A trip to the local farm store provided a 1.5" pulley and a v-belt. After a few weekends in the shop I had a stand for the mill with the motor mounted in the lower part of the stand. Now for the test!
I loaded up the hopper with more of our home-grown wheat, and flipped the switch. What a difference! Flour was now flying out the front, and I had a cup of flour in under a minute. Here's an action photo:Next I tried some brown rice, and then some steel-cut oats, with the same result: 1 cup of flour in about 1 minute. Remember, the same amount of flour by hand took a grueling one hour! Hooray, electricity!
The beauty of the grain mill is that we can make just as much flour as we need when we need it, which means it will always taste fresher. Whole grains stored in the freezer will stay good almost indefinitely. Also, it allows us to make whatever types of flour we want. Even if we buy the grain, it's far less expensive than buying flour. For example, at Costco we buy organic brown rice for $1/lb, which means we can have organic brown rice flour for $1/lb, which is far cheaper than any source I've seen online. Our whole wheat flour (organic, of course!) is basically free, since the wheat seed I planted was leftover from a 50lb sack I bought for chicken feed. Some of this year's wheat harvest will be planted for next year's crop, at a cost of $0 (okay, maybe a buck for gas for the roto-tiller). This year I let some of our sweet corn stay in the garden to mature, and once it's dry I'll try grinding it for corn meal. Normally, sweet corn isn't used for flour, but I read that it works well as long as you make sure it's completely dry before grinding it.
Here's a picture of our breakfast; wheat, oat, and rice pancakes. Yummy!

Fresh, ripe tomatoes

This year we planted all heirloom tomatoes so we weren't sure how our turn out was going to be this year.  We were starting to get concerned because we had tons of green tomatoes that were either staying green for a long time or were being eaten by something.  Low and behold though, our green tomatoes started turning orange then red as if over night.  We're now to the point that we can't eat them fast enough. I'm making tomato/cucumber salad every few days, sending some to work with Dan, etc.  Here is a snapshot of our 'overflow'...

Forager's Harvest

Dan has been reading a book called The Forager's Harvest, which is all about edible wild plants.  Interestingly, it's written by a fella named Samuel Thayer.  Providence perhaps?  Anyway, one particular evening Dan had a hard time reading his book because a certain orange cat felt he needed more attention than the book.

Indoor animals

Most of this blog gives attention to our outdoor animals, but since I had this cute picture, I thought I'd show you Buddy and Ivy too.  Ivy is on the chair in her 'froggy' pose, as we call it.  Buddy is being Buddy.  A second after I snapped this picture, he was jumping at the back of the chair trying to scare Ivy.  That is how their day goes.

Corn on the cob

Last year was our first year growing corn.  It was growing beautifully, but when it was just about time to start picking it, each morning we were devastated to find cobs half eaten.  This year, we planted more corn and put up a fence around it.  It seems to have worked.  We started seeing some damage, but instead of just a single meals worth of corn, we picked corn for lunch and dinner for about a week straight.  Next year, we'll stagger our planting so we have a longer harvest season. 

Here is our corn garden this year...

And here is a close-up of a nice, big cob...

And here is Dan in the corn patch...

Egg count

This week has been a sad, sad week for egg laying.  Each week for the past 3 weeks has been getting progressively worse.  One of our ladies died this week of unknown causes.  The only thing we can think of is heat stroke.  That is also the only reason we can think of for the decrease in eggs.  I just hope this 110 degree heat index weather passes very soon.  For the animals sake and mine!

large: 15, small 75 = 90 eggs.

Weaning bunnies

Today we started weaning baby bunnies from momma D1.  Late in the afternoon, I took 2 of the 8 bunnies from momma and put them in their own cage.  I don't think they've been nursing much, although I'm not there at night to see what they're doing.  Momma didn't seem to care that I was taking them out... maybe she's thinking "it's about time!".  The two bunnies were curious about their new home, even though it looks exactly like their old home and is right by momma.  I plan to wean 2 bunnies per day for the next 4 days to help momma's milk dry up gradually.  After this, it will be just a few weeks until time to butcher the bunnies. 

Hornworms, again!

We have blasted horn worms on our tomato plants again this year. They appear magically, damage the plant, eat the tomatoes, then move on. Annoying little buggers! The two little grenades in this pic are horn worm poo. Eww!!! The great news is that the turkeys LOVE to eat hornworms, so we've been tossing every one we find to the turkeys. You just haven't lived until you've seen a turkey with a 4-inch hornworm dangling from it's beak being chased by 8 other turkeys who want a piece of that worm!

Sunday Brunch

Ham from our own pigs smoked on the charcoal grill:

Homemade potato salad:

Corn picked from our garden just a few minutes prior to eating:

Angel food cake and a Thayer original... homemade gingerbread gelato (YUM!):

Stretchhhh.........

There's nothing like a good stretch!!!