Wheat Harvest

This week we harvested our wheat. It took all eight siblings and maybe a few cousins from the farm down the road. Afterwards we raised a barn and milked our herd of cows. Well not really, actually mom did it by herself and it probably only took a few minutes. Our wheat acreage is actually only about 4x10 feet. (Mom refers to it as the back 40, which is not technically a lie since it's 40 square feet not 40 acres.) Mom planted it as an experiment, to see if growing grain is actually possible in Rhode Island. Although we have quite a few good local farms that grow a wide variety of produce, there is virtually no grain being grown in Rhode Island (except for corn for jonnycakes, and we know how often those get eaten). What once was probably rolling fields of grain is now either housing developments or even worse, turf fields.

So mom tried two varieties which she ordered online from Bountiful Gardens (http://www.bountifulgardens.org/). Although she planted both an ancient variety of Emmer wheat and a modern type of Hard Red Spring Wheat in early April, the Hard Red was the one that was ready, or as ready as it was going to get. Although it had changed from green to gold, the seeds were not yet all hard (which is supposedly when its time to harvest). But our cat Toaster (blame me for the name, but don’t ask me why) had other plans for the wheat. In his defense what is now mom’s (ugly) wheat field was up until recently my (lovely) grass garden. Our cats had become accustomed to using the grass garden as their own personal jungle in which to hide so they could pounce on whomever was passing by. So when the wheat got nice and tall and dry and rustly, Toaster assumed it was meant for him to pounce on, and he did, and knocked it all over. So to make a boring story short mom had to pick the wheat before it was totally ripe, but we’ll see how it comes out.

(That is the destoyer of wheat, a.k.a. Toaster, in the foreground)

It might make a muffin or two.