Pennsylvania
Gene Logsdon: Pancakes From Perennial Wheatgrass Grain
From GENE LOGSDON
I hope I don’t sound too self-important when I announce an historic moment in our kitchen. Carol just made pancakes with flour from a new and startling source. Wes Jackson, the celebrated plant geneticist, author, farmer (and years ago a fairly good football player), has been experimenting for decades now with the bold idea that perennial grains can be developed to take the place of annual grains, thus revolutionizing agriculture by making it unnecessary for so many millions of acres to be cultivated annually. I raise my forkful of wheatgrass pancake and I salute you, Mr. Jackson.
This flour has the trademarked name, Kernza ™ and comes from selected strains of wild intermediate wheatgrass grain, which Jackson and his staff at the Land Institute near Salina, Kansas are crossing with annual wheat varieties to breed a commercially practical perennial grain. The flour makes a light dough and the pancakes taste just a tad sweeter than ordinary wheat flour. It is Jackson’s hope that within ten years, he and his staff can develop Kernza ™ for use in commercially manufactured foods. It is exceptionally high in some nutrients known to be important to human health and deficient in many modern diets: Omega 3 fatty acids, calcium, lutein, and betaine. It is particularly high in folate, important for preventing stroke, cancer, heart disease and infertility. Folate is also believed to be important for maintaining good mental health in old age. My mind generally glazes over when reading about nutrient values of various foods so that folate might come in handy. To me the important thing is that for once something that is good for me tastes good too. Kernza ™ does not have enough gluten in it to use alone for leavened breads, but as more and more crosses are made with it and regular wheat, all things are possible.
The work of developing perennial grains at the Land Institute is enormously fascinating, involving growing, harvesting, recording, classifying and then crossing thousands of individual plants. Annual plants obviously had to have developed from their wild perennial ancestors. Now it is a matter of reversing that process in a way that results in a perennial that yields as much as today’s annuals.
Perennial wheat is not the only grain being developed. Much progress has been made breeding up wild perennial sunflowers toward eventual perennial commercial varieties. The vision of an agriculture where we don’t have to tear up millions of acres of soil every year, saving all that money and fuel energy, is most alluring. You need to be around Wes hardly five minutes to get as excited as he is about the prospects. Other institutions are catching the fever. Michigan State University has started a program in developing perennial wheat. Chinese scientists are intensely interested in perennial rice. I can’t think of any development so significant to a truly sustainable agriculture.
If you want to find out more about Kernza ™, the Land Institute, 2440 E. Water Well Rd., Salina, KS 67401 puts out a lively quarterly report on its activities. I find The Land Report is especially interesting because not only is the genetic research going on there extremely significant to the future of agriculture, but Wes always includes articles and pictures about how art reverberates through the science of farming. I don’t know any other scientific journal that does that and it heartens me greatly. I think that farming is more art than it is science. The taste of wheatgrass pancakes is one more proof.
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Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 9:37 am
Gene, I just saw your item on ‘Crazy Ideas For Crazy Garden Farmers’. I was trying to post this comment on that page, but the server won’t let me, so I’m putting it here. Hope it’s useful anyway:
In the1960s I was a member of the Henry Doubleday Research Association, which originated in Britain, but had members by then in many countries. The legendary Lawrence Hills’s baby, it was a charitable association of smallholders and backyard gardeners which gave away expert knowledge and interesting, practically-proven new ideas to do with food husbandry of all kinds.
One of our members at that time had a fascinating practise in his garden in Cymru Dwyrain (East Wales), which he called ‘Sward Gardening’.
He would mow down close the grass of his paddocks, then hand scatter White Clover seed, then rake over the clippings to hide the small seeds a little.
After the clover was established as a substantial part of the sward, he would then mow again, very short, and plant seedlings directly into the sward, by dibbing conical holes in it, filling these with various rich soils which he made to order, mounded up in the hole till it stood a little proud of the sward surface, then placing the seedling in the middle.
He reckoned that as he mowed back the clover foliage, there was a corresponding die-back of its root system, which released significant amounts of the nitrate made by its symbiotic soil-bacteria and accumulated by them in their root-nodules; that process which is famously part of the life of legumes. This release was part of the programme of natural fertilisation which he promoted in his method of food-growing.
As well as compost for his supply of high fertility planting soil, he had several other promising innovations. For example, he would lay down many opaque sheet materials in odd corners, for eathworms to surface beneath to do their casts. These sheets were turned over from time to time, and casts collected, to make a sort of dilute worm-cast soup, which proved to be an extraordinarily potent plant food, even when watered on in extreme dilutions: a little went a long way, and fed many plants.
He used two main tools for his management. Since his was a strict no-till method, there were no earth-disturbing tools. Instead he developed a range of long-handled, counter-weighted clippers, which allowed him to clip sward-plants accurately and swiftly from a comfortable standing position.
Subsequently, I made a copy pair of these clippers myself, and they are indeed comfortable, swift and very accurate in clipping back unwanted volunteer plants, even those growing closely around the food plants. Because of the counterweights, which keeps the whole tool balanced, there’s no strain on the wrists from continually lifting the blades, and no need for any bending; everything is done from a comfortable standing posture. With care, you can avoid the food plants surely, whilst giving everything else a short haircut. All clippings are left where they lie, and are pulled down and digested into the soil rapidly by the high population of earthworms, etc. This simple hand tool can cut a large amount of sward in a comfortably short time, with minimum effort.
The other tool developed by my colleague was even faster and easier in its clipping prowess: a very narrow hand-pushed lawnmower, just six inches wide in its cut, which he made himself. With this he could run down and across the rows of food plants, cutting back the great majority of the sward plants very rapidly, and with minimum effort. Then the clippers would follow to finish the close tidying.
In the height of Summer, even wet ones, he reckoned clips were only needed every ten days to two weeks. No other husbandry work much was needed to keep the sward down low and the food plants thriving; no weeding, no hoeing, no digging, forking, raking, etc., and much less watering (the sward and its cuttings held soil moisture very well; there was, of course, never any bare earth).
I still do a version of this method myself, all these years later, though now combined with copious mulch applications, after the methods of Ruth Stout, Emilia Hazelip, et al. I still have my home-made, counter-balanced clippers, and still use them regularly after all this time. Even before the release of the new perennial grain varieties, I quit tillage of any kind long ago. Far less work. I’d never go back.
July 7th, 2010 at 5:08 pmRhisiart, how absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for contributing. Gene Logsdon
July 7th, 2010 at 7:23 pmHi Rhisiart,
July 12th, 2010 at 3:19 pmCould you share a photograph or diagram of the clippers?
SO very informative and being a Farmer’s daughter, makes perfect sense. I have already started leaving plants, no tilling, to promote growth of Mycorrhiza.
I also, would be interested in a picture or diageam of the described clippers if possible.
MANY thanks, Barbara
July 15th, 2010 at 9:15 amet, I’ll try to describe the way of making balanced long-handle shears for grass, etc.
You need the sort of standard scissor-shaped two-handed shears/clippers; the old standard kind.
If you can only find the short, ‘big-scissors’ -like kind, you’ll need to take off the hand grips and weld on extension tubes to the tangs yourself. I’ve done this with a couple that I’ve made. But if you can, find some whose blades are angled to lie flat to the ground, but then have long tube handles going up to about waist level, where the hand grips are.
As they are, these long-handled shears are quickly quite tiring to use, because they are unbalanced, so you have to lift the weight of the cutting blades (usually the heaviest part of the whole tool) at the end of long levers — the handle tubes — which makes them even more weighty-feeling.
Depending on the exact design of the clippers, and where your hands go when you’re using them, you have to get some extension tubes to spring off the original tubes somewhere, and run back on either side of you to points somewhere behind you.
The crucial point is that they must be so angled and/or bent that you can close the clippers right down to their completely shut position, without the extensions hitting your sides. They have to be still clear, on either side of you, even then. This takes a bit of trial to get right, so at first, just tack-weld the extensions onto the original tubes. The exact shape, and any bends that you give the tubes doesn’t matter, as long as you get this right.
You can shorten the overall length of the extension tubes considerably, by adding counterweights on their back ends (behind you) until, when you’re standing in a comfortably-balanced upright posture, the whole tool just sits balanced in you hands, with the cutting blades hovering just above the ground, with no effort from your wrists to lift them. All you’re doing is holding the tool in your relaxed hands, and making the clipping motion. Make sure that its all custom fitted to your shape, so that you can work in that comfortable, upright position, without bending, when the blades are at just the right height above the ground — about an inch. That posture is an important point.
Once you’ve found by trial the right comfortable shape of the extension tubes for you, then you can weld them on strongly.
After some practise, you’ll find the knack of using this tool easily for considerable periods without strain. It covers ground surprisingly quickly, and will go through quite tough ground-level foliage.
The other thing to become familiar with is tightening and loosening the bolt which connects the two ’scissor’ blades, so that they’re moving easily, but shearing across each other just tightly enough to make clean cuts reliably. Occasional oiling of the blades helps.
I rarely sharpen. The blades seem to do that for themselves as they slide across each other, if you get quality hard steel and do the initial cutting angle-set just right on each blade — trial and error. I use a 4 1/2 inch angle-grinder, with linishing discs, to sharpen and angle-set. More delicate in their action than grinding discs.
One thing you are likely to encounter from time to time is sheared bolts, because of the long periods of extended work which your tool is doing. Have spare bolts and a pair of spanners always handy.
I also made an East European-style scythe, as the Vido family recommend, but with a universal, settable and clampable joint connection between the blade and the snath. I custom-made the blade too, to work with this arrangement, after studying a lot of the blades shown on the Vido website:
http://www.scytheconnection.com/
Blade sharpness maintenance — both honing and peening — are necessary skills to learn with scythes, to keep them effective. But then they really are, amazingly so. See the videos on the Vido site. That idea that they speak about, of being able to rest yourself whilst you scythe, once you find the right sort of Tai Chi rhythm, is true! Amazing!
These are almost all the tools that I need when I’m doing the extensive sward and mulch cutting which I need for my way of doing no-till food growing.
I have also an old heirloom sickle, which I’ve found surprisingly useful when you get the knack of using it efficiently. But that’s another story.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:35 pm