Time To Start Growing Your Own Bread
From Gene Logsdon:
No sooner had the news come out that rice stocks worldwide were at an all time modern low, and that the price of wheat had hit historic highs, when I started getting calls and letters from all over. Modern homesteaders wanted to know where they could get a copy of my old book, Small Scale Grain Raising.
It is gratifying to know there are still Americans who, instead of wringing their hands at a possible problem headed their way, start figuring what to do about it. I only wish I had some copies of that book left. It was published in 1977 and is now going for as high as $300 a crack on the Internet. If you have one, put it in your safe deposit box. But I am happy to report that a new edition will be coming out as soon as I can get the revision written.
I don’t really know if the high grain prices have anything to do with renewed interest in that book. What seems to me more likely is that self-reliant people are taking a look at what is happening in our financial world and wondering if it is time to plow up the backyard or that old horse lot and plant some food.
In my little world of writing books about rural life and culture, this is all the talk right now, as it was in 1973, 1982, and 1995 when the economy did “readjustments” like it is doing now, only not quite so profoundly. (In an economy ruled by interest on “pretend” money, as I call it, about every ten years there has to be a shakeup to bring the dreamers of riches, floating around in their bubbles, back down to earth again.) The idea of growing and threshing out several bushels of wheat (a bushel makes about 50-60 loaves of bread) in the backyard makes sense to self-reliant people. It isn’t really that difficult to do.
My wife and I first tried it in the late 1960s when living in the suburbs of Philadelphia, just for fun. We scythed the wheat we grew in our backyard, made bundles of it, shocked up the bundles and when the grain was dry we beat the bundles on a bed sheet with plastic ball bats, threshing out the grain. The kids thought it was great fun. We winnowed out the chaff by pouring the grain slowly from one bucket to another in front of a window fan.
That experience became the genesis of the book mentioned above, though at the time that wasn’t in my plans. I grew the wheat in the first place to feed to our chickens. I would just throw a bundle into the henhouse every day and the chickens would do the threshing, leaving the straw for bedding. It was only as a sort of afterthought that Carol decided to try to bake bread with it. She milled the grain in her blender, but that was very slow, so eventually, we got a hand-cranked mill which we still use today. I haven’t grown wheat for a few years now, having kindly farm neighbors who will sell us a few bushels out of their combine harvester.
A fellow small-scale farmer, Tim Moreland in Oregon, recently sent me a picture of his amazing way to harvest oats for his livestock. When it is nearly ripe, he cuts and windrows it like hay, then when it is suitably dry, forks it into huge sacks he found locally, suspending the sacks, one at a time, from the prongs of his front end loader (see photo). His whole family helps in the forking, which is another reason why we small-scale farmers do such crazy things. They involve the whole family. He then hauls the oat “hay” to the barn and feeds it to the livestock in winter or when pastures are short. The animals eat the grain and most of the straw as roughage.
I can remember when wheat was still ground into flour in mills in our county. It just beats me that in places burgeoning with grain like this area, that those local mills could not remain profitable. Did people just quit baking at home in the 1950s? Looks to me like home bread-making is on the rise (oh those puns) again, especially now with all the new kitchen flour mills and bread-makers available.
If you type “local flour mills” into your search engine. I think you will be surprised. There’s quite a few of them all over the U.S. and Canada. While the political pundits and the banking bandits wring their hands and steal our money and then promote rather tasteless mass-produced bread at over two dollars a loaf, there’s still a “grain” of contrariness in many Americans. That’s how we’ve survived so far.
~~
Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.
Gene is author ofThe Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land)
and The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life
Photo Credit: Katherine Moreland
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
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Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 7:58 am
I don’t know if you agree with that, but the text of your book is available at the Soil and Health Library.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:48 amGene,
March 31st, 2008 at 3:46 pmIt sounds like investing in your books is a much better deal than the stock market. A lot more fun too!
I am ecstatic to hear this book is coming out again. I bought myself a copy on eBay for only $41 back in January and was happy to get it so cheaply (I’ve already read it three times). As soon as the new updated version comes out, I’ll buy that one too.
I love your books. I am currently reading Organic Orcharding and have Successful Berry Growing on order. My Gene Logsdon shelf is getting quite full.
April 1st, 2008 at 8:15 amGene,
Since commenting on your last entry, I picked up and have been devouring The Contrary Farmer. Thank you for writing this wonderful book. Within the next few years, my fiancee and I plan to start farming on exactly this scale (meanwhile working in the “proving ground” of our back yard). Your book is proving inspirational and will no doubt be very useful as well.
I mentioned to my best friend–who also aims for such a life–your work and passed along to him your recent entry. He realized quickly that he’d already read one of your books–Small Scale Grain Raising, which he praised highly. Your comments confirm his experience of how difficult it was to find, but I guess I know where I, at least, can find a copy.
Regards,
April 1st, 2008 at 9:17 amJohn
Bookfinder.com has used copies from $38 to $450…
April 1st, 2008 at 10:01 amGene,
That makes my day to learn you are working on an updated copy of Small Scale Grain Raising… I couldn’t afford a loan for an original copy!
April 1st, 2008 at 11:23 amBest Wishes
That’s great! I know some folks over at The Beginning Farmer (thebeginningfarmer.blogspot.com) were talking about Small-Scale Grain Raising and what a bummer it was they’d probably never get to read it. I will be sure to let them know about the reprint.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:35 pmGene,
On a somewhat related topic, I’ve been wanting to pick your brain on the idea of grass silage you proposed in “all flesh is grass” (one of my favorite books”. I tried it last year, but the results weren’t very good. Do you have a mix ratio, or am I on my own on this one? I’ve acres of grass and chickens to feed through the winter. I hope you have some clues.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:52 pmalan, my only personal experience is with feeding grass freshly cut, or letting it dry like hay. What I hear or read from others is that as silage, the grass should be in a more or less airtight container, like a plastic sack. Farmers are doing this now on a large scale with haylage or balage and they tell me it makes good feed. The trick, I think, is to let it dry a little first, maybe to about 30- 40% moisture as you would do with alfalfa or oatlage in a Harvestore airtight silo. As you know from farm silage, silage from grass or corn can emit a gas that can kill you in a big silo, so I wouldn’t recommend taking a whiff of your sacked up grass to see what it smells like. Gene
April 8th, 2008 at 10:02 amThanks, I’ll try it again this summer. During the growing season the chickens get most of their food from the pasture. I keep them one paddock behind the goats and cows, and they do a great job cleaning things up. In the winter there isn’t much to clean up, so my feed costs go way up. If I could use lawn clippings to supplement this a bit, that would be great.
April 9th, 2008 at 8:24 amHi Gene, I’m currently growing 40 acres of organic wheat that I will be direct marketing at farmers markets and to local bakeries. I haven’t been able to locate a mill to grind the wheat for me, so I’m considering purchasing a farm-scale stone burr mill. We’ve been successfully marketing our organic rice in this way for over two years now, and I’ve seen that people do care where their food comes from. We started with one product at our market stands (organic brown rice), and by the end of this year, we’ll have wheat berries, whole wheat flour, almonds, and perhaps even ducks that were raised in our rice fields. You can see what we are doing on our website at massaorganics.com.
Thanks for the great essays.
Greg Massa
April 19th, 2008 at 10:35 pmTo Greg Massa: And now that rice and wheat prices are rising dramaticly… all I can say is your are a smart man. I will check you website and possibly mention your work as I re-do Small Scale Grain Raising with our permission. I am short on experience when it comes to rice. Gene Logsdon
April 26th, 2008 at 6:40 am