Experimenting with Green Wheat: Freekeh & Gruenkern

While obsessively researching wheat on the web, my husband Michael came across a description of freekeh, or Gruenkern (pronounced groon cairn), that is, green wheat.  It is apparently something of a craze in certain foodie/grainy circles of people and a traditional food in both the Middle East and a few villages near Wurzburg, Germany; go…

{FSC Time Machine} Gardening in 2012

For the next handful of weekends, I’ll be jumping on the FSC Time Machine to create recap-posts of the  different topics we covered in 2012. Since Dianna, hit it out of the park this week with her post {Gardening in 2013} Homegrown Dry Beans, I thought I’d kick-off the series with our gardening posts! Get out…

{home wheat production} Crackers From Scratch

We have been wandering in the desert of home wheat production for three years now.  We could see the mountaintop, but were not sure we could get there.  Although it is not that hard to grow wheat, harvesting, threshing and milling all present real technical problems to overcome for home growers. We learned how to scythe, then…

{communty sharecropping} A Homemade Wheat Thresher

We have been growing wheat for three or four years in our community sharecropping plots.   Wheat is not hard to grow and not all that hard to harvest although there are some pitfalls.  The hard part is removing the teeny wheat berries from the inedible straw and glumes that surround them, which is called threshing. …

{Northeast Grains System} wheat in the ‘hood

Now that the wheat we planted really looks like it might become food, I’m beginning to dread its harvest. I feel like the Little Red Hen’s friend, ready to hide until there’s dinner. Even though I’m the one who convinced my family we should plant our new lot – behind our house in the city…

{COMMUNITY SHARECROPPING} Home Grown Wheat

Our rabbi, Jonathan Rubenstein of Temple Sinai in Saratoga Springs, runs a non-profit bakery out of the temple.  Most Friday mornings he is there, baking challah and babka, plus his kick-ass granola.  When we sold our house and garden in Argyle, New York three years ago and were moaning about where we would go to garden, Jonathan’s…