Growing food – Rice

Proverbs 6:6-8 ESV Go to the ant, I sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or  ruler, she prepared her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.

God loves us and everything is in his hands. Just as Jesus left after feeding the crowds in both Matthew 14:13-21 and Matthew 15:32-39, to prevent the them from focusing on that miracle, instead of focusing on his whole message. We too should consider the ant and remember it is incumbent upon us to provide for ourselves when we are able to do so.

With the rapidly changing world, the supply chains influx, and the rising cost of gas and fertilizer it may be a good time to consider your spring plans. I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but upcoming food shortages have been fairly well covered if you have been paying attention to world affairs and news. 

So what do we do about this? Obviously having a supply of food stuffs stored away is never a bad idea, moreso now. I would also say it’s time to looking at gardening and small scale grain production if you have the means. After all the spring planting season is going to be upon us before we know it. 

Like most skills if you haven’t grown food before it takes some time to understand what does and does not work. If I don’t start aquiring and perfecting the skills  needed now I certaint won’t be prepared for the time when growing your own food is your only option. It takes a few seasons before you really get the hang of doing a task. 

This year we’re going to try our hand at growing a few kinds of grains. In research we found a copy of “Small-Scale Grain Raising” by Gene Logsdon at the local library. I liked enough to say it is worth ordering my copy. The book truly is about growing grain for the homesteader. 

With that we have decided to try several different types of grain, to see which ones will grow well here and to see want we can actually use, for ourselves and also our animals. We are going to try wheat, millet, soygrum, winter peas, and wild rice.

Why grain? I am concerned about making carbohydrates. I am familiar with growing potatoes, corn, vegatables, and raising live stock, but I have never tried growing grains on a small scale and those are an important part of our diet. If heaven forbid the food supply dries up or becomes unaffordable we are going to need those carbs as a source of energy. 

We are going to doing the production without the benefit of major tools (tractors), mostly because we don’t have them. Also remembering by hand was the way it was done in the past and we are trying to see how viable this actually is. I think this is important to try, I hear or read quite often how someone will grow all of the food they need in times of diaster, but if they aren’t doing that already it seems unlikely someone would be able to start from scratch.

We started this week with wild rice, as research seems to indicate it is best planted in the fall. We have a large shallow pond and were able to broadcast the seed from a kayak to the areas next to the shoreline. This is not a very scientific in my approach and I may regret it but without trying I will never know either. I’ll keep you posted with the progress.

-Joe