Homestead Wheat: An Experiment

Keeping an eye on world events it makes a person concerned with the food supply in the future. We have supply chain issues, increased fuel prices, fertilizer shortages, disease affecting chickens and big game, etc. Dwelling on the reports of negative will solve no problems, and at this point it seems prudent to be reasonable for the development of at least some part of your own food if you can. Looking around the homestead we discovered grain production was a glaring deficiency. With some sweet corn being the only grain we made last year and with no plans for an increase.

Small scale grain production seems to be a lost art, or at least one neither of us have had any actual exposure to. Growing up in the Midwest large scale farming was the norm but no one was about to try and use hand tools to grow anything bigger than a small patch of sweet corn. Moving forward I wonder how we are going to make bread and supplement our current starch/carbohydrates diet of potatoes and corn.

I should let it be known that I have no experience in growing grain crops outside of helping on my uncle’s farm as a kid. I also want to point out we are trying to attempt this with the smallest amount of equipment possible to replicate growing when resources are scarce. Additionally, we don’t what to begin dropping a bunch of chemical fertilizer on the property, especially if it is close to the pond.

We decided to run an experiment and attempt to grow several different types of grain that not the family but also the birds and livestock could eat. We researched and settled on: wild rice, wheat, sorghum, Japanese Millet, and winter peas as the crops we would attempt to plant at the house. We have a pond and lower laying areas and those will be utilized for rice and millet. We also have well drained soil and those are the places where we grow wheat, sorghum, and peas.

I first crop I needed to get in the ground was wheat, and it should have been planted last September or very early October. I gambled and decided to try to plant it now, which may not work as their days of frost still expected.

To prepare the ground, we used pasture that was grazed the year before, and used a tire drag to break up the topsoil. The tire drag was constructed out of four old tires roped together, a pallet and bag of concrete was placed on top to increase the weight. This was pulled behind the riding lawn mower making several passes over the area. Seed was spread with a hand spreader covered the area more heavily than is likely called for, using a 50# bag of seed in a 30×75’ area. The area was gone over several more times with the drag in attempts to work it into the soil. Afterward it was covered with old hay, in hopes this would function as a green manure and cover the seeds protecting them.

An additional plot was planted next the first with a bucket of seed given to us which were approximately 45 years old. Those seeds seemed to have been stored properly and looked identical to the first batch. The only difference in planting this second batch was I spread the seeds even thicker than the first to off-set the likelihood this seed was less viable.

This isn’t a very scientific approach and isn’t helpful to the audience if you are trying to learn how to do something correctly, so hopefully it will be an interesting experiment to follow.  

The plan for harvest time is also equally low tech. I have a sickle I picked up from a garage sale last summer. It is in rough shape but I think it can be nursed back to health before harvest time is upon us. All steps will need to be done by hand, and I fully am aware this sounds like an insane amount of work. However, I want to see:

• If this lost art can be relearned.
• How viable (or not) making bread from seed through harvesting, milling, and finally baking home is.
• How much grain can be produced on my land versus how much we will need.

I remember an often quoted versus Revelation 6:5-6 NKJV When He opened the third seal, “I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand.And I heard a voice in the mist of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.” Now what does this all mean? Famine is the way it is commonly described, to understand we need some context to the values. If we look at Matthew 20:2 NKJV “Now when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. Here we see a denarius as an agreed upon wage for a days work.

So it the going rate for a bit of wheat appears to be a whole days wages, how does one afford to feed his family and have enough left over to function? Now I am not saying I have any idea when this will happen but the way the world is changing rapidly who knows. I do remember listening to those speaking of the 1930s in America, those were hard times and no wear near a biblical scale, famine was widespread then and we were a much more rural and agricultural people. It might be worth looking at either history or prophecy to think about your own food security. In my mind it is better to practice and work through the trials when I can still purchase food at a somewhat affordable rate, than to wait until I have no option at all.

-Joe