Sunday, August 8, 2010

More work on the wheat field

We need to keep our wheat field (make that proto-wheat field) disked to keep the weeds from spreading. Trouble is, of course, our tractor has been down all summer. Always happens.

So yesterday we borrowed a neighbor's tractor, hooked up our disker, and Don spent a solid hour going over the soil and churning under the weeds.

Before...






See the difference between the disked versus the un-disked sections?


After.

It looks much better! We should be able to buy treated seed wheat within a couple of weeks and (theoretically) be able to plant within the next month. We'll be planting hard red winter wheat, which is planted in the late summer or early fall, goes dormant over the winter, then is harvested oh, about now (meaning August) in these parts. Hopefully this is an experiment that will work!

7 comments:

  1. (lol :) could not help but think of the epa and their dust patrol...hope your wheat field is a success-i hear that over in russia they have quit exporting wheat and that prices for wheat will be going way up.

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  2. YAY WHEAT!!

    This is gonna be great!

    A. McSp

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  3. A year before the crop is ready for harvest? Yikes!

    Hey, did the potatoes ever grow? You planted a whole lot of them, seems something should have taken root.

    Anonymous Twit
    Burns-Hines, Oregon

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  4. Language police here. Its a disc or a disc-harrow for the academic types, not a disker. The other kids down at the feed store might make fun if you don't know the right word.

    I raised a wheat patch this year, about 50 x 100 feet. Cut it with my antique AC combine that I picked up at an auction and got about a 55 gallon drum of grain. Also another drum of oats from the adjacent patch. You can plant wheat in the fall, oats in the spring and they will be ready about the same time. I overseeded both with clover and got a fair stand, but so weedy I will probably plow it in for green manure and plant corn there in the spring.

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  5. Y'know, I *thought* "disk" looked wrong, so I'm glad for the correction. Thanks!

    I've heard it said that a 100x100 field of wheat will give enough flour for a family of four for a year. Our proto-wheat field is quite a bit bigger than that. With my poor gardening skills, we might get just enough wheat to last us a year.

    - Patrice

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  6. My curiosity was aroused, so I measured my patch. It was actually 60 x 200 feet, 12,000 square feet, a little over 1/4 acre. I did a poor job, cut it too late and had to go around some big ragweeds. Got about 325 lbs. of wheat which computes to about 20 bushels per acre. A good yield would be closer to 40.

    I cut a little with a scythe and the rest with the combine. Hand harvest would be a lot of work, but could be done. I bought the combine for $600, it is a 5 foot cut pull type. My intent is to use if for small scale wheat, oats, various beans, and milo. I'm trying to farm on a scale that would provide staples for 15 to 20 people.

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  7. I envy you your combine. I'm afraid we'll be cutting our wheat by hand with a scythe, as around here the combines are monstrously big in order to harvest thousands of acres at a time. So I expect our personal "harvest" will be a long drawn-out process with lots of sore muscles. On the bright side, (a) think about what wonderful exercise it will be; (b) think about how much it will make us appreciate our pioneer forefathers; and (c) think about what a great blog entry it will make!

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