Anna's wheat baby and the future

So, backtracking a little here.

Why grow a quarter acre of wheat and do all the work by hand? Back in the spring of 2010, I felt a need to try something new...something exciting...challenging...something I've never done before. Wheat was the answer. For many reasons. I have no experience with growing wheat, or growing grain period. It is also a sustainable thing to do. I wanted to eat a slice of bread for breakfast and know that I seeded, weeded,and somehow magically harvested and milled this grain myself. How satisfying that would be indeed. I wanted to know exactly how much work this would be.

As described in the earlier post, it ended up being quite the adventure. What, you have to stook the grain? What's a stook? How do you get all that other stuff seperated from the grain? How do I keep the fan from blowing everything everywhere including the grain?? That's not how its supposed to work! And these sunflower seeds? There's more sunflower seeds in there than wheat (long story)...

Yes, there were a lot of lessons to be learned. And to be honest, I had my moments. Luckily Daniel is ever so patient, and he adopted this project with enough passion and gusto to match mine. So, with his endurance and my determination (well, and a lot of help) we ended up with a whole 350 kg of lovingly grown wheat- that is perhaps a bit frost bitten and not the cleanest yet. But its ours. And we have a hilarious story to boot.

This is the first step of a long journey. Not to get too sentimental, but seriously. This year, 2011, we hope to expand to a couple acres. We will be growing a special variety of wheat known as Red Fife. It is an heritage variety that used to be the most important wheat variety of Canada. A fellow young farmer of Alberta, Mike, suggested it to us. (Ps check out his awesome website) It supposedly grows really funky and looks nothing like the perfectly uniform commercial wheats you see today, but its flavour is supposed to be exceptional. We can't wait!