On Our homestead

2019 represents the third seed production season for Great Lakes Staple Seeds; prior to now our focus was the primary staple crops - legumes, grains and winter squash. As each and every seed we sell is family grown on our homestead, we can easily become limited by man-power hours. Fortunately as we benefit from each season's experiences, our 2019 plans can include the trials of new varieties for seed and kale is among the new additions. I know it is only the end of November but I am already eagerly looking forward to another growing season! And as always, we...

Our bountiful harvest of grains this year has us exploring new ways to enjoy them. On a circuitous journey through the rabbit hole of online recipes, a sweet use of wheat berries kept appearing - wheat berry pudding. Since we've got an abundance of wheat berries, I thought why not give it a try, though admittedly a twinge of skepticism did arise... pudding from wheat? WOW! Plain old spelt berries were transformed into an absolutely amazing dish that can feature as a dessert, breakfast or snack. Spelt was chosen as it was readily available but other varieties are suitable too....

Oldest entries at the bottom, latest harvest at the top. August 3 Last of the Gopal Barley (B15) Last of the Yavaros 79 Wheat (W23) More of the Serra Wheat (W20) Last of the Bishop Wheat (W67), this one really reminds me of Red Fife except it needed another week or two. Last of the Belford Barley (B25) Another bundle of Spring Dinkel (W08) and of Einkorn (W10). These are making nice heads, but are not ripening as a field at the same time.  In the Small Grains class at Tillers International, it was pointed out before the 'combine' which...

As I was looking over photos from last May, I saw that my winter wheat was forming a significant number of heads on 26-May-2017. Comparing that with the progress of this year's grains, it had me wondering if our Spring might really be "late".  I was looking for a quick answer, so I went to this Growing Degree Day tracker.  The Michigan State University site begins their data collection in late February; perhaps that start date was driven by the snow cover?  Growing Degree Days (GDD) is a measure commonly used to make predictions in the progress of plant and...