On Our homestead

Our focus is on historical open pollinated varieties that were selected for the northern edge of the corn belt.  Here is major corn growing regions of the US per the USDA: Corn does grow in Michigan, but we're not famous for it.  To grow multiple varieties on our small farm, we will use length of maturity to manage multiple varieties as well as different fields on our farm.  Unfortunately, some with similar maturities will have to take turns from year to year. Days until maturity are certainly just a guideline.  The real driver of plant (and insect life) is Growing Degree...

The 'hulls' on buckwheat often scare people away from this easily grown 'grain'.  Instead of removing the hulls to make buckwheat groats, we can easily make flour to use in pancakes.  I will describe how we prepare flour with equipment we have, and give suggestion for alternative methods.   A device for home scale buckwheat hull removal is one of those 'things' that everybody wants but nobody has the plans to build (yet).  If you could perform this task, then, you'd have groats, like this: In this case, I am wanting to make flour.  We will start with clean Tartary Buckwheat. This...

As I upload our 2020-2021 inventory several points are worth addressing. The first is availability of quite a few varieties reflects the fact that our 2019 growing season was beyond challenging – yields were not as expected, to the point of total failure for some. This meant reduced quantities for seed stock for the 2020 season. And then along came a virus, microscopic yet huge, and as late winter / early spring 2020 progressed it became clear to us that our nation's food supply chains were unraveling. We chose to shift our growing focus to strengthening our family's food security....

This thread details the progression of our 2020 rice harvest.