Remember the post about the wheat bins? Seemed like such a good idea at the time... Buy a few tons of wheat at a great price, store it in homemade grain bins, and sprout it for animal feed. Seemed like a good idea.
Then there was the reality that the homemade grain Vacuum that worked so well with dry oats, failed miserably with wet wheat. Grab the buckets!
But worst was the discovery that the wheat no longer sprouts. Wet it and we get mostly Cream of wheat instead of sprouts. We tried different watering strategies to no avail. Conclusion... Its dead... The germ died from the heat generated inside the unventilated bins full of wet grain.
But as luck would have it (or is it Divine blessings) an alternative became available. Through a series of coincidence (or Divine intervention) we have met a farmer in Klamath with 20 tons or so of organic non gmo barley! That is hopefully enough to hold us over through summer with sproutable grains.
Yesterday we buzzed over with a trailer and picked up a couple tons for a test. Nice family road trip. If it works well (I am sure it will) we will be returning to get the rest within a couple weeks.
So as usual live and learn....
Farming.... Science with enough art to make this unpredictably fun and dangerous.
Now.... What to do with 15 tons of dead wet fermenting wheat.... Ideas?
Last week I was helping the local Habitat for Humanity clear out an old house set for demolition and rebuilding. In the trash I found a full 5 gal bucket of wheat, not salvageable as the lid had cracked and water had been seeping in for some time. I took it home and dumped it in my compost pile, I'll let you know if any sizable insects come to live in it for chicken food.
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