Things [ Hand Made ]

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My chance to wonder about hand made things and tell the world about those I make, love and cherish!

Monday 15 August 2011

Harvest

 My 7 year old wishes to be a farmer. 
He cant understand why we cant have chickens but as I have said before I am an urban girl down to my veg box delivery and my painted toenails.
I know very little about gardening and growing but he is very keen and we are learning together. 
Each year we have grown a little more and done a little better
 This year we have planted in tubs courgettes, tomatoes, peas, blueberries and  runner beans. Just a few plants of each to watch and try to work out how to help them grow. We also have a small bed with a established plum tree with gooseberry, blackcurrnats, redcurrnats and raspberries. We only out those in this year so our harvest is one raspberry ( apart from the plums)
Hanging from the plum tree is a bird feeder. When the birds feed grain falls into the soil below. We weed most of it out but we left some and it has grown. He has enjoyed watching the corn grow and last week when we saw the tractors harvesting we decided it was time to harvest ours.
Think more  nail scissors than combine harvester.

We pulled the corn from the stalk and left it to dry out in the sun. I found a little flat basket which meant we could shake the basket and some of the husk would fly off in the wind. I think this is called winnowing.
This moved some of the husk but we had to remove most by hand

Here is our corn



 Here he is trying to grind the corn after it has been dried.
Remember the Little Red hen? Who will help me grind the corn? not I said the Fox.

The corn ground with a pestle and mortar. 

The whole project produced about a teaspoon of coarsely ground flour which we included in the next loaf.
Its been a fun little project that happened without planning.
Fingers crossed that no one cracks a tooth on a piece of dried wheat otherwise I will be introducing the children to the stage of basic dentistry.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

how perfect for a budding farmer. J would like to have herds of alpaca and a farm, although he has never grown more than chilli's in a pot and hates gardening!

Chrissie said...

That's a lovely story to read. I think it's brilliant that the children learn where food comes from and that some of your crop was incorporated in the bread.