Oat Harvest

The garden has some potential, as I last posted. Mostly it lies in the oats. Right now they are at the perfect time for harvest. They're easily picked off the plant by running your hands over the stalk. There are other ways to harvest oats than hand picking the grain from the stalk. Another way is to cut the stalk at a uniform length. This was traditionally done with a scythe. Picking by hand takes longer, however you're eliminating the need then separate the grain from the stalk.

 Me, hand picking oats

 It's one step closer to oatmeal! 

The process is never ending. 

The oats were perfect to pick, but they needed to dry for a few days before we could remove the hard shell (chaff) from the inner grain (oat). We brought them inside where we laid them on a sheet. 

Oats with the chaff still on.

Drying oats

So many oats...

The next step in the process is to let them dry until the oat kernel is rock hard. From there we go about threshing the oats. Threshing is removing the chaff (that hard outer layer) from the grain. Once you thresh the oats, depending on your method of threshing, you may have to winnow the oats. When one threshes grain sometimes the chaff and the grain are mixed in a big pile. The point is getting the grain away from the chaff. Nobody likes to eat the chaff. Winnowing is traditionally done on a windy day and the grain is poured from one bowl to another and the wind pushes the lighter chaff and the grain continues to fall straight. After winnowing there should (cross your fingers) be a pile of oat groats ready to eat! I've been thinking about making oat flour and using it in bread or pancakes. Honey bread made with oat flour, or having a few oat groats for texture sounds delicious to me. 

Keep in mind this whole oat business is an experiment. We are still have a long way to go to pick all the oats, and probably won't get to all of them. The idea is that we want to try to get some oats and hopefully be able to make a few things in the kitchen for groups. The plan is to never have the oats milled, and they will always remain oat groats. The reason for this is to save on cost. You can buy a grain mill for about $100. This is a great purchase if you know you're going to be harvesting oats every year. But for our trial run I think that it's best if we harvest oats using hard work and brain power rather than buying expensive, but helpful, products.