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. 

Sense of Place: The Garden

In keeping with my sense of place theme, I've been working in the garden. The garden is a great place to bring students to start connections. Taking part in the entire process is immensely rewarding. Getting a garden ready for spring, planting seeds, weeding, watering, harvesting and eating the food gives ownership to those who took part in the work. Gardening also teaches those who work on it patience and not to rely on instant gratification. Food tastes better not only when it's fresh but when you know how much work you put into it. Waiting for a tomato to ripen or a pumpkin to grow is fun. It takes time to watch the change, but it happens.

Those who have anxiety about connecting with natural areas might have an easier time connecting to a garden. While the garden isn't wild it teaches people how to care for other living things, and in response the garden grows. It can also teaches people what happens when it isn't cared for. Knowing where food comes from isn't always apparent to people. Summer squash, lettuce and green beans aren't magically grown in the store but instead outside. Just as chicken doesn't come from the Styrofoam it sits in or the factory that packaged it, it came from a real live chicken. More opportunities to connect to where food comes from means people are more thoughtful about the food they buy. For this exact reason, I love farmers markets.

Garden where I grew up in Vermont

The place I work has a garden. It unfortunately wasn't taken care of, and so the first emotional connection I have to the garden is one of sympathy. The beds were overgrown, some didn't even come up they were so choked with weeds. About the only things that were OK were some tomatoes, broccoli, and squash. I saw that there were some dried pea and bean plants, but mostly everything was grass. The year before when there was someone to care for it they had taken 450 pounds of food out the garden. This food when then used in the kitchen and served to the students who were staying at the facility. This year they had only taken out about 4 pounds. Not enough to make a significant impact. The garden itself was in a sad state visually. Grass was everywhere. When we started to work on it, the best idea we had was to use a lawn mower and mow some of the beds.

But there was a glimmer of hope. They didn't plant the whole garden, be it for crop rotation or because they figured it might be too much work. Instead of trying to weed half a garden for no good reason an entire season, they planted oats instead. Many people use oats as crop cover. As a plant they need almost zero maintenance, they cover the ground and don't allow for weeds to come in, and then they die back about the right time. I thought to myself 'What does one do with whole oats?' I found out that once you separate the grain from the chaff they are called oat groats and can be eaten very similarly to oatmeal. It doesn't need to be milled, another thing that surprised me is that you can buy them just like that. I always thought of oats as needing to be milled. Apparently not. My hobby this fall I think will be trying to get oats to a state where they can be eaten. I will have more posts about my experiments with this process. Stay tuned!