Last Friday Agustin finished harvesting the wheat with our combine. Having our own combine means we do not need to ask our neighbors to harvest the small plots of wheat that we grow. It would probably take longer to clean their machines before and after than the whole time to harvest the crop.
Our Heirloom Sonora Wheat Flour can be purchased as an add-on item to be delivered with our CSA boxes, at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market in San Francisco on Saturdays, or through our webstore to be shipped in the US.
Photo Credit: Kelly from A Side of Sweet.
The hopper is full and we need to empty it into one ton bulk bags. We will then clean it with the seed cleaner we share with Tierra vegetables in Santa Rosa. The variety is Sonora which yields well for an heirloom variety in our climate. This last weekend Chloe made cookies for all our lavender helpers, four batches made with 100% our flour. They all went very fast!
Roberto will be mowing the straw this week then Josesito will set up sprinklers to give this field a good soaking over night. As the wheat crop ripened the soil has dried out considerably. We hope to stimulate the clover seeds that were sown at the same time as the wheat last November. Lorraine learnt about this technique at a biodynamic farming meeting last fall. It is called under sowing. We do not need to cultivate the soil to plant the clover after the wheat. In a couple of months we hope to have a verdant field of clover for the chickens to eat and fertilize for the following vegetable crops. We hope this will work as it could be a great way to integrate the wheat crop into our rotations.