Preparing for Uncertainty and Self Reliance

[TheReal_ND]

[Fife]

ruh roh

[Penner]

[Penner]

[Okeefenokee]

[C-Mag]

One of the cooler things I learned in SERE was the use of Ashes. The number of uses are incredible.
White/grey Ash and your black charcoal do different things. And different wood ash is better or worse for certain things.

Think of it this way, White Ash Cleans, Black Ash Purifies.
White Ash
- Soap, we've all heard of Lye Soap
- Lye to put on human waste or other decomposing material
- toothpaste

Black Charcoal
- Fuel
- Water Filtration
- Writing
- camoflage

The big thing is separate out your Ash and store it for use. If you know the basics of how to use the 2 types of ash you can figure out a lot of it on your own.

[SuburbanFarmer]

That's super cool. I thought lye was something completely different.

I'll look into this over the winter.

[Penner]

[Penner]

[Montegriffo]

lol: That's a pretty good idea, but then I'd have to pick it all up piece by piece.

That was the traditional technique, small bundles of wheat tied with a few stalks of wheat, called shocks. You probably know that.

I do. I'm hoping to avoid the whole waste and effort of picking it up, if I can just grab a big handful and cut.

I have seen some small handheld scythes at the hardware store. I'll try that, if the clippers can't do it.

So, Farmer Paul was out with his scythe tonight and it reminded me to ask him about harvesting and threshing by hand.
He recommended a sickle for cutting. Like you say you are best to avoid the picking up and sorting after you have cut it. Grab it near the base in small handfuls and use a serrated bladed sickle to cut it. A bread knife would do the job too. Place the straw neatly on the ground so that you can go back and tie it into sheaths later.
For threshing he recommended using a bicycle. Lay out a large sheet, turn a bicycle upside down in the middle of the sheet and get someone to turn the pedals while you feed the wheat slowly into the spinning wheel. He has used this method himself and says it works really well.
Trick is knowing when to harvest, if you leave it too late the ears of corn will fall out as you cut it so you have to harvest when it is still slightly green.
Apparently a food processor is fine for milling it into flour but you will need a sieve to stop it from being too gritty. He has used a coffee grinder before to mill small amounts.

These guys can probably help with any questions you have, http://1-acre-farm.blogspot.co.uk/2013/ ... -hand.html