December

I hope everyone had a good Christmas! Ours was fragmented but good. Kids beginning to scatter all over the map at this point in our lives. We did quite a bit of baking. My wife bought me a bread machine. I think she created a monster.

We did some holiday baking and hunkered down from the cold north wind for the most part. Crops are growing. Not as consistent a stand as I wanted, as the drill needs some more adjustment. The job is done and things are growing, however. We should have more than enough grain to cover our market in the coming summer.

Keeping an eye on grain prices. I expect the market to be softer this spring because of a better harvest last fall. Much of the corn in south Texas was far and away improved over last year. This will be good news for livestock producers who need a break in grain prices. The market will still be decent, I think.

Many people are of the mistaken belief that farmers do not estimate demand for their crops based on markets, but nothing could be further from the truth. If prices are not good for corn, we will plant another crop. Marginal land coming out of CRP has to be producing something, so, yes we will plant that. Hopefully, the farmer will keep the special problems with marginal land in mind  and adapts his practices to suit. Most of us do.

With that in mind, this is our first year to go 100% no till. That has been our goal for some time now. I do wish I had flattened some of the cultivated ridges before actually doing that, however. I suspect I will need to do so after the crops are done this summer.

The new year is coming. Nothing can stop it. I am going to do something I haven't since the last millennia. I am going to make a resolution. I am going to resolve to have more fun this year and spend more time with my wife.

I really hope to have a good 2014. We want to sell a lot of flour and corn meal this year! Maybe a few vegetables. The same for you and yours. Have a happy and prosperous new year!

Soft Red Winter Wheat 2013

We raise soft red winter wheat offering a lower gluten alternative to supermarket flours normally made from hard red wheat. It is not a good yeast bread flour, but makes excellent flat bread, cakes pastries, muffins, biscuits and crackers. The largest U.S. export markets for soft red wheat are China, Egypt and Morocco.  Lower gluten does not mean gluten free or by any means "healthier" with respect to gluten intolerance or celiac disease.  Wheat flours are an excellent source of protein hence, their wide use in food stuffs throughout history. We have not aimed our market toward bread making. Biscuits, pies, cakes, muffins, dumplings breading and the like are more popular in southern culture.

Soft red wheat is widely grown  throughout the central US down as far south as Mississippi and is traded on the Chicago Board of Trade. Our acreage is divided between soft red wheat, cereal rye, cover crop mustard for seed and mixed cover crop that will be flail mowed in March when our signature White Eagle Corn will be no tilled into the mulch.

Drilling the crop takes place between September to mid November. October is the optimum time for most farmers. Below are videos from the planting of this years crop across the central U.S. and a little insight to wheat planting dates from our Canadian friends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvbMDD1vGpQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9jOs4XVfvU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o8q4E0Fj2s

Auto pilot / GPS navigation is a nice option...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SACMazS0soQ

November

We barely made our planting window. Finally got the grain drill working. Because of that delay, and not wishing to risk capital I did not have on hand, I did not plant more acreage. For now we stick to the small farm business model until / unless FDA puts us out of business. That would be a sad day indeed. I have never in my 52 years on this earth, heard of any foodborne illness being caused by small farmers selling their crops in local markets or roadside stands. I have heard of plenty from large industrial farms and on the other side of our southern border. Much of it has occurred during transport from those distant locations. My advice, buy local while you can, Once we small farmers are out, then you will have no choice but to raise it yourself or buy the stuff from the supermarket.

Many people think, and say that there is no difference in quality between supermarket produce and locally grown. I disagree. Locally grown, you know the farmer. You know his agricultural practices. He / she knows you. You become like family. You know how the produce is handled. You know that it is fresh. You never have those assurances buying off a supermarket shelf.

I worry new FDA rules could destroy the CSA model. I do not prefer this model myself, as I have adequate capital of my own and do not need help from others to tend my crops. It is used extensively throughout the country, however, and supplies many people with safe, healthy locally grown food.

I see no choice but to make our farm larger. Milling grain into flour and meal for sale locally is a novelty thing. It is a survivalist thing as well. A family of four can survive ten years on the bread produced off one acre of wheat. Grain can be preserved and used over long periods and wheat can easily be produced from saved seeds, especially heirloom varieties. If the local sales avenue is closed, we will have no choice but to produce and sell into the world wide food distribution system.

On the flip side, there are volumes that have been written about why we should avoid grains, all grains, period. There is archeological evidence that the introduction of the agrarian diet about 10,000 years ago caused a huge increase in tooth decay, diabetes, and a plethora of other health problems. Celiac disease is just the tip of the iceberg.

The cultivation and milling of grains, however, enabled the expansion of our population, indeed enabled the rise of the specialist society, once the pursuit of food was no longer and issue. Agriculture gave rise to civilization.

This much I know. Our physical bodies will eventually die of something. That is a fact. We love and consume most all the land can produce. Whatever we were before the rise of agriculture, is long past. Whatever we will become because of it, is yet to be.

We do live in a wonderful but challenging time. Whatever diet you wish to follow, you can. Our food production system will provide it aplenty. Long or short, what you do with the life span agriculture has given you, is more important than the duration.

November sees our winter grains in the ground and growing. We will hunt hogs and deer off of it, there are plenty of them, and we will  make sausage from their flesh. In the summer we will harvest those crops and plant new ones. We will pause this month and offer thanks for what the land has provided.

Fall colors are everywhere. Geese are flying south. The days grow short. There is no better place to be, in my opinion, than on the farm.

Late October Post

Didn't have an October post because, frankly, there was nothing to say. It was Peanut Festival time in Grapeland and we had a good one. Still a bit melancholy because the crop that founded the festival is long gone. Since there is enough depressing news in the world, I decided not to blog about it.

October is really the month I prefer to plant winter grains. This October I spent trying to restore my 1967 Allis Chalmers All Crop Drill. I did a less than satisfactory job on it, but I managed to save it from the scrapper and make it serviceable. It became a necessity because my local New Holland / AGCO dealer sold their rental Tye and Great Plains drills. My budget only allowed so much. I paid $500 for my 15x7 Allis, had to haul it back from Missouri, ($500) restore and paint it ($400).  I am not dissatisfied with it, but I could have bought a $2000 Brillion in state. I saved some cash but boy, did I have to work for it!

Dropping the seeder gang out and replacing frozen seed cups is no small thing. Getting it back in is even worse. I ended up replacing 2 seeders and building a third from spare parts. The bearings on the coulters need to be replaced next, but since I am only doing a few acres with it this year, I am going to blow that off till next summer. I really need to replace the hopper, make or have made sheet metal parts to replace those which time has really been hard on. Harbor Freight Tools, here I come!

I will finish reassembly next week. In the field planting a couple days after.

With or Without

Much discussion going on in Washington DC about too many things. Somewhere in all the fray is the Farm Bill, still entangled with the food stamp issue. I am not going to come down on either side of it on this blog. It does, however, affect planning.

Planning is essential, and low margin crops require careful planning. Private insurance is more expensive than Federal Crop Insurance, but if you are going to use it, your approach needs to be carefully screened. Your risk tolerance will be tested.

As well, the Food Safety Act, will begin to dictate what we can and cannot do, often in conflict with the National Organic Standard. We could end up raising animal feed.

We are at a crossroads. Do we continue to be a small scale organic grain and flour miller or do we go with the path of least resistance, farm more land, and sell crops to Cargill? We have a plan in place and an alternative or two.

The plan we continue to work is to remain small. It is our intent to grow to suit our market in the low to no gluten flour sector. (Is there such a sector?) We want to sell more rye flour and more grades of it. We cannot raise rice where we are, but we have sources for organic rice. Most other cereals we can raise with ease. We are not too cozy with amaranth, as we already have a wild amaranth infestation. Our neighbors would be very upset if we encouraged it.

On the other hand, it is growing in popularity and... it is a weed. A summer weed. We seem to have no trouble raising those.

In the meantime, the grain drill is waiting to be painted and reassembled. Rye four is selling slowly, but we knew that would be the case, We continue to build a local market. Hoping for wetter winter weather this year. The fall has started out well in that respect.

Corn and Sunflower Pans for Conventional Reel Type Combine Heads

Every now and then I find something that gets me excited about farming. Perhaps a bit too excited at times. My current romance is with corn/sunflower pans.

For those of you not in the know, these pans work a lot like corn heads in that they channel the stalk into the combine, keeping it upright so that the ear is cut off and sent into the machine's threshing apparatus. In the case of the pan, the stalk is cut by the sickle and stalk and all is sent into the machine. Corn heads, on the other hand, channel the stalk into roller knives, that grip the stalk and pull it through stripper plates that then snap the ear off the stalk, sending just the ear into the threshing apparatus. This method produces much less trash material for the combine to sort out and has long been thought superior. Sunflowers, another tall stalk, crop are dealt with similarly.

In this age of rampant corn production and good prices for the crop, many growers are wanting to get in on the corn growing bandwagon but are not interested in the cost of a corn head for their machines. Good used heads can run between $100,000 to $180,000. This is just for a corn head. Not the combine. Obviously if you are running multiple machines, this is a serious capital investment. Pans, whether you build them yourself  or buy them, cost considerably less at $250 per pan or about $8000 to outfit a 16 row machine. Flexxfinger, a manufacture of crop lifters and pans did field tests that showed a 15% increase in harvested corn over corn heads due to less ear loss from ears tumbling out of the head. The pans retain the paddle wheel which catches errant ears and propels them into the machine. Row attenuation apparently, is meaningless as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7RIWGlxYaE

I have seen these pans used on All Crop Combines for use in sunflowers. I am told results were satisfactory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7siG3waypMU Small acreage farmers have to be creative in order to survive.

The drawbacks...

(1) Corn stalks, especially Bt tend to be hard on the sickle. This probably means you will spend time sharpening or replacing sickle parts.

(2) An Aussie farmer explained to me that though these pans work well, you need to run the cylinder about twice as fast as recommended to deal with the extra trash. In the case of All Crop combines, on which corn is hard on the rubber on rubber concave and cylinder bars this will be even a bit more rough. I am considering replacing the rubber with Teflon bar stock on my combine. We will see if it works.

I do not raise very much corn, so I am very reluctant to look into corn head or yet another harvesting machine in my already crowded barn. Also, the varieties I raise are heirlooms, the most modern of which is Reid's Yellow Dent.

Pans are worth considering. For now, I am sold on them.

Small Farm Grain Storage

I have been looking into grain storage solutions for small to medium sized farms. The day is long gone from our area where we had public storage for grains. The closest public elevator is in Navasota, Texas 102 miles away. Obviously, transportation costs would destroy any profit we might realize. If one wishes to take advantage of off season pricing, the best solution is some kind of on farm storage.

A 10,000 bushel grain bin will cost upwards of $32,000 to install. As look at larger bin capacities, the economy of scale becomes apparent, dropping costs to around 30 cents a bushel from $2 plus for smaller bins. A fixed grain bin will be exposed to property taxes as well.

This brings us to farmers like me who must lease land, often far from my base. Erecting storage bins on these properties is not an option. Grain Bagging, a concept that found its way to these shores about 10 years ago and now beginning to gain acceptance on a large scale, is an attractive option.

Grain Bagging is the storage of grain on well drained slightly sloping ground inside a giant plastic bag. The bags are 3 layer polyethylene tube 9 to 12 feet in diameter depending on the system, and up to 500 feet long. They are air tight and moisture proof. It is an excellent short term storage solution. They require fewer machines and personnel and eliminates trips to the elevator. With a bagger and un-loader a farmer  can store his grain in the field where he harvested, sell the grain in the off season when commodity prices are stronger, and load the buyers trucks from his field saving transport and storage costs. He would not have to postpone harvest for available storage space or trucking availability. The grain bags are not fixed structures, so he would not be taxed.

Most of these machines include a bag pickup system that rolls the used bag up for easy disposal or recycling. The bags are not, however, reusable as the un-loader cuts the bag open as it unloads the grain. Tractor requirements for the larger systems are high, 100 horsepower. Renn markets a unit that uses a 10 foot diameter bag and requires 50 horsepower which makes it ideal for a small to medium sized operation. The bags cost from $1100 for smaller 250 foot bag to $2500 for a large 500 foot bag.  The savings, in most cases, work out well. You would have to pencil it out for your particular operation. There is a danger of the bags getting ripped open by wildlife or vandals and what I hear there is no fool proof method to keep them out once they discover what is in them. All you can do is harden the target.

If you can harvest and store the grain on site, buying time to sell the crop, having transportation then paid by the buyer, you most likely will come out ahead. If we go with this type of system, that would be our plan.

Plenty to think about over the next month or two. I suspect we will continue to operate on a smaller scale for the time being. We may never become that kind of farm. I am not sure that I want to at this point.

Climate, Farm Bill (or lack of) and Decisions

It looks like we may well receive enough rain to save my corn and peas. Not sure whether we are turning the corner or not on the ENSO cycle and this is simply the fulfillment of NOAA's climate predictions for the summer and fall of 2013. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.pdf

So what this does for farming decisions in the coming months is indicate some moisture rather than the La Niña pattern that caused the Drought of 2010 -2013 and counting. Though conditions are better in parts of the Midwest, that does not hold true for all locations or the southwest. Last winter was so dry 6% of the winter wheat crop either did not germinate or was of such poor condition it could not be harvested. 

Our planting decisions have to be based both in economics and climate concerns. Both are constantly in flux. With no Farm Bill and the 1949 permanent law looming, our operations will still be rooted outside the system. I spoke with a crop insurance agent a couple days ago who is working up a small grains quote for what we hope to do this fall and winter. If the 1949 law returns, I might have cotton acreage, but most likely not small grains under the allotment system. We also had some peanut allotment as well but I doubt we would qualify under the old system. I will still be able to insure the crop but most likely would not qualify for marketing guarantees for winter small grains. Not that that concerns me over much. So long as I can insure the crop I am happy if the loan rate is high enough to cover costs and make a profit.

Then comes the old standby. Southern peas. Dry weather has prevented us from making a crop for a couple of years, coupled with expansion costs on an expansion that didn't happen beyond equipment, and continuing mechanical issues with some of the equipment, the costs are eating us up. None of the money is borrowed, but it will still take years to dig out of the deficit. I miss the reliability of my old Pixall BH-100.

I am still looking for land to plant small grains on. You would think that in a time when drought has devastated the cattle business, land owners would be flocking to any chance at making some return from their land especially if it included grazing winter wheat or Elbon Rye for free in the winter time. No takers yet.

Making Flour

The Drought of 2010 -2013 is responsible for the change in our business plan. That and a self-propelled bean picker that has seen better days. The dry weather actually started four years ago in a summer that was dry but not excessively so. We received enough rainfall at just the right time to make one of the best purplehull pea crops we ever had. We averaged 60-100 bushels per acre. We harvested with a Pixall BH-100 bean harvester. Loved that machine. We wanted to plant more acreage and that meant expansion. We traded the one row for a Chisholm Ryder MDH and a continuous pea sheller, boosting our thru put to 100 bushels per hour. We added a winter crop of sweet peas to the mix (Spring was the variety and they did very well). That is when our troubles started. The winter was a bit dry, but the peas made. Then the MDH blew a head gasket. We still had the BH-100 at the time so we harvested the crop with it instead. We spent about $1200 repairing the head gasket, when we discovered the gasket was blown because of a bad oil cooler leaking water into the oil. The oil cooler set us back another $600. The next season, the crop was almost nonexistent and we had no irrigation. Mechanical problems continued with the MDH. The next summer was worse, far worse. We planted mustard and rye last fall hoping to get some plant coverage over the soil so it didn't blow away. Some rain did come late in the winter and the cover crops made.

The rye did really well, and it cause us to think about raising grain. Margins on small grain are small, to say the least, and the only way ton profit from it is to make some value added product. Since there was no large industrial quantity of it, we decided to buy a table top flour mill, use our seed cleaning apparatus from our pea and bean operation to clean it up, then grind and market rye flour. The results were much better than we expected with regard to the product. We use it in our own cooking. Since I am a diabetic, rye fit nicely into my diet plan. Carbs are carbs, from a counting perspective, but replacing wheat bread with rye has had a positive effect on my health. The flour is just plain good.

On a whim we decided to attempt raising a little Native American corn for cornmeal and irrigating it.  We researched this extensively and found two acceptable cultivars which we have planted in our fields.

We still have a few peas.

Along the way, we decided to raise dry edible beans, which is how we came across our combine. Unfortunately, the farm is thousands in the red because of all this. I shiver to think about it. we are far from insolvent, but it would be nice to see some income again. All this has been pushing us to more conventional farming, planting the usual commodity crops and utilizing Federal Crop Insurance and the like. It is a safer way to do business. Had I had not had enough personal capital and income aside from the farm we would have been out of it by now.

I spend a lot of time marketing rye flour now. It is available on eBay http://www.ebay.com/itm/Elliott-Family-Farms-Heirloom-Whole-Grain-Rye-Flour-2-pounds-/281119557919?pt=Small_Kitchen_Appliances_US&hash=item417408091f

Give it a try! We appreciate your business!

It is hot. It is dry. Work continues.

Corn was really stressed due to lack of rainfall. The last ten days were rough. In the interim, we received a little rain, and every bit helps. SO we installed surface drip irrigation. Hands are blistered from shoving the valve barbs into the main line. Back hurts from all the stooping and crawling.

In the middle of it, I had to take a break and run up to Missouri and fetch an Allis Chalmers All Crop Drill. A 15x7 for planting winter small grains. Got tired of renting junk for $259 a day. I think I made a good trade.

Rye

Now how did we end up doing rye? Initially it was a cover crop, to be destroyed and used as a smother crop. The variety we chose was Elbon Rye released by the Oklahoma State Agricultural Experiment Station in 1956. It is long stemmed and produces a lot of organic matter which makes it perfect for smother crops.

It seemed a waste to destroy a crop what we could grow in the winter, as it is our wet season. We decided harvesting the grain would be a good idea especially since we had purchased a combine for dry beans. We also stumbled up on a sturdy table top flour mill to grind it into flour. Couple that with some inspiration we got from Pungo Creek Mills Indian Cornmeal on the east coast, we decided to found our own flour and meal business. The wisdom of this venture has yet to be realized. We have rye and our packaging and sales effort is just ramping up.

In the middle of this we have corn and peas growing and a limited amount of water available for both. The corn requires more so when we deploy drip irrigation next week, the corn will receive the water. If there is time we will re-deploy and water peas. Hopefully rain will come and help out.

We have been blessed with adequate soil moisture up to now.

As for the rye, we did harvest the grain, and we still had plenty of dead mulch. We no-tilled peas into the mowed down stubble. These peas are growing with very little weed pressure.

As for the future of small grains on our farm, I am unsure. I am looking for a suitable drill for planting them and more acreage on which to plant. Returns for small grains, if you do not mill them yourself, are small.

We sell our flour for the very reasonable price of $3.75 per 2 pound bag. Yes, it is more expensive than store brands. What you get for that price, is zero percent chance of cross contamination. Elliott Family Farms only mills low gluten grains below 12%. We are not marketing this to folks with celiac disease. We are, however, marketing to folks with concerns about where their food comes from and how it is processed. Rye is purported to have other beneficial aspects. I am a diabetic and I eat it.  Within reason. To me, a carb is a carb and that is how I count them. If you are going to eat a carb, I suggest something made with our flour.

You may buy the flour directly off the farm or through eBay. The price is $4 on eBay because of handling.

Corn

We took a hiatus from corn of about 10 years? Not entirely sure. Sweet corn is a good local seller if you have adequate moisture, good fertility and low insect pressure. Two Primary Pests... the European Corn Borer and the Corn Ear Worm. Control of these pests is easy with low level chemicals like carbyl, or an uptake material like Lorsban. But, they are chemicals. Sweet corn, especially the new hybrid sweet corns are insect magnets.

Organically, you need to approach these pests from the deterrent side.You might try small squirt bottles  of canola or olive oil in ear tips, just a drop or two as soon as the silks show signs of drying. A solution of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) or spinosad. Vulnerable species of insects exposed to spinosad become over stimulated, become exhausted, cease to eat, and die usually within two days.

There are a variety of horticultural oils that are effective controlling ear worms. Fortunately, I do not have any examples to show you at the moment. Most infestations occur at mid season and we are mostly past that at this point. Variety selection is helpful in deterring these pests as well. Stowell's Evergreen, an old heirloom sweet corn with long shelf life, has a really heavy thick husk that resists attack. It is not as sweet modern hybrid sweet corn cultivars but it doesn't contain unhealthy amounts of sugar either. It tastes more like corn.

Our native American varieties are not immune to disease and pests, but seem to be more hearty in some respects. They do not have the yield potential of modern hybrids but they grind well into cornmeal. I am told, the blue varieties, when made into spirits, have a blue tint.

Corn requires fertility. The story of using fish to fertilize corn plants goes back to colonial times. Fish are good. That is why we use a fish emulsion fertilizer to feed our corn. We also rotate legumes on corn land and sometimes inter-seed southern peas with corn. The whole nitrogen fixation thing. We did that on part of our place this year.

We do not do sweet corn as we do not have a corn head for the Chisholm Ryder and have no plans to buy one. Large quantities of sweet corn really need to be hydro cooled rapidly and the ears graded and stored in refrigerated storage immediately. We have none of these capabilities and we are not going to expand that direction.

Corn meets one of my grandfather's most strict criteria. Farm for yourself first. Cash crops come later. Once harvested and dry, we make cornmeal from it. Hominy can be made from it. Combine that with beans and peas and you can make it through the toughest of times. Dry, these food items will feed a family for a long time. Keep enough to replant and sell the excess as cash crops.

How we Start a Crop Year

Where to start? We actually start in October. By then all the old crops are gone and the wind is cool and the nights can be downright cold. This past season it was still dry as the preceding summer. We had no choice but to do minimum or no till because of the lack of soil moisture. It was still akin to planting in the desert. This video shows just how dry and dusty it was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BCeR7Oqtv4 We plant, hoping, praying for rain. It got worse before it got better. Because of the dry soil, germination and emergence did not occur uniformly or sufficiently robust. The mustard you see us planting with the Tye drill only yielded 60 ponds of seed off a 2 acre plot. Normal yields are around 2000 pounds per acre. The crop was a failure on that account, but since we only planted 6 pounds of seed and harvested 60, our goal of increasing the seed to a more viable amount was achieved. I would like to repeat the planting on a larger scale next season. We also planted Elbon Rye in this session which fared much better than the mustard, yielding a low but very viable 25 bushels per acre of grain this spring. Winter crops do delay spring planting six to eight weeks. It is possible to drill corn and such into rye or wheat in February but not southern peas. Cowpeas like it hot, and our native American corn varieties prefer it hot as well.So we delay.

We prep the garden in the fall as well. Compost time. Lots of it if we can get it. If we raise our own onion plants, we plant the seed in October. We start tomatoes In a hot bed or green house in February as well. We use a 3 pint hitch Caroni Rotary Tiller to prepare land that is not no till. A subsoiler is handy to crack the seed zone open and allow roots to penetrate to the subsoil and moisture. It also allows moisture to migrate deeper in the soil instead of running off in a rain. This a major concern for mostly dryland farmers.

Peas and corn follow cereal crops in June. Immediately.

I would like to plant more winter grains on more acreage to be marketed to conventional grain markets. The crops would qualify for Federal Crop Insurance and I believe our antiquated methods and equipment will allow us to do well on acreage up to 100 or so without compromising our time. These crops could be followed with soybeans or corn.

I am dumbfounded that the Farm Bill has to be held hostage by food stamps. If the Farm Bill was a separate affair, there would be no question of passage. That is for another blog post on another day.

In the meantime, planting crops cannot wait on politics. If it did, we would all go hungry.

Methods and fertilization... organic is tough to do. Let no one kid you, especially if you do it on a large scale, it is expensive. We use mechanical fertilization and we use smother crops. One of the reasons we used Elbon Rye was because it produces a huge amount of organic matter that we no till into. This organic matter suppresses weed growth, theoretically allowing our crops to spread to full canopy before weeds emerge. This method is called organic no-till. That is the cost efficient part. Fertilization, especially with corn is another issue. We prefer to use Neptune's Harvest Fish Emulsion fertilizer to fertilize everything. Fortunately our corn does not require as much nitrogen as conventional hybrid varieties so this is adequate for everything.  Bat guano is our next best option.  Its like Brylcreem, a little dab will do. Buying compost to cover large acreage is cost prohibitive.

The crop year really never ends. You simply do the work required in that season while planning for the next.

Crops

If you have kept up with us on Facebook, you know we raise southern peas on small acreage in East Texas. That continues. Like many small acreage farmers, we have dealt with the lack of farm laborers by mechanizing. We haven't expanded, frankly, because our markets are local and there hasn't been the need. Squeezing a profit from this little place is difficult in the best of years, so I have a day job. Actually it requires my absence from the farm 20 days at a time. That makes timing critical.

We have expanded out growing season to include winter cereal crops which we will sell unground and clean, food grade whole or ground into whole grain flour. This year, we only have rye. We discovered this is a very difficult grain to move even though our whole grain rye flour makes the best blueberry muffins I ever ate.

Rye is difficult to bake with. It has such a small glutens that it does not rise well. Glutens are essential to nice puffy soft baked goods. We market it as gluten free, though all cereal grains contain at least a tiny amount of them. Glutens are sticky proteins that serve as thickeners. They are a natural part of grains and are released by working the dough. As yeast works in the mixture, releasing carbon dioxide, gluten traps the bubbles and stretches, causing the dough to rise. Most people mix regular flour or add packaged gluten to the mix. Gluten free bakers often add xanthan gum, guar gum or a mixture of the two as thickeners to cause the dough to rise.

Marketing to folks who use it has been a challenge. We have been really successful with muffins and it is the use we are pushing for the product. They are the easiest to make and are delightfully sweet and robust.



We used dried blueberries but fresh will work just as easily. Avoid using blueberry pie filling. You will end up with green muffins and the dough consistency will be way off.



We are raising two types of native American corn and planning to market whole grain cornmeal from this. One is White Eagle, a blue corn with white zones on the side which often form a white eagle. The other is a tri color corn that forms three ears per stalk, all different colors. Both make superior cornbread.



We are only growing a seed plot of the White Eagle corn because we could only acquire a few seeds. With a little luck and some rain, we hope to produce at least 50 pounds of seed to use next year.

Then there are the peas, late because of the rye and mustard we had on the place, we did not plant till June. Most of the corn was planted I June as well. Many of my neighbors had poor pea emergence anyway because the nights stayed too cool all the way into early June. Southern peas like heat.

We have two harvesting machines on our farm. One is a Chisholm Ryder MDH, a big self propelled green bean harvester and a 1959 Allis Chalmers All Crop 90 pull type combine. I love my All Crop and would kill for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObDRgxx1Npk

Peas are $30 a bushel shelled, we get about 6 quarts from a bushel of unshelled peas. You are, thus, buying a bushel of unshelled peas which USDA standards define as 38 pounds. Unshelled price u-pick is $25 a bushel. I will not pick them for you unless the bean picker is operational. Otherwise I use the combine.

We will be harvesting the corn in September, most likely. In October we will be planting winter cereal crops. All of our crops are non-GMO heirloom naturally raised crops. We are not certified organic but we use organic practices.