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.