Separating Wheat From Chaff

My favorite farmer friend sometimes brings me flowers. Sometimes garden plants. Sometimes tools. And one time, stalks of wheat.

I got an old-fashioned grinder a while ago, and have always wanted to use it. The idea was the take wheat straight from the stalk and grind it into flour.

The first step was the squish, shake, and press all the wheat berries out of their husks on the stalk. It was tedious and took a long time, which is why one does these kinds of projects with a friend.

Once the berries were free from the stalk, they still had skins from the husk and bits of straw mixed with them. If you've read the Bible, you know about wheat and chaff. With a little wind, the wheat stays put, and the chaff blows away...into the fire. The first method we used was to pour the wheat out and let the wind do its job. The wind wasn't reliable, so we tried blowing on the falling stream.

 

That didn't quite work either, so we got extension cord and a box fan and blasted it about...six or seven times through to get all the chaff out. It was truly amazing to watch. These things have the perfect weight and substance to separate and make the product useable--works like a dream. 

Here you see our pure wheat berries.

The last step was to grind it. Unfortunately, we discovered the grinder is broken, or missing a few pieces, and thus cannot be adjusted to grind it finely at all--the berries just fall straight through. Someday, somehow, somewhere, I will find a way to grind this, and make a very small amount of bread.