Blessings Darlings!
Oh, goody - it's "Lammas". Lammas it the neopagan holiday that demonstrates exactly how EXTREMELY cut off from earth/agricultural reality so very many American neopagans are. (I can't speak for neopagans in other countries - my expertise (I was an agriculture major) is in US agriculture.)
The winter wheat harvest ended at least a month ago. It's WAY too late to be celebrating that. Spare me the "Loafmas" references thinking that they mean loaves of wheat bread. They don't mean loaves of ANY bread - the root of Lammas isn't 'loaf' of bread, it relates more to "Lord" as in "Lord of the manor' that the serfs worked on. It's about the 1%, darlings.
Barley harvest? Nope. That's just underway. It won't end for a couple more weeks. And no farmer is stupid enough to leave the fields during the harvest to have a harvest celebration. So spare me the singing of "John Barleycorn".
Spring wheat? The harvest for that doesn't start for a few more weeks.
If you want to say that you are following a 'nature based religion', wouldn't it be nice to ... actually pay attention to nature? Especially nature in, like, your local area? Find out when your closest few county fairs are, or 4-H fairs. THEY will be timed for between the local harvests. They MAY feature newly harvested local foods = or not. But at least you'll get the timing better.
Me - I'm going to the racetrack and participating in politics for Lughnasadh. Some of you know why this is way the heck more traditional than baking a loaf of bread. Especially from store bought flour that is undoubtedly over a year old.
Frondly, Fern
Showing posts with label wheat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wheat. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Monday, February 11, 2013
Hoping for Mud Season
Blessings, Darlings!
I mentioned "mud season" in last week's Imbolc post. For those of you with lawns rather than pasture areas, let me explain this a bit. Mud is what you get when you combine pastures with animals (especially hooved animals) with rain. Mud season is when you have a spring with normal rains.
Unfortunately, most of the US (and a goodly part of the rest of the world) hasn't been having normal mud seasons. The serious drought continues across the US. Worldwide, humans used more wheat than we harvested (and in the the US, most of the wheat is winter wheat, which relies on spring rains, rather than winter wheat which relies on summer rains).
While the area I'm in isn't having a current drought problem, my area isn't the breadbasket of the nation/world. That blighted area of the Great Plains IS that breadbasket. This has been going on for almost a year, and the weather pattern does not seem to be changing at all.
Rains. Long and slow and renewing. We needs it.
Frondly, Fern
I mentioned "mud season" in last week's Imbolc post. For those of you with lawns rather than pasture areas, let me explain this a bit. Mud is what you get when you combine pastures with animals (especially hooved animals) with rain. Mud season is when you have a spring with normal rains.
Unfortunately, most of the US (and a goodly part of the rest of the world) hasn't been having normal mud seasons. The serious drought continues across the US. Worldwide, humans used more wheat than we harvested (and in the the US, most of the wheat is winter wheat, which relies on spring rains, rather than winter wheat which relies on summer rains).
While the area I'm in isn't having a current drought problem, my area isn't the breadbasket of the nation/world. That blighted area of the Great Plains IS that breadbasket. This has been going on for almost a year, and the weather pattern does not seem to be changing at all.
Rains. Long and slow and renewing. We needs it.
Frondly, Fern
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Staff of Life
Blessings Darlings!
It's Lughnasadh! Let's talk wheat!
SOME Examiner.com writers are fucking morons. One posted her article on a Prepper list I'm on. She went on about how the drought trashed the winter wheat crop. Except ... it hasn't. The crop has been harvested a bit early due to the drought (no rain slow downs), but even Kansas, HARD hit by the drought, had a great winter wheat crop. Winter wheat in the US finished being harvested in the middle of July.
I think that the author can't tell winter wheat, which was planted late last fall, from spring wheat which was planted this spring. Spring wheat IS likely to be affected, but it's a far smaller crop than the winter wheat is. Spring wheat is just beginning to be harvested now. I've never lived in an area that grows any. Here the rotation is corn one year, beans the next followed by a fall planting of winter wheat the second year, then harvest the winter wheat and plant beans year 3.
Corn and soy beans ARE going to be affected, of course, as will all the things with those crops in them, from vegetable oils to meat to soda. Prices of 'veggies' might rise 5% due to increased cost of irrigation, but amounts of them shouldn't be affected much. Local veggies and soft fruits are going to be more price-competitive with supermarket ones.
Still, in the US we spend a WAY smaller percentage of our income on food, so we're going to be hit far less than most other countries. Without imported grains, there will be famine. People will die. Rulers will be overthrown.
Buckle up.
Frondly, Fern
It's Lughnasadh! Let's talk wheat!
SOME Examiner.com writers are fucking morons. One posted her article on a Prepper list I'm on. She went on about how the drought trashed the winter wheat crop. Except ... it hasn't. The crop has been harvested a bit early due to the drought (no rain slow downs), but even Kansas, HARD hit by the drought, had a great winter wheat crop. Winter wheat in the US finished being harvested in the middle of July.
I think that the author can't tell winter wheat, which was planted late last fall, from spring wheat which was planted this spring. Spring wheat IS likely to be affected, but it's a far smaller crop than the winter wheat is. Spring wheat is just beginning to be harvested now. I've never lived in an area that grows any. Here the rotation is corn one year, beans the next followed by a fall planting of winter wheat the second year, then harvest the winter wheat and plant beans year 3.
Corn and soy beans ARE going to be affected, of course, as will all the things with those crops in them, from vegetable oils to meat to soda. Prices of 'veggies' might rise 5% due to increased cost of irrigation, but amounts of them shouldn't be affected much. Local veggies and soft fruits are going to be more price-competitive with supermarket ones.
Still, in the US we spend a WAY smaller percentage of our income on food, so we're going to be hit far less than most other countries. Without imported grains, there will be famine. People will die. Rulers will be overthrown.
Buckle up.
Frondly, Fern
Friday, October 21, 2011
People Food
Blessings Darlings!
As many of you know, my food storage program is built around a base of feed-store bought wheat and corn (and, damn, I wish feed stores around here sold whole soybeans). Some people have wondered about whether humans can/should be eating food that's sold for feed for animals - sure grains sold for direct human consumption are better somehow. Cleaner? Better inspected?
Certainly the same products sold for human consumption are more expensive. But better/cleaner/certified? Nope!
While the Chubby Hubby isn't at all into prepping, really, he DOES bring a serious knowledge base into this part of the discussion. While in college, he worked summers at a Huge Corn Processing Company. They made (I'm sure they basically still exist now, but have been swallowed by an even LARGER Huge Corn Processing Company) most of the types of corn products used across the US: corn starch, corn sugar, corn syrup, glutens, flours, etc. He has told me stories of how things work there.
The corn the company got was the same corn that the feed producers get. The same silo spits it out into the same train hopper cars. The silo tests ALL of the corn for toxins.
The feed companies and the Human Processing company both use the same process to 'clean' the corn - fundamentally, using fans/compressed air to blow away things not the right weight as the kernels should be. After that, the feed company fills 50 pound bags with the grain. Meanwhile, the Corn Processor starts to play.
Corn Processor 'cleans' the corn .... by dumping the kernels water with sulfer dioxide in it, making the water a weak acid. Yummy! This kills stops any mold from growing during the 24 hour soak, but allows enzymatic action in the kernels. They then wet mill it, and the slurry gets divided into it's 4 main component parts - hulls starch, germ, and something I can't recall right now. Dang. The splashing acidic slurry eats away at the concrete around the milling machines, by the way.
Anyway, let's talk about where the starch goes. It gets refined in TONS of different ways, for different purposes. Every now and then, they take out a sample to test it. When they take a sample, some spills on the floor.
How do they clean the floor? Oh, with water. Where does the corn starchy water go? BACK INTO THE MIX FOR PROCESSING. How yummy is THAT?
So, yeah. I grind my own flour, from whole grains meant for animals.
Frondly, Fern
As many of you know, my food storage program is built around a base of feed-store bought wheat and corn (and, damn, I wish feed stores around here sold whole soybeans). Some people have wondered about whether humans can/should be eating food that's sold for feed for animals - sure grains sold for direct human consumption are better somehow. Cleaner? Better inspected?
Certainly the same products sold for human consumption are more expensive. But better/cleaner/certified? Nope!
While the Chubby Hubby isn't at all into prepping, really, he DOES bring a serious knowledge base into this part of the discussion. While in college, he worked summers at a Huge Corn Processing Company. They made (I'm sure they basically still exist now, but have been swallowed by an even LARGER Huge Corn Processing Company) most of the types of corn products used across the US: corn starch, corn sugar, corn syrup, glutens, flours, etc. He has told me stories of how things work there.
The corn the company got was the same corn that the feed producers get. The same silo spits it out into the same train hopper cars. The silo tests ALL of the corn for toxins.
The feed companies and the Human Processing company both use the same process to 'clean' the corn - fundamentally, using fans/compressed air to blow away things not the right weight as the kernels should be. After that, the feed company fills 50 pound bags with the grain. Meanwhile, the Corn Processor starts to play.
Corn Processor 'cleans' the corn .... by dumping the kernels water with sulfer dioxide in it, making the water a weak acid. Yummy! This kills stops any mold from growing during the 24 hour soak, but allows enzymatic action in the kernels. They then wet mill it, and the slurry gets divided into it's 4 main component parts - hulls starch, germ, and something I can't recall right now. Dang. The splashing acidic slurry eats away at the concrete around the milling machines, by the way.
Anyway, let's talk about where the starch goes. It gets refined in TONS of different ways, for different purposes. Every now and then, they take out a sample to test it. When they take a sample, some spills on the floor.
How do they clean the floor? Oh, with water. Where does the corn starchy water go? BACK INTO THE MIX FOR PROCESSING. How yummy is THAT?
So, yeah. I grind my own flour, from whole grains meant for animals.
Frondly, Fern
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