Chickens need food and bedding. Planning for this, I ploughed some of our land last November and sowed cereal – wheat and triticale – to provide seed food and straw bedding for them.
Growing it is dead easy – after a month chuck fertiliser onto the young grass, and let nature take its course until the following summer when it is tall and golden, with big ears of corn drooping down. My problem (through having no experience) is what next? Obviously the wheat has to be cut, the grain threshed from it and stored, and the straw stacked. A combine harvester is the usual big farm answer but is impractical on a remote farm with small curvy fields. I’ve never seen one in this area.
JJ has a side-cutter for his tractor but last year some bolts sheared on it and I don’t know if he could repair it, it was old. João had a walk-behind wide blade mower but in May that too broke down irreparably.
I looked into buying a scythe a couple of years ago but the shop has now closed down. Eventually I used a three-lobed brush cutter blade on my strimmer, which worked well but slowly. What I really need is a top-mounted scoop for the end of the strimmer, so that with each pass of the cutter the wheat is scooped and at the end of the stroke it falls into a neat bundle, all stalks together. This is how the scoop is used in India or South Asia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVTpiDmqig They can be bought in India but the rural makers and vendors have no English and my written Gujarati / Urdu etc. just isn’t up to scratch 😉
Cut wheat is then gathered together in big bunch with the ears at one end and tied into a sheaf using a few of the straws twisted into a cord. You will not have tried this. I have, and can tell you that without being shown how it is, for me, an embarrassing waste of effort. You can imagine. Then the sheaves are assembled into stooks and one eventually threshes them.
In the end I co-opted Janet and we raked it up, straws parallel, and shifted it into the stack you see here, with grain still attached. Threshing is at present beyond our ken. In theory I need a flail, a threshing floor, a winnowing basket and the knowledge of how to do it. The locals just buy sacks of grain for chickens on the market. One of our neighbours has a very old baler which makes rectangular straw bales, wheat ears included, but at harvest time he seems to make himself scarce. So much for self-sufficiency. I’m told it was all done by hand and donkey in the 1980’s.
Clive Boden's Blog 
August 12, 2014 at 4:56 am
Ron says your tractor is still too clean – needs more work. .. Carrol
August 12, 2014 at 7:24 am
Cheeky monkey! Its so dry here I wash it in June and just clean it with compressed air until October, its only dust on it. But the air filter needs blowing out every couple of weeks.
August 14, 2014 at 8:17 am
Many congratulations for even trying this just the two of you! Not so long ago it would all have been done with so many more people. We’re losing those skills too, I remember a farmer near my home in Perthshire who used to make “stooks” of hay in the field just for old time’s sake, I haven’t seen them for a long time now though.
We grow barley as well as very mixed grass on about 40 acres of the farm here. Cutting, storing and handling it all involves every machine you can think of and lots of diesel and plastic wrap. For the future I think the answers may revolve around annual rotations of perennial cereals, eg rye grown with clover, and many more people – an interesting time for all ahead I think! PS I think the best scythes are probably the Austrian ones Simon Fairlie sells. Also check out Fukuoka and the Single Straw Revolution 🙂 happy farming 🙂
August 14, 2014 at 1:42 pm
Thanks for appreciating what we’re trying, Ian. Much valued! Takes one to know one! I’ve heard of Fukuoka and will check out the Single Straw idea. I also heard of the Austrian scythes and haven’t found anyone around here that sells any version of scythes. I may have to contact Simon directly. Sadly, I can buy one and learn how to use it, but there’s no-one to pass on the scythe or the experience to when I find it too much work. I follow several American blogs and they have the same kind of problem. One back-to-basics farmer would even virtually give away his farm to the right young couple but none has taken up his offer! It is great for us, but what after out time? We appreciate the lifestyle you have chosen too, and recognise its value to you both and in the Big Picture. I think regardless of whether we see a long-term future in all we are doing, we must just keep on going. It seems right somehow . . .
August 15, 2014 at 6:51 am
Great Clive, it does indeed seem right. My kids and some of their friends are getting more and more into all this eco stuff, in fact Laura and a couple of them stayed here for a few days and loved it, which was wonderful. Love to you both xx
December 23, 2014 at 10:26 pm
Hi we are moving to castelo branco and were wanting to build as straw bale house and looking to work out costings and find straw suppliers any help and advise welcome, cost of bales and where to find them. I think you guys are doing amazing work and its a wonderful life for kids. you could email me any responses, Thanks, Jolene
December 24, 2014 at 10:14 am
Hi Jolene, and thank you for your kind words. It is possible to make a straw bale house in the Castelo Branco area. Generally, though, there is a stone ruin on the quintas that ex-pats buy so they re-roof and restore them before making a straw-bale extension. I’ll contact you by email with more information. Wishing you success in your re-location, Clive.