Bread: home grown, home made
I’m a life-long bread baker, having grown up in Berkeley in the 1970s with a homemaker (grow it/can it/dye it/weave it/build it) type of mom. One year she grew some wheat in the back yard, threshed...
View ArticleResources for grain production and baking
Some information on wheat and ancient grain production and use: Production of alternative (organic, specialty market) wheat and related grains in California Evaluating Spring Wheat Variety Performance...
View ArticleSugar production, part 1: sugar beets
A couple of years ago we decided that it would be interesting to see if we could produce our own sweeteners. If nothing else, it would surely help us decrease our sugar consumption if we were to rely...
View ArticleSugar production, part 2: sorghum syrup
Around the same time we started playing around with sugar beets we also discovered sorghum syrup. Sorghum species are cultivated worldwide for multiple uses – human and animal feed, alcohol, biofuels,...
View ArticleSmall grain harvest and cleaning, part 1
I love working with grains. They are not at all showy in the field; having evolved away from having the fancy flower parts that in other plants help attract pollinators, they instead rely on wind for...
View ArticleSmall grain harvest and cleaning, part 2
As I said in the previous post, we quickly realized that adding some key pieces of processing equipment would be necessary if we were to continue to grow grains. So in the years since that first oat...
View ArticleCorn tortillas
One of the great things you can do with field corn is make tortillas. Here’s how we do it. We’ve been growing Hopi White corn, which is a flour type, but dent and flint corns can also be used for …...
View ArticleWood Fired Oven Build (1/2)
(Part 1 of 2) The following is a condensed account of our 32″ x 36″ Alan Scott barrel vault wood-fired oven build. We are sharing this for others interested in pursuing a similar project, but – just a...
View ArticleWood fired oven build (2/2)
(continued from part 1) At this point the core of the oven is complete, and we’re moving out to the external layers. First we added a course of pavers to make a level shelf at the top of the urbanite:...
View ArticleDry Farming on the Central Coast of California
The following text was written by Jim Leap (with editorial support from Martha Brown) for inclusion in the University of California Santa Cruz Center For Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems...
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