bread for Farmhouse Breakfast Week

This is last year's wheat crop, which was green last January, almost ready to harvest in July, combined in August and then stored in the barn. 

Most of the wheat was sent to a central co-operative store where it is sold on for food production. We use some of the wheat as seed for the next crop that is now growing in the fields and I take a very small amount to use throughout the year.

So that we can have toast and marmalade for breakfast during Farmhouse Breakfast Week, I've been using wheat from last year's  harvest to make some bread.

First the wheat is put into the grain mill, which grinds it into flour and then the dough is made, left to prove and shaped into loaves.

The loaves are then baked in the oven and we'll eat the fresh bread with rabbit rillettes and then toast the rest for breakfast.
There are more ideas for farmhouse breakfast week at Life In Mud Spattered Boots.

all is safely gathered in

The wheat harvest finished at the beginning of August and most of the beans were combined during August. However, it wasn't until 2nd September that the last field of spring beans were harvested. As expected, the yield wasn't very good and it was a difficult crop to combine because the plants were so short.
So, at last harvest 2011 is finished and all is safely gathered in.

wheat harvest has finished

A dodgy video clip that may make you feel slightly seasick as the camerawork is very shaky. In my defence, I took this when I realised I’d just lost my specs somewhere in the stubble and was trying to film the combine, look for my glasses and keep out of the way of the tractor and trailer. No, I didn’t find them. No doubt they’ll either get smashed to pieces under a tractor wheel never to be seen again or they’ll get buried in the dirt and someone with a metal detector will uncover them in a few years time.

 

The last of the wheat was combined on Saturday evening and carted back in the trailers to the grain store in the yard. We were lucky to get the wheat harvested quickly as we didn’t get held up by rain many days though the combine zipped along through the crop as the dry weather earlier this year reduced the yields by about 25%. 

Some of the wheat has been kept back as next year’s seed, but the rest has been loaded onto lorries and been taken away and the barn swept clean, using this high tech equipment, ready for the beans.

Rain before seven, fine by eleven?

 

Well, not yesterday when it started to rain at 6.30 am and stayed wet all day. After a good start to harvest at the weekend, work has now stopped as we wait for sunshine to dry out the crops. 

Combine harvester cutting Batallion wheat in Gardners Field

working late

On Wednesday evening it started to rain steadily, there was an enormous flash of lightning and we lost our electricity supply in the house and yard for half an hour. Surprisingly, there was no rain two fields away where the combine was working and they harvested until the early hours of the morning.

cleaning the grain store

Machinery and barns are being cleaned, serviced and checked over as Bill gets ready for harvest. 

The grain stores have been inspected to make sure that there are no gaps for water, birds or rodents to get in and now they’re being cleaned. The walls were swept down with an airline and now Bill has the long job of traipsing backwards and forwards across the grain store with this industrial vacuum cleaner until it’s spotless and ready for the first trailer load of grain to be tipped on the floor