by David Clark, Contributing Columnist dclark@outofthesky.com

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

I planted a little wheat patch last fall. I missed two years of this annual ritual while travelling the country. Missing the planting meant missing plowing's maintenance. This past fall, the weeds stood brazen and bawdy.

A couple of weeks ago, the wheat began turning golden. One determines when wheat is ready to harvest by squeezing a kernel. Before wheat is ready, the kernel is filled with a milky liquid. As it reaches maturity, this liquid turns "doughy." The trick is letting it get dry, but not too dry. If one waits too long, harvesting shatters the seedheads. The results of the harvest will slip through one's fingers and fall to the ground.

It is amazing to watch the wheat change. One can see many stalks which are half-green and half-golden. Then some magic moment occurs, and the next morning one wakes to find the whole patch is the golden color.

I have witnessed wheat's transformation many times in my life, but I am startled by it every time. Shoots of green grass stand unprotected in a cold winter's field, taking any advantage of good growing conditions. Come spring, one can almost watch the grass growing taller. The first hot days are greeted by my own little personal "amber waves of grain."

My wheat had competition this winter while I was away working in Atlanta. Brazen and bawdy seedpods were grinning reminders of field-maintenance-failure: wild turnip, vetch, sorrel, tall grass and other weeds.

I harvested my little patch with Daddy's old black-handled sickle. I walked bent over, pulling a sickleful of wheat at a time towards my waiting hand. I kept a file in my pocket, and sharpened the sickle's hooked blade about every twenty minutes.

A man with a combine could have harvested my little patch of wheat in about two minutes. It took me about eight hours. The man with the combine would have ended with fully winnowed grain. I still have to thresh and winnow mine.

A friend asked: "Why go to all this trouble?"

It's a fair question. Flour is cheap. Bread is cheap. Wheat is cheap. These facts strengthen the arguments of those who say no one can "come out money-wise" by growing their own food.

But buying cheap bread or flour doesn't yield the same benefits. It's easier to grab these goods off the grocery shelf, but there's something to be gained by inspecting my ground a sickleful at a time. I participate in a ritual that's thousands of years old when I rub the seed heads together and hear the kernels dropping into the wheelbarrow. Dropping the threshed kernels in the summer breeze teaches me all over again the important simplicity of separating the wheat from the chaff. Picking out the wild turnip and vetch seedpods will indeed be a royal pain in the neck, but it's the type of pain that creates resolve to do better next time.

What I gain cannot be bought. What I harvest is far more than wheat.

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Email David Clark at dclark@outofthesky.com, or write him at P.O. Box 148, Cochran, Ga. 31014.