Get Them Before They Get You!

I've hit a landmark of west-coast living that I put on the same level as learning how to surf. Last week I ate my first rattlesnake! It happened like this:

Garden Manager Ellen's son Cody, who roams the ranch fixing fences, irrigation pipes, and cows, occasionally runs across a rattlesnake. Often he kills it, and on one notable occasion he skinned one for a hat-band (turning down my suggestion of making gloves - you know, with little rattles at the fingertips?). The natural progression was to grill one up for dinner, which happened last week.
The photo shows clearly what happened: Cody relished it and Ellen, on the right, was disturbed, disgusted, and naseaus. Everyone at the table, in fact, fit into one of those two categories. Happily (for those of us in the former) Cody was willing to share!
Inevitably someone must ask "Does it taste like chicken?" To which I must answer "Probably it tastes like gutted chicken neck grilled with seafood spices." Specifically, a chicken whose neck was genetically modified to contain lots of very strong salmon bones. Tough, but novel.
I am told it is a lot better in stew, though somehow I had always pictured them cut in sushi-style rolls and frittered. Shows what I know. (That's me in the photo on left, sampling my piece).
Ok, now to a subject I have wanted to broach for a while. Hear me out before you mock. There are many among us who say "I am a vegetarian, though I eat fish" or even "I am a vegetarian" when it turns out that white meat in general doesn't count as meat to them. And saying "I am mostly vegetarian" is not objectionable. But I am betting that I could not get away with saying "I am mostly vegan." Never mind that I hardly ever eat meat, or that I consume merely a little butter or honey regularly. I'll let Nikki respond however she likes to that one.
I don't specifically want or need to be vegan (especially given the opportunistic tendencies demonstrated above), it is simply a hypothesis of mine that vegetarians are a little more inclusive with their designation. 'Cause I can still be a mostly vegetarian and eat a little rattlesnake if it crosses my path. Free-range, grass-fed, and everything.
Having enjoyed the novelty of rattlesnake, what other dangerous delights might be next? Here's a hint from our front door (picture it deep-fried, if it helps):

The First Zucchini!

I don't know whether to bounce with joy or to cringe in fear, but here they are: the first two zucchini of the season. There are present signs of many more on the way, and a bed that threatens to pour summer squash forth in Tribble-like abundance.
In the photo at right: does Margo have the zucchini, or does the zucchini have Margo?

Ladybug vs. Aphid

I don't know much about Alien vs. Predator, except that it involves two species having a war on Earth. One side does vanquish the other, but the human interests caught in between are also almost completely destroyed.

Our own garden's recent battle, that of Ladybug vs. Aphid, has had a similar outcome. While the ladybugs have clearly risen to the occasion to overpower the aphids, there have been casualties. If they just hadn't spent so much time toying with their prey! As you can see from the photos, one whole section of our Fava Beans were rescued. Unfortunately the other section has some major damage. In the first section most plants have been relatively successful, achieving a reasonable height of ~5' and setting plenty of pods. In the other section none of the flowers survived to set pods, all having been destroyed by aphids. What is more, individual plants and some whole areas gave up entirely, not even giving us the benefit of any appreciable biomass!
It is always a learning experience when one watches a crop through its entire life-cycle, and pays attention to how that crop deals with adversity. Certainly when they are flatted and transplanted we always choose the strongest seed and seedlings. After that there is little we can do to help - the plants must continue by their own wits. But by observation there are many lessons to be learned.
These two sections are 200 and 140 square feet, respectively. We plant out many beds of Fava Beans as compost/cover crops in September, but only leave a part of that to go to full maturity. They do a considerable amount of growing before the cold of Winter slows them down, and so we trellis them with stakes and string. Why? This photo explains.
When frost and snow hit them, they lose all turgidity and wilt this way and that. Holding them off the ground preserves the plant when warmth comes again, allowing them the best chance of recovery. Then, once the Spring comes and they leap forth, the trellis keeps them out of the path.
Back to the point of adversity, we noticed that the 200 sq ft section (the one that now looks great) grew more quickly in the Fall, then suffered the most during the frosts. In the Spring it looked terrible, with sections of plants dying throughout. It had aphids as bad as any other section. But now it looks productive and healthy, and will probably have excellent yields. The 140 sq ft section, planted 10 days later, was slower off the blocks, not knocked back as hard by the frost, and then infested with aphids same as the rest. Somehow, though, this section was overcome, set no seed, and areas died before the middle of May.
How do you read this riddle? We know there are no easy answers, and certainly no concrete formulas for success in this kind of matter. In agriculture you watch, pay attention to any variables you can discern, and speculate. For instance, in this case the only constant was the seed source. The losing bed is ten feet from the windward garden border, the healthier bed is well to the center. Maybe the former got too dry at a pivotal moment? What was planted in each bed previously? Did two different people plant the sections with significantly different techniques or attitudes? Did the frost trigger some immune response, or had the bigger plants set more energy aside in the Fall? Did the ladybugs colonize the 200 sq ft section first, or did the aphid infestation really initiate in the 140 sq ft section and spread from there?
So we draw our own conclusions and create theories, then watch in future years to apply them. This is how, after forty years of experience, a farmer can say in the Spring "I think this is going to be a good year for corn, but the cucumbers might be a waste of time."
For the time being, we have an abundance of ladybugs and their spawn, even on the dead plants. In the photo below you can see three stages; larvae, pupae, and adults. Incidentally, I have noticed that there are many adult ladybugs with deformities in their shells and wings. Is this perhaps because eggs were laid in an environment once populated with food, which became scarce by the time the eggs hatched? I can imagine the larvae not getting enough nutrition before transforming, then suffering the consequences as adults. Probably similar in humans...
Look forward to the next post: Purslane Cake!

Integrated Pest Management, Golden Rule Style

Our Fava Beans aren't looking so hot right now. They are suffering, as they always do this time of year, from one of the biblical plagues so hideous it could only be referred to euphemistically as "locusts". Yes, I'm talking about Aphids.

Ours are black, and a little bit of research has me guessing that they are Aphis fabae, the Black Bean Aphid. They are the scourge of our Favas, and probably indicate something of which we should be aware (we are generally of the belief that most plants in any given crop will have pests or disease, but only the weaker specimens will succumb to the attack).

At any rate, we worry some about our beloved Fava Beans, high biomass producers that they are, and heralds of the coming of the Fava Bean Burger mentioned in an older post. Mostly, though, we worry about what other people will think when they visit the garden. So we kind of rush them past the Fava beds.
Until recently, of course, when we began to see the textbook example of what we preach in terms of pest management: Lay off the poisons, focus on a healthy system, then let natural predators step in. Most notably we have the Ladybug, which is our garden hero due to its status as a general predator. Once it has finished with the aphids, it will move on to other pests. Or, more likely, when it has eventually reproduced to levels too large to be sustained on the aphids the excess will migrate to the rest of the garden. So when the plants die (of natural deaths) in June or early July, we will have a ridiculous number of ladybugs spreading out for new grounds. A side-note here; Ladybug beetles and larvae both do plenty of eating, up to 50 aphids a day. And Recently a Dutch group called the Foundation Against Senseless Violence chose the Ladybug as its logo. Cute for us humans, ironic on an insect level...
Here we have an unidentified wasp species, which began arriving in droves a week or so ago. They hang out over the Fava Bean beds in the hundreds, maybe thousands, and create roving clouds in the rest of the garden. It isn't their eating habits that please us as much as their egg-laying habits. You can't say that for many things besides chickens, can you? These wasps, just a half-inch long or so, inject an egg into each aphid they encounter. The egg hatches, parasitizes the aphid, and then, when it has eaten all there is, leaves the aphid an empty shell (see left).
Here is another strange predator, which those more skilled or experienced might be able to identify. It is enough for me to know that, with a shape like that, it is not eating Fava Bean plants.
There we have it. If we had gotten wigged out by all those aphids and sprayed, dusted or otherwise applied poisons, the aphid population would surely have been affected. But so would the populations of all the predators attracted to the aphids. It is a basic law of predation that 1) there are fewer predators than prey and 2) the reproductive cycle takes longer for predators than prey. So when it comes to bouncing back from devastation, the prey will excel. Predator populations will come back much more slowly, leaving room for a great infestation before they catch up.
So here's to our ladybugs! May they always get their way in our garden.

The Illicit Tuber Trade

I'm not sure exactly how to say this best to avoid retribution and underhanded attack by certain parties in our vicinity, but honesty and full disclosure of the facts is probably best. And the truth needs to be known.

We have an underground market in Jerusalem Artichokes (see photo on right) and Potatoes. Probably other roots, too, like Salsify and Parsnips, maybe garlic seasonally. But tubers are definitely the big targets. The crimes, which are mostly simple and petty, boil down to theft and stockpiling. Market manipulation? Maybe... But the truly insidious side is that the business goes on, unseen, even in daytime hours.

Who are the culprits? Oh, we can be almost positive on this count. Voles, they do their deed and depart. While sometimes incredibly destructive, like certain vegans, they flee the scene leaving evidence of their crime. Mice and voles, both, are bad. But it's in their nature. They can't do anything about that. Ravens, sparrows, and the like: well, they're just free-wheeling and don't understand the implications of their actions.

We're talking about gophers, here. Infrequently even seen above ground, let alone in daylight, these animals have been plotting all along. We thought they, too, were tunneling to our crops out of need, which we would have understood. But that wasn't enough. They have used their complex tunnel system to transport the above-mentioned tubers as far as 60 feet in the garden, stashing them in hideouts indiscoverable except by chance.

We thought it was gardener error when a bunch of Jerusalem Artichokes came up in the raspberry bed. And when Margo, while preparing a bed, unearthed a pile of potatoes, all 1 1/2-2" in diameter, we thought they came from the same bed, in which potatoes had been growing not two feet away. But those potatoes had been red. These were yellow. The closest planting of yellow potatoes had been two beds away, at least.
One and one-half to two inches in diameter. Big enough to matter, small enough for easy transport through a gopher hole. The implications finally started to sink in.
This Spring Margo unearthed a similar pile of Jerusalem Artichokes. There is only one bed in the whole garden in which we are growing Jerusalem Artichokes, and it was not that one.
And, finally, the day before yesterday I was surveying the scene of the bramble removal, which was carried out three weeks ago. The blackberries have started sprouting up from their mangled stumps, it's true. But something else was sprouting up, too. Outside the garden, where once was a solid bramble (the perfect cover), are now growing potatoes and Jerusalem Artichokes.

Jack Frost Nipping at our Beans

I know this post isn’t going to receive any sympathy from folks in the northern lands, but those of you on the west coast and in the south know what I’m talking about: when the mercury falls below 32°F it’s really cold! So much so that things start to freeze! Thank God it doesn’t stay that way when the sun comes up…

All subtle bragging aside, we have a mild enough climate that the occasional nighttime lows below 32 are sometimes exasperating as we consider all the things we might be able to grow if it never froze. Add to that our last frost date of May 15 and occasional frost begins to seriously affect our capacity to grow long-season crops. Sorghum and corn barely mature before frost comes again, late potatoes are often still small at harvest, and miscellaneous other marathon crops are, for the most part, out of consideration. So tease us about our lack of severe winters, but realize that your warm nighttime lows in the summer allow your plants to overtake ours handily. (See the sidebar under “temps” for clarification).

As to the title, we have a variety of legume that stands out in a number of ways. Its seed production is great, its biomass production is incredible, and its hardiness means it will live through our winters. All three attributes put together make it an ideal crop for us. It will act as protection for the soil against sun, wind, and erosion, give us a great deal of mature material for compost, and make a tasty meal to boot. This wonder crop is the Banner variety of Fava Bean. It grows to around five feet high, can produce more than six stalks per plant, as many as seven pods per stalk and up to six beans per pod. We’re talking up to 252 beans per plant, and they are largish beans. And, as I said, they are hardy.

It gets down to 18F, as you can see if you scrutinize the min-max thermometer above, and while the Favas don’t like it they do cope. They get a little wilty, maybe a little covered with snow, and maybe even the tops die back. The point, though, is that they don’t die, and whatever they have saved to their roots starts going into high-gear around late March, which we’ll see soon. Here you see them relaxing onto the strings we set up to help them stay vertical.

As I mentioned earlier, any solar exposure usually melts the frost promptly around here. It seems, in general, that the sun is stronger in the west than, say, the Midwest. If you are working outside when the air temperature is, say, around 65°F you might be comfortable in the shade, but when you move out into the sun you get too warm quickly. Not that I’m complaining about that. At least, not in the winter. It means that, as long as your garden isn’t shaded all day, the ground doesn’t freeze very far down, and won’t stay frozen long. Root veggies store pretty well left in the soil. And you don’t have to worry (too much) about draining pipes and hoses. This photo was taken about 8 am. The hose is still frozen, as you can see from the frost, but the sun is on it already and it will thaw soon. Pipes are all around 12-18” down, well out of danger.

This week looks to shed its wetness tomorrow and turn the gardens into a warm, sunny, potato-planting wonderland!

One Big Week, part I

Last week was a doozy, a confluence of events that would slide right off our backs in the middle of summer, but which, coming out of the winter season of sluggishness, caught us off guard. Of course, being as well organized as we are, we saw it coming. We just didn't realize it was actually 2009 already, that the Super Bowl was almost here, and that it was simultaneously time for planting Spring Grains, the week my sister would be visiting, and the weekend we would be teaching two days of classes.

First things first: having my sister here was great. Good conversation about lifestyle and lots of game-playing, plus she brought work with her to do. This meant that, since Margo and I really needed to work on our classes coming up, we could all procrastinate happily together in solidarity.
Next comes the planting of Spring Grains, justifiably capitalized because they are an annual point of reference. It marks the first time of the year that beds are cultivated and planted, and also, since these grains all go 5" apart, becomes a somewhat tedious two weeks. Almost all of the crops we grow are first planted in flats, then transplanted into the ground. This may sound ridiculous to a seasoned tractor farmer, but with the scale on which we work the time and care taken pays off big in yields.
First of all we have the bed: in this case 40-Bed Unit 3 North, or 40BU3N. There's a great gardening song I could quote from the Beetless' Gardening Book (filled with gardening-based parodies of Beatles songs - I recommend it). Called "One After West Twenty-Nine" it mocks the best efforts of gardeners everywhere who try to organize their beds by logical means. I understand it completely now.
Anyway, we started by clearing it. Here Margo is removing the cover crop we planted in late fall to 1) keep the soil covered and 2) grow some compost material. We don't leave any beds fallow. The beds in the 40BU are all four feet wide, which works well for me.
Next I double-dug it. This involves digging one trench about 12" deep and wide across the end of the bed (you stand on a board so the bed doesn't get as compacted from your weight). Next you use a digging fork to loosen the soil in the lower 12". This way you end up creating pore space about 24" down. Pull your board back about 12", dig another trench next to the first by moving that soil into the first trench, and fork that one. Repeat until you have the bed done!
This next photo shows how strong my chi is: having pulled up the fork after one go, there was something stuck on it. Potato, maybe? No - I speared this rock! I'm definitely keeping that one for posterity...
At this point it is important to mention that the soil structure is so good in the Golden Rule garden that double-digging is rarely necessary. The lower trench is usually very loose. Grains are the one exception to our non-double-digging, because they respond so well. To prove this to ourselves, 110 square feet of this bed will be an experiment. We'll plant 55 square feet of Red Fife wheat in d-dug soil and 55 sq ft in single-dug soil (only loosening the top 12" with the digging fork) . The rest of the bed will be Jet barley and the already-present alfalfa.
No photos of the planting for now, 'cause I left the camera inside. When we finished planting we covered the bed. This part always makes me grumpy. Up at the EA garden birds and rodents are a problem, but nothing like here. Up there a shade net on short sticks, drooping to the ground, is usually enough. Not here. Here we have fencing cut in small sections so that it bows over the bed, and then bird-netting is draped over that, tucked under the little wire prongs on the edge of the fence, and weighed down with rocks, sticks, rebar, or whatever else can be found. The bird netting sticks to everything, including your knuckles, so it is a big pain. The bows of fencing like to pull in towards each other, dragging tiny seedlings with them... It is not a smiley activity.
And now I can tell you that it gets worse. If I thought it was bad putting it down I didn't imagine what would happen if we left a little corner unsecured. Yesterday a brief glance showed that something had gotten in. A closer look showed that a mouse, bird, or maybe both had gotten in and eaten too many plants to simply write off. We ended up removing the whole contraption, replacing the plants, then putting the thing back on. This time we both walked around the assembly adding rocks and other objects, making very sure it was secure. Whew.
Poor Ellen's section was a little worse off. A heap of feathers showed that a bird had gotten in, eaten a bunch of grains, and then gotten attacked by one of the cats. Did the cat also get in, or kill the bird through the netting? Hard to tell, but it was a mess, and the head of the bird remained to look at us accusingly, as if it were our fault. I'm leaving that picture out, too.

Cats' O the Garden

Sage advice from people who know. This is a good time to introduce our cats, two of which inhabit the garden, and two of which haunt our front door. I'll start with the one that tempts us to ignore the warning in this brief poem: Marcello. Once a good cat, probably, he has become mostly bad. Definitely the Captain Ahab of the feline world. While I guess we don't know what is going on in his head, we can imagine by how he rubs against you so sweetly then, without provocation, bites you on the elbow, wrist, ankle, shoe, or whatever is closest. He has good days, where he does no wrong, and bad days, when the mere act of walking past elicits a claw in your leg or, if you were wise, your cat-proof pants. Worst of all, in my opinion, he has that deplorable trait of attacking you when you walk away and running when you turn to face him. That always creeps me out in a pet. To sum him up, he's the kind of animal you really want to take to an animal communicator to figure out. We are probably going to send him off to the shelter soon, or find someone who doesn't care about how weird their cat is. Ellen had the good point that, if a dog went off regularly and bit visitors, the sheriff would take it away.

Next up we have Ricky, aka "Ricky-ticky-tum-tum" and "Rickle-Pickle-Pie." As you can see from the picture he is adorable. His most notable characteristic is that he drools slightly when you pet him. Not normal for a cat, but acceptable, considering he catches rodents nearly on demand. Three days in a row I was working in the grain loft all afternoon and he would leave, only to come back ten minutes later with a large, mostly dead vole in his mouth. He would then crunch it up beside me and leave the liver and some other less-identifiable part for me to approve of. Now that is definitely acceptable behavior. It is especially nice that, between he and Marcello (who does catch rodents, too), the grains in full view of any grain-eating animal are kept completely safe.
The only downside to the cats in real terms (since the terrorizing of visitors can sometimes be helpful) is that we occasionally find the head of an acorn woodpecker or a pile of feathers. We bird lovers disapprove severely. We once watched, in disbelief, as Marcello stalked and caught a California Towhee scratching nearby. Cats are fast, even crazy ones. We subsequently chased him all over the garden till he let it go, unharmed, to fly away.
Now for our front-door cats. Vanilla is older, so she goes first. Vanilla initially belonged to Ellen's daughter, and is still supported by her in Vanilla's old age of 19 (or so). This is no small contribution, since Vanilla now scorns hard, dry, tasteless food for that most deliciously palatable of treats, wet canned cat food. We learned from a friend in the Bay Area, who used to work as a meat inspector, what exactly goes into canned cat food. We're not telling Vanilla, though, because then she would demand grade A something. Vanilla, being long-haired, demands some effort for grooming. I am told she used to keep up her hair-care very well, but she isn't so diligent anymore. So Margo and I got a little pink brush to help her out. She hates it, but looks better as a result. Among Vanilla's other oddities is a spot on her head that has never had fur, as I am to believe, though I have never heard why. On a long-haired cat this is a little disturbing. I brought it up to my visiting Aunt who remarked, dismissively, "It's a cat. Leave all the bones in one room and it'll heal." Vanilla is the exception (in the case of this spot of mange, anyway). I'm pretty sure it's karmic. She used to be a hell-raiser, apparently, having once caught a squirrel, killed it, and left its head on the pillow of her young owner. Wow! This is the kind of thing she was capable of back in her time, and this is why Ellen maintains that Vanilla deserves whatever she wants. (This is also why Vanilla does not gain access to our house).
Finally we have Smootches. For the first few months we were here she was known as "Mark's Cat" and assumed to be male. Mark is our neighbor. Poor Smootches first met me when someone had left the door to the attic, which is externally accessed, open, and she went in to live. I crawled back among the rafters and insulation to get her, but she was pretty much feral. We were both traumatized. I left the door open and eventually she decided she didn't want to live there, but still hung around the house and garden. Ellen had fed her at the same place Vanilla ate, because she was there anyway, begging for food. At some point Ellen brought it up with Mark, who said "That's not my cat." That is when we started trying to make friends, and, between Margo and myself we have made great progress. We started feeding both Vanilla and Smootches at our door, eventually coaxed Smootches close enough to touch, then pet, then hold. Our long term plan was to take her into the shelter (because we're leaving in the winter and NOT taking a cat with us), but she was way too shy to come inside, and still very jittery. So we decided to introduce her into the house for short periods of time, but only when Vanilla wasn't around, since we had made it clear to her that we didn't want her inside. (Vanilla can be very demanding). But there is something endearing about timidity, so Smootches is welcome whenever. And she has occasionally caught voles, which makes any cat good.

Pathetic Offspring

We love our grains dearly, and so when one (or all) of them goes astray it pains us all the more. Especially when the fault can so clearly be traced back to us.

This is what a bad grain year looks like for the Golden Rule (speaking specifically in terms of fall and spring grains, like wheat and rye). Here is the entire grain harvest for the 2008 season. In the photo you have two points of reference, a CD in front and a gallon jar in back. A third point of reference that may be helpful is the area we grew in grains last year (1,318 square feet) together with the total weight of the grains (54.56 lb) and the fact that, subjectively speaking, we usually do much better than that...

Objectively speaking we have three categories of goals for yields in anything we grow: beginning, intermediate, and high. "Beginning" is for if the grower is facing impediments, like lack of experience, poor soils, uncooperative weather, things of that nature. "Intermediate" is what we aim for. We aim for "High" yields, too, but more in the way a child of a past generation might hope for a Red Ryder BB gun. Beginning, intermediate and high yields for these fall and spring planted grains are, respectively, 4, 10, and 20+ lb. per 100 square feet. So in a bed of 5X20' we might expect to get 10 pounds of grain and hope for more.

When you do the math, you see that we got an average of 4.13 lb/100 square feet. Now you would notice if you could see my spreadsheet that our 160 sq ft of cereal rye this year did produce 11.09 lb/100sq ft (of which we are all proud), but it was the clear exception. On the whole, for our fertile soil and doting love, we got abysmal yields.

At which point were our babies led astray? Well, one could point to the wildfires that plagued Mendocino County, despite the firefighters' best efforts, clouding the air with smoke and drastically cutting down photosynthesis for at least a month and a half. We're sure this was to blame for many of the other low yields we saw this year. But the sad truth is that the grains were at their last stages of maturity then, their chlorophyll having departed for greener pastures (ha ha ha).

No, we had no one but ourselves to blame, and let this be a lesson to all of you out there. Reap the wisdom from our thickly sown sloth: weed your grains virtuously! Also your garlic, onions, flax and things. But if you would not be thrown into strings of foolish excuses when your visitors say "Huh, I never realized wheat was so short," weed them when they need it! Grains just can't compete.

I guess I'll follow that up with a nice photo, cause even though they were really sad looking, they were our grains and we love them. Here you see some of them at the end of their lives. That green tint in the closer bed of yellowed wheat is volunteer chamomile, happily prospering. A little information: we plant nearly everything on offset spacing rather that rows. Fall and spring grains are planted on 5" centers. We put stakes and string up around the beds to give them support. The closer you plant grains the better they produce (to a point), but as they cram together they are also prone to "lodging," which is when they meet rain or wind and lose (fall over). Hence the stakes and string.

The winter season calls us to organize ourselves, and I attacked our seed shelves recently, trying to figure out how many species, varieties, and years of grains we had stored for use. There were many jars, bags, or packets from previous years, but since most of the grains were grown last year we can choose to store the freshest seeds. Then I consolidated them, made a list, and stored as much as we might want for seed in the coming years. (I plan to cycle those out when we have harvested and threshed this year). The picture shows the grains all packed in plastic bags inside jars. I just learned this morning from EA's Garden Manager that this is a big no-no. Any moisture in there will wreak havoc on the seeds, rendering them non-viable. So we'll go get some silica gel, which absorbs moisture, and put it in each of the baggies. The rest of the seed goes on the table by the flour grinder, ready to be turned into something tasty and healthy.

Grains are a joy to all of us here, but, lest you think we are more impressive agriculturalists that we really are, I must say we don't come anywhere close to growing all the grain that even Margo and I consume in a year, let alone the community. Grain, even intensively grown as we do it, demands a lot of space. We do it here a little for fun but mainly for experience, biomass for compost (more about these practices soon) and to acclimatize varieties to this region.

I will end this post by parading past you the names and varieties of grains we have in stock, like the abused but victorious personalities they are, proudly marching to the grinder...

• Wheat: Pacific Blue Stem, Red Fife, Kamut, Huron, Lavras, Hard Red Spring, Hard Red Winter, Emmer, Black Emmer, Maris Wigeon, SS791, Square Head Masters, Chidham Red Chaff, Colona Lunga, Turkish Red Winter, Perfectly Awnless, Alaska Spelt, Early Stone Age, and Farro
• Rye: Cereal and Akusti
• Triticale: Pika, Musky and Juan
• Oats: Paul and Shelly
• Barley: Karan 16, Schrene, Tibetan, Sangatsuga, Naked, Ethiopian, Faust, and Jet