wheat harvest, part 2

OK. To answer a few questions from part one! I think I must have been a bit vague on that. My bad, I've been busy lately. But feel free to ask, I'll do my best to answer them, via a comment or a post!
It's about 2.5-3 acres of wheat.
Yes the combine and the tractor are ours. And both are paid for! So even better!
No we are not allowed to bale the straw, due to the owners saying we can't. So we won't!
It's a hard red spring wheat, called Glenn. 
Now on with the cleaning!

It comes out of the gravity box, down the auger

 And into some buckets.

Then dump it into this part of the

 SO here is a picture of the whole thing. Dump in the dirty wheat, it gets shaken and shimmied down the screens, then the cleaned wheat berries come out to the right, and the hulls and chaff go out to the left.

Then you grab some kiddos who have nothing to do (ahem) and they hold the bag to hold the wheat berries.

Now what will we do with all this wheat?
We gave some of the chaff, still has some wheat berries in it away, and we plan to feed some of it out.
For the use of this wonderful cleaner we traded some man power and wheat berries for the use of it.
We will save some, maybe plant some...
 Defiantly use some to make some bread. I'll have the kiddos grind it fresh because wheat starts to loose it's goodness once it's been ground. It gives the bread a whole different taste and texture.
It's only taken me 3 days to get this post done. I've been up to my eyeballs in tomatoes. Literally.
Any more questions feel free to ask. Now I've got to run and tend to my canner...have a great weekend all!

wheat harvest, part 1

We were given a wheat field. What? Yup, it was grown by a store that my husband does business with, and they said if you combine it, it's yours. What a blessing you might say. And it's organic! Even better. See how pretty it is...

...well was.
 It's not 100's of acres like out west, but it's still nice to look at. And hardly any weeds!
 Growing wheat has been something my husband has wanted to do for a long time, and did once, but that field has been taken back and we can no longer grow any wheat. But when this opportunity came knocking he took it! He kept an eye on it and tested the moisture and all that to make sure it didn't go past what it should be.

Up close of the combine cutting the wheat.

My man up on his tractor!

Back side view of combining. Perfect weather.

 The gravity box almost full of wheat to be cleaned.

Here it is. Yes that is a thermometer stuck in there. We had to take the temperature of it to make sure it wasn't getting too hot.
I'll have part two, the cleaning soon. Just life got busy here for a few days. Now with home school in session...every day just got even fuller! 
Have a great day all!

tilling the soil

Alright, so I said I would try to post some farming pictures. So I will. I know that this is way out of season, but I wanted to share a little more about our farm!
We grew 2 acres of Spelt last year. Nope in fall of '09. September 15th is the cut off date to plant wheat here in Maine. You can plant it later, but September is better. Then we harvested it in August 2010! Due to lots of reasons we did not plant any last fall.  Matthew was really bummed about that too, he loves to grow wheat and I feel bad we just were not able to get it done. Now why Spelt and what is it? If you don't know it's gluten free wheat. For people with Celiac Disease, and we had a customer that would buy it all, provided it was up to his standards, and fit for human consumption. That is why we went with the Spelt. I guess there is a short window for great wheat and bad wheat. Bare with me I'm still trying to wrap my head around growing wheat.  Weather has a lot to do with it too. It had to be certified organic as well. So we went ahead and got the land owners to let us get the land certified. Then we tilled the soil! That was a learning experiecne!  (Just a little bunny trail here, so hang on). When we bought the tractor we bought a plow and a harrow. Well the man that sold us the tractor didn't know what he was talking about when he sold us the plow and harrow, and we didn't realize that they would be too small! The ones we bought were made for a compact tractor, not a full sized tractor! Nothing fit our tractor right and we broke the plow. Well Matthew called another dealer, the sister dealer to the one we bought it from, and we ended up trading the disc harrow that we had never used, in for a larger one and we put the plow up for sale, which we finally sold and have yet to buy another plow. A neighboring farmer came over and plowed our field for us, because if he didn't we would have missed the cut off, and we were leaving for Ohio! Lots of stress right before our vacation!! But by the grace of God we got it planted and got off to Ohio for a wonderful vacation! Just the two of us! The kiddos were with the grandparents! A great time all around! We are hoping we can plant wheat this year, not sure if we'll do a spring or winter wheat thought, but we have a little while longer before we decide...

Matthew plowing up the land 

Matthew planting the Spelt! He had a good time doing that too!!