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Junior Member
 
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| A couple of months ago I picked up several ears of corn from a friend's field that had been knocked down during silage making. I got a hand crank grain grinder for my birthday last month. Last week I ground the corn and made my first batch of corn bread using locally-grown, hand ground corn. What a treat. Earlier this year I made two loaves of wheat bread from wheat growing along the road I ground in my blender. I am now hooked on grinding my own grain. On Wednesday I picked up enough corn from my brother-in-laws field to last all winter, and I have planted a plot of winter wheat on my property. I also cleared a plot to plant some open pollinated corn of my own next spring.
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Starting Member
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I have been wanting to grow a grain, your story is fabulous. What kind of corn was he growing? How much space does winter wheat take? Maybe I can get some in the ground begore it's too late
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Junior Member
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| Charlene: I planted a plot 22' by 71' which I estimate will yield about 2 bushels of wheat. I live in northeast Missouri. If you live farther south than me you still have time to plant winter wheat if you get it in the ground right away. Any feed store will have wheat, just tell them you want it for seed and to make a crop. If you live in my area or farther north you will have to wait until next fall, although you might be a able to grow a small crop of spring wheat, especially if you live farther north. I don't know what variety of field corn was growing in my friend's field, but it was some kind of hybrid, probably Roundup-ready to make use of herbicide, fertilizer, and pesticides. You can grind any type of field corn. I plan to plant Reids Yellow Dent next summer in my own field, along with a small patch of Hopi Blue just for fun. These older open pollinated varieties should taste even better.
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With silage corn you will get more yield too since most varieties give you two cobs per stalk instead of one. At the same time the inner part of the cob is thinner so you get huge sized kernels. You can also harvest it quicker since it goes into milk, dough and dent a lot faster then the human varieties. Heck they have some that matures in 60 days. That is just under 3 inches per day!
You might want to pay attention to the variety though. This year we are trying Microgen as well as Pioneer and we noticed some distinct difference. The cobs are pure white all the way through them when you break them, whereas the Pioneer corn has a brown halo inside. The nutritionist says the cows find the white cobs far more palatable...and I bring this up now because perhaps humans eating this corn will find the corn more tasty then the old Pioneer type corn? Unfortunately its also twice as much per bag then the Pioneer kind which leaves the question...will the cows give twice as much milk on Microgen versus Pioneer...I doubt it, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.
I will say, back when we farmed poor we used to take field corn and use it for corn chowder. I think it tasted okay that way, but you definitely don't want to eat it as corn on the cob. Yuck!
I love vegetarians...slice them real thin, dip them in ranch dressing and they compliment lamb quite well! :-)
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This is interesting.
I have a gluten intolerance which means that wheat products cause me a lot of pain. I am committed enough to bread and pasta that I take pills that let me enjoy those products when I can.
But, most of my starches come from rice or corn since I can digest that with no problem. I'd love to try making my own ground corn. I'm lucky enough to live amongst many dairy farmers and just next door there are acres of field corn. Now, who would miss a few ears, since the deer take plenty anyway!
Hmmm, maybe I'm grinding my own corn!
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| TIFFLE: Check out my post "Free corn for your livestock" in the Livestock category. If you have a gluten intolerance you also might want to try sweet sorghum or grain sorghum (milo) flower. I think sweet sorghum flour (the flour is not sweet) tastes a little like buckwheat. This summer and fall I cleared about an acre of ground on our place that my dad let grow up into saplings. I plan to use that land to grow field corn for grinding and for my poultry, and to grow some sweet sorghum, for both sorghum syrup and the grain.
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