How to Thresh & Winnow Wheat

Getting wheat grains off the stalk and winnowing them is the first step toward bread.

Any gardener can grow tomatoes. The real elite grow wheat. Imagine how impressed your guests will be when you present them not only with a home-grown tomato on their bruschetta, but home-grown bread under the tomato.

It's easy enough to grow and harvest a small patch of wheat in the vegetable garden. But the next part -- threshing and winnowing wheat -- is not so obvious. Mechanical harvesters and combine machines do this all in one pass, but for centuries gardeners and farmers threshed and winnowed wheat by hand.

Things You'll Need

• Two sticks
• String
• Electric box fan
• Two buckets or trays
• Broom
• Dust pan

Instructions

1. Check to see if the wheat is ready to be cut and threshed. When it's ready, the kernels become hard and brown. The stalk should be brown also. Cut the wheat anywhere along the stalk with a sickle. Lay the cut stalks with their ears attached on a smooth, hard surface such as a driveway or concrete patio.

2. Make a flail by drilling a hole in one end of two sticks. Tie them together with a string, so that one stick swings freely when you hold the other stick. Use your flail to hit the pile of wheat stalks repeatedly until the ears shatter and the wheat seeds begin to fall to the bottom of the pile.

3. Pick up the straw that remains behind and store it for another use, such as mulch. Sweep up the wheat kernels that are now left on the threshing floor. They will be mixed with chaff.

4. Pour the wheat kernels and the chaff together into a bucket. Turn on the electric box fan. Standing in front of the fan, pour the wheat from the bucket into another bucket or onto a tray. Pour back and forth from one bucket to the other in front of the fan. The fan will blow the chaff away, and little by little, the wheat will be cleaned of the chaff.

5. Dry the wheat thoroughly in the sun or in a low oven before grinding into flour.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have a small quantity of wheat, put it in a pillow case tied with a rubber band and flail away at the pillow case to shatter the heads, instead of putting the wheat on a threshing floor.

• Don't over-fertilize your wheat or it may "lodge," meaning it may grow too tall and then fall over.

References

• Walden Effect: Harvesting, Threshing, Winnowing, and Dehulling Backyard Grains
• "Small-scale Grain Raising"; Logsdon; 2009