How To Make A Simple Grain Mill

 The other day I saw a great little grain mill on an online museum that are trying to preserve the history of milling. 

It was a mill that was carried by Swedish soldiers in the 30 year war (1600's) and later. The soldiers would have been issued one to mill there own grain as they would have been given grain over flour (guessing as it keeps so much better). It was made from birch, a wood abundant in Sweden and a hard, strong wood as that.

I decided it looked like fun to make and have a play with. So I did (it's also going to be a magazine article very soon in Woodturning magazine)!

It's a really fun project and one that makes a really tactile item that's fun to use. I wouldn't say it's the most efficient way of milling grain, but great to show the effort involved. 

Check out the video above for how I made it. 

Since having made it I left it on the side with some grain in, its taken ages to mill the grain down but each time one of us in this family has walked past we've all had a go. 

I should say it's more likely it was used to crack grain to make it easier to digest, but still you can imagine it would have been a very useful item. 

Have you milled much grain by hand?

Ever made anything to crack grains or make flour?

Planting Grains To Raise Seed Stock

 So I have a friend who is interested in this small scale grain raising like I am - I know I was as surprised as anyone! 

so he sent me a few grains to get going in my plot here, ones I could over winter. 

Hulless Oats

 I foolishly said on a previous post that threshing the grain wasn't the issue - Well it turns out I was wrong there as well. 

My hulless oats have been causing me trouble as well. 

Dehulling Machine Needed!

 I've grown a small amount of Emmer wheat with the hope of planting more of it next year, or potentially as a crop to over winter.

Its proving difficult to hull though. This isn't threshing - this is the act of removing the grain from it's protect hull - something that is a lot more suborn on these "less developed" grains.

Does anyone know of any open source plants to build a dehuller? Or seen a method that works well by hand. I'd rather not use heat as want all the seed to still be viable.

Currently thinking I'll get an old hand grinder and create rubber plates for the seed to rub through, which should take the hulls off. Although I'm open to suggestions!

Small Scale Grain - Amaranth

As a bit of an experiment this year I've tried to keep the two beds in my front garden looking nice but still be productive. 

A crop I chose for this duel purpose was Amaranth.

Small Scale Grain

So my plans for growing some more calories on our smallholding has already hit some setbacks. I had planned to turn the front lawn over to growing some grains and started to grow some grains as plug plants in the green house but unfortunately the mice put pay to that idea. 

Sorting grain - hull less on the left and the ones with hulls on the right

They ate most of my wheat seed and all of the hull less oats that I had when I started them in cells in the greenhouse. I managed to get some hull less barley growing and enough wheat to make a triple row.

Goodbye Front Lawn?

I've shared this on other forms of social media over the weekend and it's been interesting seeing the different comments from the other platforms.

I really dislike my scrappy front lawn. I never mow the grass so it always looks a right mess. I've already put raised beds on the one half (this is the other half) where I grow some crops over the summer. 

I'm now thinking I'd like to grow a small patch of cereal in this area.