The Wiebe family hard at work helping up do more hand threshing: | |
Then later that day, Jed put the hand threshed stuff into this motor powered thresher to break up any larger quinoa panicles. The third process happens in the winnower that you can see in the left towards the back of Jed. Dusty business.
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Quinoa was planted in April. Four months flew by with the garden, school and other projects and now its harvest time. Jed, Joel and Zoey harvesting the dry early ripened plants, leaving the colorful plants to ripen hopefully before any major rains. Beautiful eh?! Too bad the bugs and mildew got to eating a good portion of the crop before us. However growing quinoa in a multitude of conditions is favourable for developing a landrace. As we continue to save seed from plants that resists bugs, mildew, ripen early and other factors we hope to have quinoa that is well adapted to grow on the property and hopefully on other peoples land in the Shuswap area. Before planting the mix up of 12+ quinoa varieties by wheel hoeing the area behind Jedidiah. The far right corner is sloping downwards and is more sandy. Last year the plants were smaller in height, yield was okay. Closer to the two cedar trees is more rich moist soil. Will the shade cast by the trees stunt growth? UPDATE: Sept 20th 2014, quinoa planted in semi shade did grreat! Compared to the sandy dry and sunny spot (quinoa: 2ft, not much yeild), the shady area with richer soil produced taller (4-6ft, good yield!) did well. Whats the difference between lambsquarters and quinoa? watch this short video http://youtu.be/BbB2HCCcuIA to hear and see the difference. We have tried winnowing quinoa by hand with the wind. That works. We have winnowed quinoa with a mill and fan and that works too. Then we made a seed cleaner that acts with a vacuum from plans found here. These all work fine in our opinion on a small application. As we grow more quinoa (40lbs winnowed quinoa in 2013) we hope to learn a more effective way of processing it. This im sure is also what Andean growers (and researchers all over the world now) have been working on too. So this January we tried the Five in One seed cleaner at Golden Ears farm with some success. This machine can be outfitted with differing sized cylinders (with different sized holes) depending on the grain being processed. Since we didn't have the correct sized cylinder (it was set up for buckwheat, I think) we did what we could. We modified the main cylinder by tapping a piece of cardboard to cover the holes. If we hadn't, quinoa would just fall through at that stage. The final verdict below... The final verdict: this machine was slow (A few gallons took a few hours) and its quite loud... and the machine tossed some "good" quinoa in the reject pile. Would we use it again? Not for this application.
Hello quinoa enthusiasts from White Rock, Enderby, Blind Bay, Cherryville, Oyama, Vernon, Malakwa, Kamloops, Tapen, White Lake, Sicamous, Salmon Arm (our home town:), Mayne Island, and beyond! Did I miss someones town/city?
We met at this years Enderby Seed Swap. Remember you took home a little brown envelope with the Quinoa Project stamped on it? If you haven't already, get those seeds out and plant your quinoa anywhere you have space. (See below if you need some basic growing instructions). You each signed up your emails because, i'm guessing you want to contribute to the quinoa growing community and you're interested in sharing your experience of growing and eating quinoa locally, right? AND you also want to take part in the online discussion about quinoa - the first forum dedicated to all things quinoa ! Hope so : ) Jed and I are really looking forward to hearing about what you discover this growing season so we can learn from you - all experiences are valuable lessons. Got some questions? Have something to share? Why not post your thoughts on the forum for the growing quinoa community to learn from? Right here: http://quinoaproject.weebly.com/forum.html All the best to you, your family and community this spring, (Happy mothers day to you and to Mother Earth!) Sarah Lecouffe Axtell and Jedidiah Wiebe quinoaproject.org/quinoaproject.weebly.com Here are some quinoa growing instructions from Salt Spring Seeds: "Plant as early in spring as the ground can be worked. Grains don't require very fertile soil. Too much nitrogen may cause plants to fall over (lodge) in wind or rain. For best yields, sow in rows the first year. In subsequent years, seed may be broadcast. Plant seeds about an inch (2.5cm) apart and cover lightly. Harvest when the grain is fully ripe by picking or cutting individual heads. Alternately, stems can be cut when 50% yellow, tied into sheaves and leaned together in a shock to cure for a week or two. Thresh by hand rubbing or foot stomping." The local lambsquarters, quinoas cousins has sprouted so its probably a good time to seed quinoa. But first we must prep the land. Preparing 1/3 acre of land for quinoa planting can seem like a big task when you're using hand tools. While we could use tractor to till the land and this would be faster its important to us to not break up the soil networks (fungi, bacteria). The wheel hoe only penetrates through the top few inches of soil in order to cut off weeds... In just half a days work, the two of us got it prepped. We decided to rack the weeds/stones into windrows this year, we'll see how that goes. The green unweeded area is where we mostly grew quinoa last year. Its wetter there and we found the plants got tall and many fell over during a windy period. We'll be growing in the left hand side that has been wheel hoed and deweeded. We're trying out a windrow like technique of piling the weeds and rocks into rows that will parallel the quinoa rows.
Lambs quarters (quinoas weedy relative) is already growing so it is certainly time to seed quinoa. Above we are preparing the land by picking up last years quinoa stems. Last year we thought we'd pull the stems and root ball out and hope that the stems would decompose and the earth would dislodge off the roots balls over time. Over the winter and early spring, they did not. In the fall this year we will leave the stocks standing (rather than pull them out and leave them on the ground) because the root ball rots off from the stem. The only reason we are removing them is because our hand wheel hoe that we built can't move through big stems. This year we will be planting mostly in the high, sandy and dry area of the field. Previously those grown in the wetter region grew very tall (6ft) and would fall over with a sudden burst of wind (something that is not typical for Salmon Arm, but it does happen). Here are two early volunteers in the field: mullein (left) and dandelion (right) - two of my favourite medicines :)
While at the Young Agrarians Mixer this past weekend held at Summerhill winery in Kelowna we tried out Mojaves Kaplan's seed winnower. Over the past year i've scoured the internet to find affordable hand tools that can aid in quinoa growing and processing. On some youtube videos featuring Andean quinoa farming collectives they have purchased and used a machine very similar to the one Mojaves brought. We came to the mixer with a few gallons of quinoa that passed through a 5 in 1 seed cleaner at Golden Ears farm then winnowed with the contraption we build. Turns out Mojaves crank winnower/cleaner does do a better job! Nice! April 21st, some info about the above hand crank fanning mill from Mojave:
"about winnowers. You can get them from us, Planting Seeds Project.........we're the distributors. It's a hand crank fanning mill with two baffle adjusters, allowing the cleaning of light seed as well as heavy seeds like grains and beans. It's used to separate cut and sifted herbals. Stems and leaf from berry collections, etc............ Used in the field internationally all over the world. No screens are required for the winnower itself...............all hand screens can be applied............. (Unlike electric fanning mills that require the exact correct screens, and there are 70 sizes for instance for the clipper office model ............. refer to the p 38 of the 2014 High Mowing Seeds Catalogue.)" Im told a grain grower in Tappen "says that this winnower cleans just as well (post combine) as his electric screened fanning mill. He is not able to clean his barley seed for lack of the right sized screens" We just got 12 new varieties of quinoa in the mail today! This includes GQU-7353 Faro, Pedro's Select Strain Quinoa, Shelly 25 Black Quinoa and Temuko Quinoa to name a few. When we first grew quinoa we started with 5 varieties from a west coast seed company. We saved seed from the plants that grew well (those that survived in our conditions) and continued the process every year. Then we realised that promoting diversity, genetic diversity to be specific, in the long run became more important than short term high yields. Thats why we are going to grow all the varieties together this year and focus more on selecting seed for the purpouses of developing a resilient quinoa landrace. If anyone out there is growing quinoa (especially a unique variety) and wants to contribute to the Quinoa Project, send your seed our way. To the Enderby Seedy Saturday attendee: it was really awesome to have met you all ! Its also really awesome and encouraging to hear about how enthusiastic folks are about growing food their own quinoa locally.
Quinoa has different names. In the Andean area the names ranges between regions and from one country to another outside of the Andean area names vary by language.
In Peru: Quinoa, Jiura, Quiuna, in Colombia: Quinoa, Suba, Supha, Uba, Luba, Ubalá, Juba, Uca, in Ecuador: Quinoa, Juba, Subacguque, Ubaque, Ubate, in Bolivia: Quinoa, Jupha, Jiura; Chile: Quinoa, Quingua, Dahuie, in Argentina: Quinoa, quiuna. Quechua : Kiuna, Quinoa, Reaper. Aymara : Supha, Joppa, Jupha, Jauira, Aara, Ccallapi, Vocali, Jiura. Azteca : Huatzontle. Chibcha : Suba, Supha, Pasca. Spanish: Quinoa, Quinoa, Quingua, Triguillo, inca Wheat Arrocillo, rice Peru, Kinoa. English: Quinoa, Quinoa, Kinoa, Swet quinoa, rice Peruvian Inca rice, rice Petty. French: Anserine quinoa, Riz of peruo, Petit Peruo riz of quinoa. Italian : Quinoa, Chinua. Portuguese: Rice miudo do Peru, Espinafre do Peru, quinoa. German: Reisspinat, Peruanischer reisspinat, Reismelde, Reis-gerwacks, Inkaweizen. India: Vathu. China: Han. Mujica S., Angel, Izquierdo, Juan, Jacobsen, Sven-Erik, & Jean-Pierre Marathee eds. (2001) Capitulo I. Origen Y Descripcion de la Quinoa. In Cultivos Andinos Version 1.0 Quinoa Chenopodium quinoa Willd. FAO. Chili: Santiago. http://www.rlc.fao.org/es/agricultura/produ/cdrom/contenido/libro03/home03.htm The Quinoa Project will be at this years local Seedy Saturday!
Find us at on March 1st, 2014 10am to 3pm at A.L. Fortune Secondary School, Enderby BC We have a table booked and we are looking forward to meeting potential collaborators in the Quinoa Project (with quinoa seeds to give away!). We will have a sign-up sheet for participating in the soon to be launched quinoa forum and we'll have the seed cleaner we built for quinoa on display. The event sounds like a lot of fun. There will be speakers, presentations, vendors, food, a demonstration area for new ideas and skills and a seed swap spot too. See ya there! After scouring the internet to find an affordable machine or better yet someone making their own seed cleaner for cheap we found some plans. Is this machine truly suited for small scale quinoa growers? We're not sure yet. Some experimenting is in order. It is winter time. Now the land is covered in snow. Nevertheless we worked on cleaning the quinoa. After harvesting earlier in the fall we threshed then stored the seeds all mixed with dried leaves, stems and fine dirt. So today we finally got on to the processing part. We attached a metal rod to a electric drill and put the bent end of the rod into the bucket filled with the unrefined quinoa mash. This method broke down the quinoa clumps/clusters and bigger stems to a satisfactory size. Has anyone ever used a winnower for quinoa? Or has anyone built a machine for separating the undesirable particles from the quinoa seed? We'd love to hear about it. Now we are ready to start so we can eat. But first we must build a winnower. We will try this seed cleaner with open source plans. |
Jedidiah / SarahWe have been growing and eating quinoa since 2009. Follow our seasons as we learn and grow with quinoa in the Shuswap, British Columbia, Canada. Archives
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