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.
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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.
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.
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" |
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
November 2014
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