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« on: September 26, 2015, 09:32:38 AM »
Paul, I can only imagine the amount of work that goes into hand threshing. The threshing floors in biblical/olden times were very important places for the community. Probably took the whole community to bring the crop in for the season. We have a farmer about 45 mins north of us that grows grain on about 1500 acres, mostly rented land. He grows corn, wheat, millo, oats and soybeans. Its much cheaper/better to buy directly from the farmer. I asked about the hull-less oats, he said that they were only grown in Canada. Glad to hear you are able to grow them that far south. We used to see these oats named "Triple cleaned" oats for horses in our area, and we fed them in the fall for conditioning. Oats are higher in protein than most other grains except for beans/peas and they were quite expensive too. We are able to use the hulled oats for some birds but some will not eat them unless they are soaked/sprouted. We grew some spelt one year as a cover crop in the garden. It produced a good crop, took a long winter to summer to crop and was way too rough for the birds too eat. I can imagine how hard it must be to hull and thresh this for human or animal consumption. But it is reported to have less gluten than the wheat we use so much now.