Fodder from soup to nuts, or maybe seed to feed?

I know I have posted about fodder before, in this post in November I really thought I had it all figured out. WRONG, just like anything else in agriculture I am coming to believe that no-one ever has it all figured out. This Facebook Group has really educated me about how woefully uninformed I am. Todays post is going to outline day 1 of my fodder process, please feel free to share your differences or similarities.

Soak Bucket

I switched to 80 oz. Painters buckets from lowes or home depot, they are cheap and just the right size for soaking. The larger buckets I was using didn’t seem to give me as consistent germination rate, my theory is that with the seeds being spread out more some areas would dry out more than others. Who knows?

Red Wheat

Today’s batch is Red Wheat with a bit of safflower mixed in. Why safflower? My Sweety, Karen, had given my a bag of sprout mix intended for parrots and it was mostly Safflower and had gotten dumped in my bucket before I moved to my current process. Now rather than just one big bucket of sprouting seeds I keep two; the first is primarily Red Wheat with a diminishing amount of safflower, the second is 100% barley. Right now the barley is producing the prettiest fodder but I still rotate, one day barley the second wheat. Why?  Variety I guess, I don’t have any real reason other than it feels like the right way.

1.7o Ounces of wheat seed

A recent change I have made is reducing the amount of seed per batch from 4.5 cups to 3 cups. The wheat was fermenting a bit and I decided to see if reducing the depth of the seed bed in the trays would help, I’ll let you know if it does. Today Karen brought her kitchen scale home so that I can track what my seed to fodder conversion is, I keep reading of 1-6 and 1-7 ratios but don’t know.

Soaking the seed

Seed Draining

The seed gets soaked for about 6 hours, I tried longer soaks but definitely saw an increase in funk with the 24-36 hour soak times. During the soak period I lift and plunge the buckets several times thinking that the agitation will help thoroughly wet the seed and help keep down the funk via aeration. After soaking the seed stays in the buckets being wet down daily for two days at which time they get dumped into the trays. I will outline that process in my next post.

Soaking/Laundry Sink

P.S. This sink that my Sweety got me was one of the best improvements in the process so far! Outside the critters were always getting into my stuff, and in the kitchen Karen was always in my stuff. Now that the whole operation is confined to the Laundry room things are much smoother and controllable.

 

 

Who says Main Street is dying ?

My Sweety, Karen, needs space at the new homestead for her business supplies. She has a 10×10 shed at the Griffith House but it just isn’t practical to move. Ideally we wanted to get a 25′ or so long construction office trailer or a conex but with construction picking up the prices of these have risen out of our price range. My good friend Paul,

Paul was my Hero growing up on Isabelle.

the modern day Fred Sanford, has been on the lookout for a solution. The first try is affectionately known as “The Bomb Shelter”

“The Bomb Shelter”

is surplus from The Nevada Test Site, is built like it was intended to survive a nuclear blast, and seems to have a faint glow on moonless nights. While a definite hit with Ajax it would be fair to say Tuey was a bit underwhelmed. Sensing the lack of enthusiasm surrounding his first try good ole Pauly went into all out scrapper solution mode. The result being “The General Store”

The General Store

While not in anyway fitting Tuey’s original vision I think this 10’x20′ beauty may make the grade.

 

Offloading and setup was a bit of fun (Tommy kept running away squealing louder than Alexa cause he was scared!) but the final result came out just a bit of OK

General Store next door to the Jail

Things are slowly starting to shape up around here, we finally moved in last month…sort of…but thats a story for another time.