The Grain Project 2

We have finally completed our grain project that we started way back in May.  I don’t think it was as successful a project as growing wheat was in the past.  The Kamut, Triticale and Oats were the only grains that we were really able to harvest.

The soybeans (centre of photo) seemed to do well — at least to the point when this picture was taken – but since they are not really a grain we didn’t include them in the harvest.

The biggest problem with this year’s grain project was the lack of cohesion.  Attendance was sporadic and we had so many changes to the group.  Some of the children that were here for the planting were not here for the growing and harvesting.  The summer children that were here for the growing and havesting had little interest in the project because they did not understand the history behind it.

Still, we did manage to complete the project.  We did not use all the grains.  Since the oats were the most abundant crop we used them.  The children separated the oat kernels from the rest of the plants.  It took a really long time over several weeks because it was a very tedious process.

 

The wheat was much easier to work with than this;

After some research we discovered that ‘steel cut oats‘ would be a more plausible product for us than rolled oats.  We did do some comparisons with our oats and store bought oats too;

Then for snack yesterday we had oatmeal made from a mixture of our oats and some steel cut oats that I purchased since we didn’t have enough patience to process all of ours.

MMmmmm!  Having tried these I will never go back to quick oats again.  However, most of the preschoolers were unimpressed — claiming this oatmeal was ‘too chewy’.