# Hw do I harvest wheat and oats?



## RUN1251 (Mar 15, 2012)

We planted several plots of oats and wheat lasts fall for our deer. They didn't eat everything, so we have quite a lot of green oats and wheat with plump green seed heads. How and when would I harvest the seed heads to store?


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## RUN1251 (Mar 15, 2012)

Sorry, we have oats not oaks.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

It isn't easy to harvest and thresh grain by hand.
With regards to when to harvest, this depends a lot on the conditions of your area. Take a head of wheat and break it up in the palm of your hands, like you are trying to warm them up, then blow away the chaff. A wheat seed is mature and dry when it is hard to make a dent in the kernel with your fingernail, another way is to bite the kernel, it should break not squish. If the kernels are not mature when you squish it with your fingernail a liquid will squeeze out, it begins as something quite like milk and later turns to a doughy substance. If it is not possible to wait until the kernels are mature and dry it can be cut once it is in the doughy stage. If cut down while still milky the kernels will shrivel too much.
Oats is much the same except it never gets quite as hard. If you plan to use oats for human consumption you will have to somehow get the hull off of the seeds, not the easiest thing to do.


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## JustCliff (May 21, 2011)

check out some of the videos on Youtube. I have been pondering the same things. I think Machinist on here has some things he has made to do wheat with.


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

The way we did wheat when I was a kid was to cut the heads and put them in a 30 gallon drum then pound them with a fence post until it was all a mixture of grain and chaff.

We then dipped in a small bucket, let the grain drop back to the drum and the chaff blow away. It wasn't the fastest way to make it happen but it was cheap and effective.

Oats are quite a bit more difficult, as said above, the hulls have to be removed from the groat. Their are some attachments for small home grinders that have rubber lined plates(to "roll" the oat) that can do it but they are unreliable, slow and difficult to use. I've been thinking about trying to grow "Naked Oat", a verity that doesn't have a hull, the seed are pretty expensive and the yields are quite low.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

Good point about the hulless oats, there are actually quite a few varieties around now but they haven't really caught on because of yield, seed quality, resistance to damage etc. These factors might be outweighed by the difficulty with the hulls in a self-sufficiency situation. 

If the seed is to be used for livestock feed by the way, it is not necessary to remove the hull. Under certain circumstances there is a considerable benefit to cracking/rolling the grain but the hull need not be removed.

Some varieties of bearded wheat are also much easier to thresh than non-bearded varieties, of course this means the kernels are more susceptible to damage before harvest.

Barley would be good to consider as well, very easy threshing (mostly just getting the beards off the seed) and no hull to remove. It is more susceptible to damage while standing that most wheat however.


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