Any small grain farmers on here?

We grow vegetables and I have never grown small grains and do not know the first thing about them.
My question is does a seed cleaner, dehull and remove the chaff or do you need to use a dehuller and then run grain through a cleaner?

What are some good brand units out there?

Thanks

seed cleaner is just that it cleans the seed. Why would you want to remove the hull

Grains like spetl have a hull on them that must be removed if you want to grind them into flour.

Should ay spelt- not spetl

If you are talking about wheat the hull comes off in the threshing process. Cleaning will remove any foreign material from the sample like
bits of straw, chaff, weed seeds.

I think very few of us on here know what spelt is. I sure don't.

Spelt is a distinctive ancient grain in the same family as oats, wheat, barley, rye. google has good info.

There is quite a bit of Spelt grown around Lancaster Pa. For what I can tell it is very nearly like wheat in the way its grown and processed. The straw is good also.

I have grown spelts here in North-East Iowa. Your cultivation practices will be the same as you would for wheat. The spelts will mature a little later than wheat. Maybe a week on average.

As for fertility I put down 75 lbs. of potash in the fall worked in before drilling them in. I usually plant a 1 1/2 bushels per acre. I want a good cover. The experts say 1 bushel is enough. If everything goes right that will work but if the fall is dry then you will not have a high enough population for a good yield. I like to have them planted the first few weeks of Oct. here. That way they have good growth for spring. Do not plant it too early in the fall if you live very far south, The fall growth will get too tall and that increases the chance of winter kill. In the spring before they grow too much I applied 1/3 of a unit of nitrogen per bushel of anticipated yield. DO NOT over apply the nitrogen as the plant will grow too tall and it will lodge before you can harvest it. So for a sixty bushel crop you would do: 60 x.33 /.46 = 43 Lbs. of 46% Urea per acre. My usual yield is in the 60-80 bushel per acre range. I have had it reach 100 BPA once.

The straw is much like wheat straw. The only difference is it is more palatable to animals. So some horse people complain that their horses eat too much of it if they use it for bedding.

For seeding proposes you do not have to remove the hull. So if your saving your own seed to plant then just cleaning it to remove foreign material is good enough. If your going to sell it for milling then I would dehull it and then run it through cleaner to remove any remaining hulls an foreign matter.

Spelts are and excellent cattle feed. That is what I raise it for. It is wonderful for starting calves on feed. There is enough fiber that it about impossible for a calf to founder on it. It usually is in the 12-13% protein range. So it is a pretty good feed alone. I often feed it with just a mineral mixed in the creep feeders. Neighbor buys it off me when I have extra. He says it helps him not have scours in his bottle calves. Mature cattle really eat it well too so it must taste good to them.

I've never seen spelt.

Oats and barley you don't remove the hull, just plant. Generally pretty forgiving crops to plant, spread it and get some dirt over it, hope for a bit
of rain and good. A drill is a little more precise, but broadcasting works great too.

Paul

Interesting.

Did not know it was a winter crop, a winter wheat. They say they don't know of a spring type, and it sounds like it is not terribly winter hardy so wouldn't grow up here in MN.

Looks like what is grown in the USA is concentrated in Ohio.

So, it's related to winter wheat, came about by a natural hybredation from 8000 years ago, and possibly another hybredation in Europe also.

Related to wheat, has a hull like barely, weights and feeds like oats.

Paul
Spelt

There is really no small combine available to harvest small grains these days and that's the problem growing small grains on a small scale.Used to be some small AC and IH combines around.
If you could get a hold of a plot combine that'd be the way to go but they are scarce and very expensive.For really small scale I know a guy that wanted to get enough of some wheat variety for seed he cut the wheat off short put it in a 55 gallon barrel and used a weed eater to thresh it out.

Just to clarify, Spelt is indeed wheat. It often gets called by its own name, but so does Durum. Both Durum and Spelt are types of wheat, just like a Angus and a Brown Swiss are types of cattle. There have been lawsuits when farmers have tried to market "spelt" as something other than wheat.

Know a guy from the farmer's market that was making tortillas. They were really good! He wad corn ones, wheat ones, and "spelt". I told him one time that I thought Spelt was wheat (what I learned in school). "No, no..." came the response. Within the year, someone complained to the Department of Ag, and they made him re-do his label.

Spelts, spelled with an S on the end. Spelts contains no gluten, so is often used in baking for people who are intolerant to gluten. Some of My Amish neighbors raise this mainly as animal feed, and some is sold to Amish communities in northern Indiana for milling and Spelts flour can be bought in the Amish health food stores.

Gene

Spletlt or spelts does is NOT gluten free.

Your Dept of Ag has its work cut out for it as there are hundreds of ads for Spelt all over the place.Really Spelt is a distinct form of wheat and looks and feels different from regular wheat.Do the gov't folks in your area make Yam growers
and sellers say Yam Sweet Potatoes as all Yams I have ever seen sold just say Yams?Guess they'll be jumping on restaurants that advertise Angus steaks too.

I would disagree that Spelt and Wheat are like Angus and Brown Swiss.
The reason the FDA classifies spelt as wheat is both have gluten.
For me spelt and wheat are the same thing like sugar made from beets and sugar made from cane are the same thing.

Thank you JD seller. There is a lot of good info in your post. Also you answered my question in that a cleaner will not dehull the spelt.

(quoted from post at 06:46:38 02/11/18) I would disagree that Spelt and Wheat are like Angus and Brown Swiss.
The reason the FDA classifies spelt as wheat is both have gluten.
For me spelt and wheat are the same thing like sugar made from beets and sugar made from cane are the same thing.

Click to expand...

Yes, Spelt and wheat are similar and both containing gluten according to
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/what-is-spelt#section1

Direct quote: BOTTOM LINE:
Spelt is a type of wheat. Its nutrition content is very similar to wheat, and it is high in gluten.

So do you seed it like wheat and harvest like wheat? Is the coloring same as wheat? How do your yields compair to your wheat? And if you have a market for it how is price?

I live in Ohio and have never seen it that I know of, if I saw it did not know what it was. Not a normal crop here

Just what is a durum wheat, have heard of it but no idea what the difference is to other wheat?

Durum is wheat grown for pasta. While some is obviously grown in Italy, In the US it's production is in North and South Dakota and a little in NW MN. It's also grown in the Manitoba and SK if I remember correctly.

Back in the the day in a grain crops class, we had to identify all the different classes of wheat. Spelt was one, Club wheat another, Eincorn and 3 or four others I don't remember. Also different classes of barley, etc. Had to be able to ID them all from the head, the seed, and the young sprouted plants. The young sprouted plants was the hardest- telling rye from barley or wheat when they are just a couple of leaves takes some doing.

Hardly. I'm told their biggest gripe about calling it SPelt was that it was also claimed Spelt was gluten free, which wasn't true.

Maybe a poor analogy. Perhaps a poodle and a German Shepard both being dogs would be better? Keep in mind though, a Brown Swiss is a fair amount different than an Angus- average days of gestation being about 10 days longer is one.

Leroy you plant and harvest it just like winter wheat. The mature plant is bearded so it looks more like barley than wheat. The yields I get are usually about the same as wheat 70-100 BPA. The determining factor in the yields we get is the weather. We usually are too wet in the spring so the funguses get started that limit your yields. Some of the best wheat and spelt yields I have ever had are in real dry springs, not drought but dry. As for markets there is not any commercial markets any where near me. I feed 100% of what I produce. Well I sell some to other livestock producers but it is not a real cash crop. The straw is worth just about as much as the grain. The straw is usually really bright and clean if you do not get too many rains around harvest time. I have two different dairy guys that will take all I want to sell for $3 a small square bale.

I usually plant around 50-75 acres a year. This year I did not get any planted as we got too much wet weather at seeding time. Also I still have around 2500 bushels left for prior years. I am wanting to clean the small bin completely out as it has not been totally empty in 4-5 years.

Leroy the picture of it growing does not show the beard on it like mine does in person. The picture of the harvested grain is: The left side is dehulled spelts. The right side is how they normally look right from the combine. I try and keep the hulls on as they increase the fiber I want for my livestock rations.

Connie Minnie You correct that spelts are a subspecies of wheat. It is an old grain but NOT in Biblical times/Egypt like many modern text say. They are derived from more northern Europe area. They do date back to BC times just not south of the Mediterranean Sea.

I think the issue was trying to claim it was "spelt and not wheat" you can certainly sell spelt with a label of "spelt" on it, but you can't make claims that it is not wheat.

paul

What is your business plan for the grains? Do you intend to seel grain for buyers to make flout? Or will you be milling the grain.