An accidental crop of 31 pounds of whole rye grains safely stored in large glass jars rests on my pantry floor. In our island’s history, I am hardly the first to grow rye. Not only did early settlers grow it for a bread grain, but it was needful for at least one sort of whiskey that I can think of. I’ll bet my hand-knit socks, though, that I am the first in a decade or four, or more, to grow some to eat, and I didn’t even do it on purpose.
That rye was meant to be a cover crop. Planted in late summer as soon as a vegetable crop is cleared, winter rye sprouts up and covers bare ground, holds the soil, and prevents weeds from taking over. In the spring it grows until one tills it into the ground, whereupon it rots, adding organic material and enriching the soil. Short on time this spring, I did not till it into the ground, but let it grow in a section of the garden I decided to leave fallow this summer. The rye grew as summer wore on, tall, thick, luxuriantly. It was beautiful, and I admired it very much. Soon it was taller than me.
Sometime in July, I began to notice seed heads forming with the distinctive v-shaped grains lining the stem and straight bristly strands at the ends. I picked a head and plucked out the grains and chewed them. I ought not to have been surprised that they tasted like grass, only sweeter. Still, I did not decide that harvesting rye was my goal.
It took a visit from my niece Sarah, who looked at the rye and said, “Let’s harvest this.” I agreed in principle, not sure how we would accomplish it. Or more importantly, when.
In earlier times, it seems ordinary people like me carried around so much practical daily knowledge that we modern have lost, including things like how to tell when grain was ripe. Nowadays, I leave such matters to experts. Enter old friends visiting on their way from the Skowhegan Kneading Conference in late July. Paula and Pret used to work at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Massachusetts where the staff recreates early 1600s life. Paula had harvested grain, and accompanied me to the garden where we tested a few seed heads and noticed how easily many grains slipped from their sheaths. Clearly, it was time to gather up the rye before all the seed fell back to the ground.
Paula and Pret sickled the whole crop, formed sheaves, bound them with twisted strands of rye, and stacked them upright in two shocks looking for all the world like a painting of medieval farm life. I ruined the look by heaving a piece of plywood on top to further protect it from rain. Paula recommended giving the sheaves a bit of time, maybe two weeks, to finish drying. Meanwhile, she gleaned, walking over the ground and picking up scattered seed heads that she and Pret threshed between their palms, blowing away chaff by holding handfuls up before their puffed cheeks. She boiled up the gleaned rye grains and we ate them for dessert with fruit and cream, wonderfully tender, succulent, sweet nubbins of rye bathed in sweet cream and sugar, sliced strawberries and whole blueberries scattered through.
I began to fantasize about rye pilaf, rye berry salad, and I wondered if I could possibly find my old grain mill from early back-to-the-lander days.
Meanwhile, my niece looked online to see how we might thresh the rye. One site described a way to create a frame of hardware cloth that we could set up on saw horses. She assembled it, and we took up bundles of straw and rubbed the heads over the hardware cloth, listening to the light patter of rye on the tarp below. A fan set on one side blew away some of the chaff.
We were surprised at how many rye grains accumulated on the tarp. We looked at each other, eyes wide with amazement, and kept rubbing. The little beards on the heads were tough and sticky, made our hands and forearms itch. The chickens broke in on us whenever they possibly could, eagerly, opportunistically, snapping up grains, before we sent them scurrying out of the barn. We threshed as cleanly as we could, waiting for a breezy day and slowly pouring the rye from a spackle bucket onto a tarp, but ended up eventually picking out a few remaining full seed heads to rub between our fingers to get the last few grains.
That was when we noticed that there were small critters, tiny pale worms mostly, in the grain and sent each pound through the freezer for a couple days to kill off insects before storing it.
Yes, it was laborious and impractical from a commercial point of view. We became hobbyist grain growers. Still, it was entrancing to run our hands through the rye and feel the small, smooth seeds run through our fingers.
The rye is delicious. Thank goodness it can be cooked whole without any further processing to remove a tough exterior. I’ve used it in soups as one would use barley. I made a salad based on a recipe for using whole-wheat berries. I made pilaf—a simmered, savory dish with onions and slowly absorbed broth. I still haven’t located my old grain grinder. Maybe it went to the rummage sale, but I really want it because I am now imagining steamed brown bread made in part with island-grown rye meal to go with the pot of island-grown baked beans, or a nicely sour loaf of rye bread with caraway seeds in it.
I suppose I could grow caraway, couldn’t I?