Harvest (?) Day: Amaranth





Last summer we tried to grow a batch of amaranth (you can see the purple stuff behind Melissa in this photo from last July)


here in the garden, and also up closer to the house... the deer got the stuff closer to the house. By the time we picked it, we only had about a dozen flower heads, which we hung up to dry under the yurt and forgot about.

This week, we got them down, bashed them up in a bucket, and started the 'winnowing' process. Here's my attempts at getting the little sticks and stuff out of the bucket.


Melissa then did some of the classic 'winnowing', using the wind, she'd drop the seeds into the bucket below, and the chaf (seed shells) would blow away in the wind. You can't see it in this picture, but it's working.






Unfortunately, because of having only 12 flowers (and maybe because the mice got some of it over the winter) we basically got one meal's worth.


Still, a fun experiment, and makes me want to grow a big crop soon.