pulling Rye

Left: Rye heads growing up above the wheat heads.

Well here at the farm we've been busy pulling rye. Had some passing car stop and ask what in the world we were doing. We said "pulling rye" He asked "What's that?" I explained it sort of looks like wheat but grows up above the wheat and kind of waves at you in the breeze like its sort of mocking us and just waiting to be pulled up by its roots. We'll that's what we've been busy with anyway. It takes a long time to keep it out of the fields but its sure worth the effort because the elevator will dock us $1.00 per bushel of wheat if they find any rye seeds in the wheat up to 3% and and will dock us $3.00 per bushel for anything over 3%. (at least so I've heard on the grapevine gossip tap) Makes that "clearfield" technology that you can spray your wheat and it removes everything else growing there sort of like roundup pretty attractive right about now. We've had my brother-in-law, future sister-in-law, a crew of 10 mexican field hands, 5 school kids, our full time farm hand, two part time hands, and two young women from town helping at the same time plus my humble self! Sure makes for fun conversation. We have a system. Pull it up, behead it and stuff it in a homemade rye bag. Then transfer it to a trash bag once you get to the side of the field and finally, feed it to the cows. Our good friend Phil Blahut suggested making rye bread with it. Today, I'ld rather starve. When its all finished though, a good sandwich made with rye bread sounds pretty good! r