Nice to know I'm not alone..............

................ in the world of small scale grain growing and my interest therein LOL.
A brilliant new book arrived in the post this morning - Small-Scale Grain Raising by Gene Logsdon. I've only got to page 27 so far, but am enthralled and have learned quite a few things already.
I've grown wheat and oats so far - just patches (albeit decent-sized patches) in the garden, but both successful. I grew enough oats from a tiny bought packet of seed to give myself enough to sow for a good sized patch next year; the wheat did superbly until the pigeons ransacked it, but I'll be ready for them this year LOL;the wheat will follow on from the potatoes, and the oats will go in in the spring further up the garden.
Mostly I had thrown at me the following type of comment "It's not worth growing that small amount, waste of time, waste of space , you don't know how to process it, you're weird..............."
OK, so it's not an acre of wheat, but to me it was well worth growing; I did quite a bit of research, learned an awful lot, got the seed in the ground, managed to grow it and would have processed it too had the pigeons not kindly obliged with that part of the proceedings ..........
For me, the knowledge and experience gained is priceless; I'll keep on with my small patches of crops - one day I might have several acres, then I'll be ready to get on and sow straight away having cut my teeth on a mini scale enterprise.Apart form all that, it's always interesting and challenging to grow something new, and the thought of growing the grain, handmilling it and baking it is too tempting to pass by for me.

Now - here's something the pigeons didn't get to before I did! I cut these yesterday, and they're hanging in the kitchen now to dry off for autumn/winter flowers. They're helichrysums, or everlasting flowers; I prefer the French "immortelles" for them. The colours are very rich and earthy, and they grew very well in between the asparagus plants once the spears had been harvested.