Doing research

Hi

I m currently doing some rough research to determine the viability growing my own grain for my mash bill as an option to changing my cast of grains for stability

For some back ground, I currently operate a very small orchard that produces the apple portion of my hard cider and ale and I m looking into possibly growing the grains that I use in my ale mash.

Currently the scale I m looking at is under 8 acres but with 8 different grains, half of which is corn and the corn is represented by three heirloom varieties.

My thought was to use an old pull type combine like an old Deere 42 and use galvanized bulk feed bins for storage after cleaning and drying.

I do have about 20 acres that would be better suited for grain, and I really only need use 5-10 trying to figure out if it is worth it.

What would the professionals suggest someone use for small scale craft grain gardening?

Lets look at this question from a different perspective.
Is this grain you are thinking of growing in anyway
rarer? Can you buy a suitable product on the market
currently? Do you intend to grow this crop with out the
aid of fertilizer and herbicide? And lastly can you sell
whatever extra product you grow for a premium price?

I am not going to try to say you cant grow a crop of
grain without fertilizer or herbicide, but the quality of
the grain ( pounds per bushel ) will be far lower than if
it is grown conventionally.

Time you put in the effort, capital cost of equipment
,seed and fuel, you may be faster ahead to just
purchase what you need. And remember when you
purchase grain, you pay according to the grade, when
you grow your own, what you grow is what you get

Hey, thanks for the quick response.

The corn side of the equation is a roller coaster season to season. These are heirloom strains that I use more for the flavors they impart rather the fuel used to make ethanol.

I scrambled last year which is the third time in a decade to find a source for bloody butcher that wasn t asking an acre of land for a metric ton.

To give you an idea. In the heirloom and craft markets, little ripples have big impact and a 50lb bag of medium cracked heirloom can go well into triple digits for something so trivial as a media video.

If I break even and have 2 extra weeks of my time because I didn t have to scour every mill house in the continental US to cobble together. 2 ton purchase that I have to transport . It will have been worth it.

My initial thought, without making public my mash bills, was 4 acres of corn and using my barley, oats, wheat, and rye requirements for cover crops and just rotating seasonally.

As for pesiticides . I need more research.

Yes, dealing with fertility and weeds is going to be the problem on 5-10 acres with most crops being 1 acre in size. Big for a hoe, small for a tractor and cultivator.

Knowledge for growing the diverse crops might lead to some poor crops and disasters, learning ph and soil tests and getting your soil in good condition for the crops,
balancing NPK and micro nutrients to get a good yield worth bothering with. Organic or conventional makes no difference, need to get your dirt right either way. Seeding
rate, depth, timing.... a lot to learn on 5 different crops.

Keeping your corn true will be another problem, growing those open pollinated so close to each other they will cross pollinate. You will need to buy seed every year,
which eliminates one of the good points of growing open pollinated.

A combine as you mention with a corn head option will do it. Good ones are getting rare.

You might want to consider a simpler combine without a corn head plus an ear corn picker. You wont need to switch heads on the combine which is often a full day of
effort on the old stuff, plus ear corn you can store wetter and allow to air dry. shell later with a simple sheller. Storing wet shelled corn is a disaster, drying small
quantities is a challenge economically. Some feel quality is much better drying on the ear. Storing ear corn you need a crib structure those, something that allows air to
flow through.

Some random thoughts. If I sound negative I actually think its a great idea, just have your eyes wide open.

Paul

Can you grow everything successfully in your area? An example would be: I can grow great malting barley here, but my
close proximity to lake Michigan means damp days & evenings come harvest time. There is a good chance the barley will dry
down enough to combine. It's the risk of it sprouting in the field that makes it a bad idea. Especially if it's organic &
weedy. That could end up being a nightmare. Hops does great. Finding a decent Spring to start them in is a challenge.
We've had some very late frosts/freezes here, on into mid to late May. Corn & other small grains would do fine here.

Just food for thought.

Mike

For planting a grain drill will probably handle all your crops except corn. Pretty simple and easy and cheap they kind of spill out an amount of seed and kind of plant about so and so deep which is fine for most small grains and beans.

Corn you plant much less seed per acre and the corn is much more fussy about being planted the exact same depth and somewhat spaced apart.

The older plate planters need carefully sized seed; the newer finger or air plate planters dont mind just random sized seed; they often have much much better depth control as well. So you have to decide if you can get sized seed or just any old seed for the corn planter. Yes Im being very picky here you can get by blocking off 3 out of 4 holes in the grain drill with tape and grind your corn seed through the drill to plant some corn: but your results will show the lack of care with this!

As a farmer I try to say the right way to raise a crop. You can get by with less but it depends on what results you want to end up with.

Having both corn and (I assume) small grains makes for a lot more machinery needed, corn is different.

Im sure on 10 acres you will be told you could plant by hand and weed by hand and harvest by hand.... And you could. But Im guessing you want to spend your time with your brewing, not 10 hours a day in the field every day!

And one more time: weed control is going to be your headache. Once you see weeds enough to say oh I should do something.... you will be a week late and never catch up! Beginning farmer mistake #1.

Paul

Unless you are going to grow all the corn organically chemical application for weed control would be fairly easy to do with not a lot of work. For the small grains if you can Clean the field up ahead of time them plant on the thick side it will help with weed control. Fertility and PH will go a long ways towards weed control since some don't like sweet ground and some don't like sour ground. What is the likely hood of being able to contract grow some with another farmer in the area. This would allow you to have a stable supply without spending all your time in the field. Also would allow you to have a basic supply still buying some of the fill in volume. Bloody Butcher is a sweet corn from what I have seen in the garden catalogs.

Vegetable canneries, meat packers, and seed companies routinely hire experienced local farmers under contract to custom grow their raw inputs for them. That might also work for a distiller to hire someone to grow distillers grains. The contract details can be written to meet your needs. Would you be able to market any excess grain produced?

Wow lot s of input and questions.

I ll do the questions first.

Can I grow everything here?

I have to say that I m unsure. The corn and wheat, yes. I bucked enough winter wheat straw and hay as a teen to be confident in that, and until last year two of my heirloom corn strains we grown 2 and 17 miles from my back yard. I just assumed the other small grains would as well which I shouldn t have.

I am in east central Illinois, closer to Purdue than I am Chicago or Indy.

Have I considered a contract grower?

I have and I have used plenty of them. The problem is that either what I need is too big of a hassle and I hunt for a new grower on short notice and hope I find one I mean . I could go on about contract growers for days . I m here because I can t rely on contract growers.

Can I source other grains?

The small grains are not an issue to source by any means. They re pretty standard industry wide and I do my own malting and corn milling. It s the corn that is the issue.

I just, in my pedestrian understanding of Midwest grain farming, assumed that I could make use of cover crops to harvest small grains and plant corn where the previous seasons cover had been planted. So that I would essentially plant corn and harvest small grains in the spring and flip those in the fall.

Small grains are not a necessity, but I thought I may as well try and grow all of my mash bill.

Are the grains marketable . Could I sell excess?

The heirloom corn? Yes. I took a big loss at the end of October in order to meet my contractual obligations because a semi viral TikTok video about one heirlooms I use and a grower ghosting me.

It ended with me flying to Austin from Illinois in order to rent a Ryder and have it filled at a miller s with $2.13/lb medium cracked of this variety. I forget what I paid in fuel it was sickening. The price per pound included the milling fee that was discounted.

I can sell any of my varieties at 0.80/lb in 50lb quantities all day un-milled . Or even as bulk in many cases to other brewers, certainly distillers, and to a mill as a last resort.

Paul mentioned a picker/husker for corn over a combine and crib storage, and I believe using a combine for small grains . and shelling the corn after crib drying. Who made what that s worth looking for? Is there anything that was cheap and common?

If you were me, AND you have decided to do this . What older machinery are you looking for specifically?

Until the late 1960s most combine heads were not easy to swap from a grain head to a corn head and back. By then most combines were 4 row narrow or bigger. Corn heads need to match the row spacing of the corn planter. A 1970s or 1980s small 4 row unit would meet your needs if you can still find one in usable condition. At that age condition and parts availability will mean much more than brand, stay with popular models as more parts will be available from salvage yards. Deere, IH, and Gleaner were popular brands. Gleaner has a reputation for being easiest to repair.

Pull type combines are generally limited to the grain head that is on the combine as very few corn heads were ever made for them. Allis Chalmers pull type combines had a good reputation for producing clean grain. A Scour-Klean attachment cleaned the grain before it went into the grain tank. Replacing the canvas in draper heads can be expensive.

Try advertising in antique tractor club news letters to find an older well cared for combine sitting in the back of someone's shed.

Sounds like you need more equipment and expertise than you're likely to gain fast enough to make this work in less than multiple years. If that doesn't trouble
you, have at it. Go to antique tractor shows, talk to people, learn about equipment. Maybe you could generate interest in having a group take part in this endeavor
in exchange for a banquet with plenty of that ale at the end of the season. Maybe get some FFA kids involved, maybe not in the ale part.