Whole Wheat from the Ground Up

Last fall, as an extension of the first grade Plants and Animals FOSS kit (FOSS is the hands on science curriculum), Ms. Fisher's first grade class planted wheat during garden time. At first we measured the wheat plants' growth, but after a while gave up as it got taller than the students, taller than our yard sticks.

The first seeds we planted, blue beard wheat seeds grown in a community garden in Martinez, which I had gotten from a seed saving exchange at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, did not sprout well. So on December 1st we replanted red winter wheat seeds from the wheatberries grown at Full Belly Farm in the Capay Valley. I bought those at the farmers' market in Berkeley.

The students noticed new kinds of insects attracted to the wheat (soldier beetles, which eat aphids), and differences between the seed heads. They learned that wheat seeds go through stages before they can be harvested--first the "milk" stage, where each seed oozes a white liquid when squeezed, then the "dough" stage. Finally, the seed is dry and hard, ready to be harvested, threshed, and ground into flour.

We harvested, threshed, and ground the wheat the last week of school, and Ms. Fisher made whole wheat banana muffins with her class on the last day, to rave reviews from the children. I saved some of the wheat berries from Ms. Fisher's wheat, so the first grades this year will plant these seeds (before December this time, since it takes at least six months to reach maturity). This is how our ancestors propagated and developed different varieties over time. If we kept saving and planting the wheat seeds we grew every year, eventually we'd develop our own heirloom variety of wheat specially adapted to our soil and climate--we could call it the "Redwood Heights School" variety of wheat.