Having our very own grain mill, and discovering that growing our own wheat isn’t too hard, has meant doing some calculations (I love our grain mill! I love calculations!)
1 cup of wheat berries makes about 1.5 cups of flour
We use about 25 cups of flour a week, so would need about 17 cups of wheat berries a week.
There are 52 weeks in a year, so that’s 884 cups of wheat berries a year.
884 cups is about 6 bushels.
The approximate yield of one acre of wheat in western Iowa is 5o bushels. So for us to grow 6 bushels, we’ll need to plant about 0.12 acres.
There are 43,560 square feet to an acre. So 0.12 acres is 5227 square feet.
So if we have a square plot of wheat, it should be approximately 72 feet long and wide to provide us with flour for a year. Plus a little extra to have seed for the following year.
We’ve got space for that.
Twitter
ShareThis
Ah, Anne, you make me laugh out loud! Have you figured deer, birds, bugs, and hailstorms into your calculations? What about an alien invasion, or evil villains attacking Headquarters?
— Cathy29 August, 2011 at 9:43 am
I’m not sure what all went into the “50 bushel yield for 1 acre” statistic. Hail and birds and bugs and deer, probably (although real farmers are probably better at minimizing those things then we are). Evil villains, probably not. We’ve also heard that yield goes up (to that 50 number?) when you know what you’re doing when it comes to harvesting, threshing, winnowing, etc. And we clearly don’t know what we’re doing yet.
Where I cut myself off, actually, was not writing out a formula (where x would be the amount of flour we need per week and y would give you how many square feet to plant, including that extra seed for next year bit).
— A29 August, 2011 at 2:09 pm
I love dimensional analysis with all my heart.
— Hélène Martin29 August, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Double that area and bake for local farmers market next time around!!
— Dana30 August, 2011 at 12:37 pm
I don’t suppose 72 sq ft is enough to justify buying a combine? I’ve always wanted to drive one of those.
— cja30 August, 2011 at 12:43 pm
72 ft squared I mean.
— cja30 August, 2011 at 12:43 pm
CJA, no, but maybe it will justify a scythe. And we might get to take a ride in our neighbor’s combine come harvest time!
— K30 August, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Ohhhh, so cool! I can’t wait to follow along with how that goes. Wish I had the space and the gut for wheat!
— Nicola18 September, 2011 at 11:44 pm
It’s like THE LONG WINTER by Laura Ingalls Wilder!
— Shannon1 October, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Shannon – You are not the first to reference Laura Ingalls Wilder as it relates to our life. We haven’t read the books since we were very very young, and plan to give them another go soon.
— a2 October, 2011 at 4:57 pm