Be a part of Lawns to Loaves 2013

Become a community grain grower!

All growers pool the wheat to be shared in an autumn harvest celebration.The shared wheat is threshed and milled using a bicycle mill, and baked fresh in a wood fired oven for all to enjoy.  Receive free grains to plant and information on how to grow wheat in your yard this spring.

When: Sat April 6, 1pm – 3pm

Location: In the garden house, in the Strathcona Community Garden. Near Hawks & Prior in Vancouver.

What: Sign up to get involved and pick up your free wheat seeds. Get advice and get info on wheat planting.

Growers can have any size plot to join Lawns to Loaves. The more the merrier! Across the Lower Mainland; Schools, bakeries, community centres and community members of all ages are welcome.

Bake your Lawn – Northern Ireland

Here is a lovely blog from Northern Ireland, part of their Bake Your Lawn project. It’s inspiring to learn about similar projects around the world. http://bakeyourlawnni.blogspot.ca/

Those little hands are so helpful.

Thresh your way to success

An ingenious home-made machine was used to thresh last year’s Lawns to Loaves shared harvest. Threshing gets the grains off the shaft and loosens the chaff. With the homemade machine, the grains are fed into one end, and with the turn of the handle we are one step closer to pizza! Thanks to Kelly for sharing this great machine with the community and to her brother for building it!

This old fashioned method of threshing works too, get your back into it!

Cake made from school garden grown RYE

 

Ta da! The most satisfying cake around! Thanks to Lawns to Loaves these Vancouver students get a chance to eat the freshest cake in town.

So satisfying to harvest the grains you’ve grown yourself.

The students mill the rye flour and carefully weigh it out.

Harvest spectacular!

More great photos from the harvest celebration on the Environmental Youth Alliance blog.

 

 

Bread Club

Sharing isn’t just nice, it’s eco-friendly, too. Does everybody need their own lawnmower? (Heck, does everybody need a lawn?)

The idea for a bread club is simple, this idea is from the David Suzuki Foundation, from the Queen of Green –

Here’s what you do:

1. Recruit two friends who like to bake.
2. You’ll each bake bread once a week. But instead of baking one loaf, bake three.
3. Hand out the other two loaves to your club members.

To learn more, here’s the link:

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/queen-of-green/2012/10/get-fresh-with-bread-club/

Eat your wheat

It’s a little confusing to some people, but let me explain: You can cook whole grains of wheat (think of how we cook rice or barley) and eat it like that! Often wheat grains are called “wheat berries.”

We feasted on a lovely soup made with locally grown wheat berries at our Lawns to Loaves celebration. It was so popular I am sharing the recipe so you can try it at home.

Eating whole grains has multiple health benefits, and the handy thing is if you grow your own wheat and you don’t have a mill, it’s an easy way to enjoy your harvest,

Contrary to popular belief, wheat berries do not require an overnight soak before cooking. Simply boil them for 1 hour to soften the kernels, which will produce their characteristically chewy texture.

Wheat Berries

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups wheat berries
• 7 cups cold water
• 1 teaspoon salt

PREPARATION

1. Sort and rinse whaet well under cool running water. Place in a large heavy saucepan. Add water and salt.
2. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer gently for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Drain and rinse. To serve hot, use immediately.

TIPS & NOTES

• Make Ahead Tip: Cover and refrigerate for up to 2 days or freeze for up to 1 month.
  

  Cumin Scented Wheat-berry Lentil Soup

  

  Yum! Soup.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 cups French green or brown lentils, sorted and rinsed
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 4 cups cold water
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 large large carrots, finely chopped
• 1 medium red onion, diced
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper, plus more to taste
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 1/2 cups Cooked Wheat Berries, (recipe above)
• 1 bunch rainbow or red chard, large stems discarded, leaves roughly chopped
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice

1. Combine lentils, broth and water in a Dutch oven. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat, cover, and simmer gently until the lentils are tender, but not mushy, 25 to 30 minutes (brown lentils take a little longer than green).
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add carrots, onion, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to brown, about 15 minutes. Add garlic and cumin and cook, stirring constantly, for 30 seconds more. Remove from the heat.
3. When the lentils are tender, stir cooked wheat berries and chard into the pot. Cover and simmer until the chard has wilted, about 5 minutes. Stir in the carrot mixture and lemon juice.

   4. Enjoy!

Harvest success

We ate wheat, we threshed, we were merry. Thanks to everyone who came out to the Lawns to Loaves Harvest Celebration. It was a lot of fun.

The oil drum oven pumped out locally grown wheat crust pizzas with pizzazz.

The homemade thresher was a great labour saving device. Fun too!

Grain growers from across the Lower Mainland shared their bounty.

Check out more photos on Facebook.

Wonderful wheat

The “wheat belt”. Also featured, Pearl the cat.

This years Lawns to Loaves growers are a creative bunch. Though we don’t grow a lot of wheat, we sure learn a lot from it. Thanks for sharing your inspiring photos.

Come celebrate the harvest Sat Oct 6. Details here.

We’ll be threshing, milling, weaving and snacking… a combo not to be missed.

The wheat didn’t stand a chance, this intrepid crew harvested swiftly and with glee.

Beautiful mandala art woven from Lawns to Loaves wheat and invasive ivy.

Grain-tacular!

Join in Saturday OCTOBER 6, the Lawns to Loaves harvest celebration! 11am to 3pm at the Eco-Pavilion in the Strathcona Community Garden near Hawks and Prior.

Pedal power! Grain milling.

Learn how to “thresh” the wheat and follow the grain from a shaft of wheat to a pizza!

Get your pedal powered milling groove on! We’ll be milling this year’s Vancouver grown grains.

Mmm…

We’ll be firing up the oven to bake the locally grown wheat into tasty snacks.

Check out crafty creations made by weaving straw.

If you’ve been growing grains this year for Lawns to Loaves please bring them to be pooled and processed at the celebration. If you have several pounds please email lawnstoloaves@gmail.com to arrange prior drop-off and threshing.

Truly a hands-on event. All are welcome to this free event, come and learn more about Lawns to Loaves and pitch in the fun.