Little Ren Hens

Alice and Robert harvested some of the wheat from our garden today.

The little red hen cutting down wheat stalks with a butter knife and one little red rooster taking a break to eat parsley. That boy and parsley! He's selected a pile of garden parsley for his dinner vegetable more than once.

It was planted on a whim when they and the neighbor kids wanted to "play farmer" one day. Well, Alice found the harvesting chore MUCH more difficult than anticipated. They spent much of the afternoon cutting wheat stalks, washing, drying, separating seeds, and peeling husks to get this:

That's about a tablespoon of green wheat. Completely unbakeable.

I didn't dare tell the girl. She had convinced Robert to help all afternoon by saying, "The more you help, the more bread you'll get from this wheat." Buddy is expecting one whopping portion of bread.

So, I guess we're making bread on Saturday. I'll grind up what the kids prepared in a mini mill and mix it in with a lot of normal, ripe, and well-cured wheat flour. I just hope green wheat isn't poisonous ;)

The chickens' new docile and kid-friendly attitudes have led to more free-range time for them. Here are two of them hanging out in a shady dugout they made for themselves...right by my tomatoes.

Two real little red hens relaxing for a moment.