Wheat & Chaff

Its amazing the things you get up to when you are retired. We have all used the expression "separating the wheat from the chaff", well today that's exactly what I was doing!

About 10 ton of wheat had been delivered to the local farm but was of very poor quality. It was full of husks and pieces of straw, which meant it was blocking up the feeders. Now normally the wheat is separated from everything else in the combine harvester but this hadn't happened. So how do you go about separating it without farm equipment?

Our first attempt last week involved loading up a pick up truck with the wheat and taking it to the top of a nearby hill where it was windy. In keeping with what was probably done thousands of years ago we proceeded to toss the wheat in the air and let the wind blow away the straw and chaff. Only problem the wind was pretty gusty and every so often the wheat would fly away over the hillside along with the chaff. Another plan was needed!

Our mark II model involved a length of deep flow guttering, a riddle, several buckets and a cow dryer. Maybe I should explain that the last item is like a hair dryer, but much larger and used for drying cows after they have been washed for an agricultural show (bet most of you didn't know such things even existed!)

Anyway, our Heath Robinson contraption worked by pouring the wheat down the guttering, which acted as a chute, and letting it drop through the air being blown from the coo dryer, before it landed on the riddle where any larger pieces of straw were captured. Towards the top of the blip you might just make out some of the chaff being blown away. Our little invention actually worked very well and it took 3 of us 3 hours to bag up about a ton of clean wheat. We even talked about maybe patenting the invention and trying to sell it to Hovis!!

All in all it was a job well done, although possibly one of the worst blips I have ever posted!

Right, what can I get up to tomorrow then?