How to Make Bread from Scratch, Part I

Carl Sagan would say, "first you must create the universe". Well no, that's already been done for us. We only have to scratch the surface.


OK, you already know this, but we're starting from scratch. The old way. I wish I had my computer here. I have better pictures. See the stick in his hand? That's used to press the the ox startup button. We used a stick with a nail driven into the end of it. Works great. I just found out that in English it's called a goad. Now you know what they're talking about when they say, "being goaded into something".

The new way has to do with tractors. No picture. You've seen tractors. A typical tractor here would be 200 hp and pull 6 plows. Anyone reading this would know how to start one up and keep it going straight - keeping oxen going straight is something I never learned to do!

After plowing comes cultivating. We would use disc cultivators at home. I don't see many of those here. They use "spring tine cultivators" and more recently variations like this.


I suspect the choice is due to the difference in soils. These are glacial moraines (I think). The American mid-west is predominantly silt-loams. So, here they contain much more sand and, I think, are much less prone to end up as unbreakable clods. I hope to come back to soils again.

Then the seed must be sown. Once this was done by hand too. You've seen pictures. Getting that right takes practice.


Today, not so much practice. This, we call them "seeders", not sowers, is the tractor way. This one can plant 6-7 meters wide, measures the seed precisely and never leaves a gap. And you can drop fertilizer at the same time. Some are made to plant directly into sod. No need to plow, cultivate; just go over the sod with chemical herbicides and place the seed into the soil. This one has springy things on the back. The ones I know have cultipackers, a row of weighted wheels, that insure the seed is in contact with the soil. As far as I know, that was never done when sowing by hand.

Then you wait for the seed to germinate and the plant to grow. The old way, before chemicals and tractors were common, there was a lot of weeding that had to be done by hand. Here today they almost uniformly make one more pass over the field with a sprayer. I know they do because I see the tracks the tractor makes. They wouldn't do this if they didn't have to, but I'm not sure what they are spraying. Nitrogen I think.

Next post, the harvest.