THE

ORGANIC GRAIN GROWER

Small-Scale, Holistic Grain Production for the Home and Market Producer

JACK LAZOR
Foreword by Eliot Coleman

Foreword
We grew grain the very first year on our farm in Maine. Even though we had begun with wooded land and were working hard to clear enough for the first vegetable crops of what would become our specialty, we made sure to clear enough extra for a small plot of field corn. We were lucky to get seeds from another farmer and grew an old New England heirloom, Longfellow Flint. Polenta and corn bread have always been favorite foods in our house, and flint corn makes the very best. My standard breakfast is a bowl of oatmeal so a few years later, after locating seed for a hulless oat variety, we grew a field of oats. Unlike the corn, which was simple to hand-harvest and husk, the oats required another technique. By following pictures in the graying pages of an old book, we figured out how to cut the standing grain with sickles, tie the stems in bunches, and stand the bunches in the field for further drying. When the oats were dry, we threshed them on a canvas tarp by beating out the kernels with homemade flails. We winnowed the chaff from the grain over that same canvas tarp on a windy day. By the time we grew our first field of wheat, we had progressed another few centuries. From drawings in one of the wonderful old Eric Sloane books, The Seasons of America Past, we figured out how to add wooden cradle fingers to a scythe. That cradle scythe made the cutting and shocking operation go easier. We went halves with another farmer on the purchase of a Japanese CeCoCo thresher. The CeCoCo had a foot-powered, treadle-operated, spinning drum covered with wire loops, which effectively removed the grain from the heads of the wheat shocks when they were held against it. That year we adapted a neighbors blueberry winnower to make our winnowing more efficient. ix But fun as all this may sound in the retelling, we were anything but efficient. In reality we were just blundering along. Ahh, what I would have given back then for a copy of this book. There was hardly any information available at that time, because New England grain growing had been on its way out for many years, especially in our area. The industrial concept of grow it all in the Midwest and ship it east had almost completely taken over. Recently, however, the burgeoning interest in local foods has begun to spill over into grain. New England grain growing is again becoming a topic of conversation. But Jack Lazor did not wait for a new movement to inspire him. Jack inspired the movement. Jack began reclaiming the small farms grain heritage right from the start of his farm many years ago. That is why this book is such a delight. These are the words of someone who has talked to all the old-timers and done it all himself. It is like acquiring hundreds of years of knowledge in one book. And he presents everything in an appealing, storytelling manner that will have you sitting up late reading page after page. If you ever do get to visit Jacks farm, you will see what determination it has taken to do what he does. Perched on a hill in the far northern reaches of Vermont, Butterworks is a farmers farm. In fact, the first line on the back of their yogurt container says it all: Butterworks Farm is a real farm. The grain-cleaning and -bagging equipment in the classically designed granary testifies to ingenuity, both Jacks in putting it all together and that of the old inventors and manufacturers who devised the smallscale machines in the first place. But grain growing is not just machinery. It is also biology. The field corn I presently grow, Abenaki Calais Flint, was reselected and improved by Jack Lazor.

The Organic Grain Grower

Even if you are not a farmer and have never thought about growing grains, this book is worth reading just to understand how an exceptional farmers mind works. Remember, these are the folks who are feeding you. If you are a small farmer, this is your world. I give my deepest thanks to Jack for paving the way for the rest of us. Eliot Coleman Harborside, Maine March 2013