Good morning, Saturday Morning Garden Blog-Friends old and new! This cheerful long-running tradition appears every Saturday morning at 9am Eastern, and lasts well into the week as conversations percolate. A core crew of us reads every comment, as far into the week as it goes.
Anyone who likes to garden or talk about gardening or gardening-adjacent topics and whatever they devolve into… WELCOME!
When last week’s SMGB post published, my little family was making the grocery-run-before-the-snow — and then we hunkered down as an entire foot of the white stuff piled up. Our outdoor gardening season is even more officially at an end than it previously was.
But wait, what’s this I see? Could that be an indoor sprouting of… wheat?
Why, there it is, right next to the then-about-to-bloom Thanksgiving cactus!
Wheat is not just a casual thing with my family. It is a living and an identity, a heritage and an inheritance. On my dad’s side of the family, it goes back to Anabaptists/Mennonites who relocated again and again to stay ahead of church-state persecution and forced military-participation: from Switzerland to the Alsace, then to Volhynia (in the current Ukraine), then over the ocean to America in 1874. From the breadbasket of Volhynia, they brought Turkey Red wheat which contributed to establishing Kansas as a breadbasket state. My grandfather farmed wheat and also studied family history and wrote related dramas for family reunion events. I grew up on tales of my ancestors sorting through wheat kernels grain by grain, so that only the best would go into sacks and trunks to be conveyed to the new world.
1974 centennial celebration of the Anabaptist/Mennonite immigration to Kansas
My father followed in his father’s footsteps when it came to history, with a professorial career in Mennonite and American history. The team name for the Mennonite college at which he studied and then taught (along with my mother, both professors!) was the Threshers, and the symbol was a threshing stone that would have been pulled by oxen to press the ripe grain from the chaff. The image is a powerful one for the academic endeavor, enabling the gathering of the good and true while letting that which is false and misleading blow away in the wind.
I have warm (quite literally) summer memories of riding with grandpa’s combine in summertime, and even getting to drive occasionally, though I never did really get the hang of properly taking it around corners!
It was quite the piece of equipment!
My brother and loved to play in the harvested grain in the truck.
Swimming in wheat!
The next layer of wheat-connection arrived when I was in 6th grade. My amazing homeroom teacher was Mennonite and connected with the college. She had jumped on the bandwagon when a group of Kansas Mennonite women adopted and modified the British art of “corn dolly” straw art, better known in the U.S. as “wheat weaving.” Such a perfect regional and heritage teaching opportunity… she taught the entire class how to do the entire process!
First you have to catch the wheat at just the right time, when the entire head and stalk has turned golden, but while the heads are still standing straight up. (The heads bend over during the final ripening.) Cut it down with a couple of feet of straw-length, then bundle your harvest and hang the bundle heads-down in a dry and airy location for several weeks. Once it’s dry, you can clean it up by cutting just above the highest joint in the stem, and removing the sheath so you have an unbroken smooth stem right up to the head. I don’t have any unprocessed wheat in the house, but here’s what a nice long cleaned straw looks like:
Piano bench for scale (heh)
Then when you want to weave, wrap the straw that you need for the project in a towel and soak it in lukewarm water for 45 minutes or so. Bathtubs work well for this step. It softens the stems and makes it possible to manipulate them without cracking. They then harden up when they dry back out.
Here I am with my brother making wreaths.
Observe the soggy pink towel, lower right.
So my whole 6th-grade class played with soggy wheat and learned to make lovely creations, which we then sold at the middle school art fair as a fund-raiser for a classmate who had just lost ALL FOUR of his outer limbs to a rare form of meningitis. I still remember the pitch from our vending booth: “A Hobby for Bobby, at a Price that’s Nice!” (Bob has gone on to great things — he’s a motivational speaker and the author of the book No Arms, No Legs, No Problem; he was also a Paralympic athlete, featuring in the documentary Murderball that highlighted his medal-winning rugby team).
ANYWAY, where was I? Oh yes, learned to do wheat-weaving with my sixth grade class. As the grand-daughter of a wheat farmer, I had my own ready supply:
WHO wears short shorts?!
And thus I embarked on a on-and-off quest to decorate my family’s Christmas tree, give gifts galore, run the craft-show circuit, and just generally hone my craft over the years. I ran it as a small business for a while, called The Final Straw (hence the diary title)!
Here’s an early tree pic:
Featuring wreaths like my brother & were making in the earlier pic
And some from more recent trees:
Baby Jesus on the half-shell — English walnut shell for the manger-bed, beard-cuttings from the wheat heads to represent the straw. Instead of straw… heee!
Foghorn Leghorn and the chicken-hawk approve!
I also got into Nativity sets, like the one on my mantel in the cover shot, and this one that was auctioned off at a church fundraiser:
I am extra-delighted by the amazed shepherd and the king with the basket of gold (wheat kernels)
I also did a couple of wall-art gifts for my daughter’s wedding last month:
Big reveal at her bridal shower
The other one was on a circle canvas
Speaking of weddings! My wheat-farmer grandfather was no longer alive to attend my wedding in 1993 to A FIB in Cheddarland, but I honored the heritage by using wheat as a component of my flower-basket and the corsages & boutonnieres.
Me with my dad
My darling daughter then brought the heritage around for yet another cycle last month. First, she had the florist design her 2025 bouquet as an homage to my 1993 basket, wheat and all. And then, instead of throwing the bouquet to the single ladies at the reception, she GAVE IT TO ME, with an amazingly touching tribute speech! Mama was mighty happy….
Anybody got an extra Kleenex? *snif*
We put the bouquet in water and displayed it for as long as we could… and then when I took the bouquet apart for composting purposes, some of the wheat had sprouted. Which takes us right back to the first pic of the diary, the sprouted-wheat decoration!
Just to bring this rambling wheat-y diary back to its SMGB-ing source, we do actually have a wheat component to our regular outdoor gardening. We have been doing wheat-straw mulch rather than rototilling for a number of years now:
Here comes the mister with a bale, wearing his Merry Light tie-dye!
I won’t belabor that point as I wrote about it in a diary a few months ago on Garden Herpes, ha!
But the return of that season is some months in the future. For now, I’ll happily kick back with a warm mug in front of the wheat-adorned tree, and wish you all the delights of the season!
all mama wants is a silent night...
How’s your December shaping up so far?
