Jack Lazor - The Organic Grain Grower: Small-Scale, Holistic Grain Production for the Home and Market Producer

About the Author

Photo courtesy of Steve Legge

Jack Lazor is co-owner of Butterworks Farm in Westfield, Vermont, with his wife, Anne, and cofounder of the Northern Grain Growers Association. Jack has been growing organic grains in the mountains of Vermonts Northeast Kingdom since 1975 and is considered a leader in the movement for growing grains in cold climates. Lazor grows grains both for human consumption and for feed for their herd of Jersey cows, including corn, oats, barley, soybeans, legumes, alfalfa, and oilseeds such as flax and sunflower. Butterworks Farm also produces organic Jersey-milk yogurt, buttermilk, sweet Jersey cream, cheddar cheese, and grain products. He is the recipient of many agricultural awards.

Praise for The Organic Grain Grower

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.

from the Foreword by Eliot Coleman , author of The Winter Harvest Handbook

Given our industrial agriculture, most of us assume that grain can be grown only in huge monocultures devoted to producing as much as possible, unmindful of the quality. But in The Organic Grain Grower, Jack Lazor provides us with a practical and attractive alternative. As a farmer he has demonstrated that one can provide an emerging market with a diversity of superior-quality grains, grown on a small scale, using heirloom varieties and modest investment.

Frederick Kirschenmann , author of Cultivating an Ecological Consciousness

I believe I can safely say, without losing any money, that if you know of one fact truly necessary to growing grains organically in the United States that is not in this book, Ill pay you five bucks out of my own pocket. Plus theres a whole bunch of stuff about how to process and use grains in the barn or on the table that I have not found all in one place before.

Gene Logsdon , author of Small-Scale Grain Growing

Jack writes from the top of a mountainthe mountain of his life. His long years of experience are longer than his very beard, and the wisdom and distillation of his farming life are written here with clarity and graceful articulation. As he says in the book, people are hungry for meaning as well as food. In this classic book, Jack provides not only the meaning, but also the methods required to succeed as a small-scale grower of organic grains.

Jeffrey Hamelman , director, King Arthur Flour Bakery, and author of Bread: A Bakers Book of Techniques and Recipes

The Organic Grain Grower is quite possibly the most complete and extensive text ever written on grain production in the Northeast. Jack Lazors deep passion and knowledge create an astounding story, and he shares his wisdom and experience generously. If you have ever wanted to grow grain, this is a book to own and cherish.

Dr. Heather Darby , University of Vermont Extension agronomist

Copyright 2013 by Jack Lazor.
All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs by Jack Lazor.
Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations copyright 2013 by Elayne Sears.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Project Manager: Patricia Stone
Editor: Makenna Goodman
Copy Editor: Laura Jorstad
Proofreader: Helen Walden
Indexer: Margaret Holloway
Designer: Melissa Jacobson

Printed in the United States of America.
First printing July, 2013.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 13 14 15 16 17

Our Commitment to Green Publishing
Chelsea Green sees publishing as a tool for cultural change and ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book manufacturing practices with our editorial mission and to reduce the impact of our business enterprise in the environment. We print our books and catalogs on chlorine-free recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks whenever possible. This book may cost slightly more because it was printed on paper that contains recycled fiber, and we hope youll agree that its worth it. Chelsea Green is a member of the Green Press Initiative ( www.greenpressinitiative.org ), a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the worlds endangered forests and conserve natural resources. The Organic Grain Grower was printed on FSC -certified paper supplied by Maple Press that contains 30% postconsumer recycled fiber.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lazor, Jack, 1951
The organic grain grower: small-scale, holistic grain production for the home and market producer / Jack Lazor; foreword by Eliot Coleman.
p. cm.
Small scale, holistic grain production for the home and market producer
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60358-365-7 (hardcover)ISBN 978-1-60358-366-4 (ebook)
1. GrainNortheastern States. 2. GrainCanada. 3. Organic farmingNortheastern States. 4. Organic farmingCanada. 5. Farms, SmallNortheastern States. 6. Farms, SmallCanada. I. Title. II. Title: Small scale, holistic grain production for the home and market producer.

SB189.L29 2013
633.1dc23

2013011765

Chelsea Green Publishing
85 North Main Street, Suite 120
White River Junction, VT 05001
(802) 295-6300
www.chelseagreen.com

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

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.