Bountiful buckwheat grows at Coolidge homestead

Last June, students from Union Street School in Springfield helped plant a small field of buckwheat the old fashioned way and soon they will return to help thresh and harvest the seeds.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20120910/NEWS02/709109861

Fred DePaul of Plymouth Notch and his team of horses, Annie and JoJo, harvest a field of buckwheat he planted in June with students from the Union Street School in Springfield at the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site. DePaul used an antique drop reaper. After the buckwheat plants dry, the students will help DePaul thresh and harvest the seeds. Photo: Photo by Len Emery Published September 10, 2012 in the Rutland Herald Bountiful buckwheat grows at Coolidge homestead By Susan Smallheer Staff Writer PLYMOUTH NOTCH — Buckwheat used to be called the “lazy farmer’s crop.” It would grow anywhere, the soil didn’t have to be that fertile, and farmers could plant it in June and still harvest a good crop, said Plymouth Notch farmer Fred DePaul. DePaul and students from Union Street School in Springfield planted a small field in June, and about 10 days ago, DePaul and his team of workhorses started the harvest. They cut the buckwheat using an antique drop reaper. In a few weeks, the school students will be back to thresh their crop. Diane Kemble, the education director at the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, said buckwheat is actually related to rhubarb. She said she had asked DePaul to grow it a few years ago as part of a hands-on experience for Vermont school kids. DePaul will let the buckwheat dry for a couple of weeks, and then the students will be back at the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site to help thresh the buckwheat by putting it through a fanning mill. Eventually it will be roasted and turned into buckwheat groats or kasha or ground into flour. Buckwheat, which despite its name is not a form of wheat, is no longer as popular as it once was on Vermont farms. But it remains a popular grain for Russian farmers, DePaul said, and for people who have to be on a gluten-free diet. Buckwheat seeds can be ground into a flour to make buckwheat pancakes, he said. “It’s the easiest grain to grind, because you only have to grind it once,” said DePaul, who said once the shell is ground, the inside almost turns to powder. DePaul said farmers in New England have a small window to plant, in order to give the grains enough growing days to fully harvest. Oats, for instance, have to be planted in April to fully harvest, DePaul said. Nowadays, DePaul said, people grow buckwheat as a cover crop, since it crowds out weeds very effectively. And buckwheat hulls are now used in pillows, Kemble said. The horse-drawn Osborne drop reaper, operated with a cutter bar, holds the cut stalks bunched up on a small table-like shelf behind the cutter bar. DePaul bought the drop reaper at an antique farm equipment auction in upstate New York a few years ago. He had to hunt all over the farm to find all the pieces of the 1870s reaper, and only had to add a few bolts. The reaper, revealing its age, has iron wheels. “They didn’t have rubber tires back then,” DePaul said. The reaper has been kept under cover, so it’s in good shape, he said. The reaper worked like a charm behind DePaul’s workhorses Annie and JoJo. Later, DePaul, using a barley fork, a four-tine fork, will pick up the harvested grain and transport it to a barn at the historic site for drying. “You don’t lose much if you pick it up softly,” said DePaul, who noted in the past he had grown buckwheat for a specialty food producer. Once the grain is put through the fanning mill, DePaul gives it to his chickens. “My chickens love buckwheat. They will pick through a foot of chaff to get a few seeds,” he said. Some beekeepers grow buckwheat, he said, in order to produce buckwheat honey, he said. Buckwheat honey is darker and has a stronger flavor, he said. He said he was harvesting the buckwheat in late August to harvest the biggest crop of seeds. A second flush of bloom and seeds are possible, he said, but the bigger crop would be lost to birds and insects. In shape, the buckwheat seed is similar to a beechnut, but much smaller. The fourth-graders used an apron feed sack, tied around their waists, to sow the seed, Kemble said. William Jenney, the site administrator for the state historic site, said the buckwheat field, which in recent years was lawn, used to be the site of the large vegetable gardens of longtime Plymouth Notch resident Midge Aldrich, whose home is now Jenney’s office, and who ran a group of tourist cabins in the 1920s and ‘30s in Plymouth Notch for tourists who came to see Coolidge’s home.