guildfordcycads

I have some land, that I am not living on yet. I am working on making it more productive for my needs in the future. I have a forested area that floods when I get rain, but drains down fairly quickly.

Does anyone know of a device that would mark the high water mark of each flood event. I could reset it during each visit. I do not go out to the area when it is supposed to receive heavy rain as not much can be done during this time. Also, I would like to note the level over multiple rain events.

Growing up eating millet, I thought a millet is a millet. Turns out Some millet tastes better than others. there are many species of millet with different grain sizes, colors, cooking characteristics, etc. They can come with distinct traditions and best-use knowledge, if you talk to the people who have been growing them. If you pick it up from a store thinking it’s a straight substitution to the rice, well it’s likely going to be frustrating.

The first time I cooked a pot of millet from an American store (actually a bulk order from a college co-op) did not turn out well. The grains solidified into a dry chalky cake. I kept adding more water to salvage it into a porridge. It graduated from a small pot to a medium pot, then to the big stock pot. It kept soaking up water and was still thirsty!

Millet grains are full of soluble fibers and keep swelling and puffing if you keep boiling them in copious amount of water. You can’t cook it exactly like rice or quinoa and have good results. It’s more like making oatmeal but with more extreme in the difference in the texture between before and after, with all that soluble fibers unraveling in the boiling water. The millet grains start whole instead of flattened like rolled oatmeal or cut like steel cut oats. So people often do not use enough water and time, ending up with dry, partially cooked millet. Yuck. Do not try to eat this in a large quantity or you may have gassy cramps. Same as the warning on the bag of wheat flour: do not eat raw grains – they are difficult to digest.

Recently, agricultural breeding programs in countries that actually like to eat millet for food must have gotten great results, because some are so creamy and sweet, it‘s really superior to the best polenta or grits you may find in US restaurants. I’m particularly talking about the tiny yellow millet from northern China. I still can’t find what species and cultivar it is. I tracked it down to the northern province of Heilongjiang where it’s grown in gigantic quantities.

Millet fits into permaculture practice as a fast growing staple grain that needs no irrigation even in semi arid areas with marginal soil. Some millet even doubles as hay. Personally I want to find a seed source to grow that Chinese small grained sweet yellow millet! Can’t use hulled millet because they are not viable. Maybe USDA germplasm collection has some info and seeds?