time of harvest

Today Joseph and I went for breakfast at a local diner, and stopped to harvest mustard plants on the way home. Joe has been keeping an eye on the roadside wild mustards so he could harvest the seeds and make his own mustard. We found a generous patch along a little used frontage road. Once home, Joe spent about an hour separating the tiny (1-2 mm) seeds from chaff using his thumb, and then winnowed away the remaining chaff debris using a fan. It worked remarkably well. The seeds, from arms length look a uniform brown in the bottom of the bowl. But if you pull them closer, it’s a whole different story.

Tomorrow we make mustard. I’ve done it once before. It is remarkably easy to do.

hand harvested black mustard seeds (Brassica nigra)