Psalms of Cherry 23

 

As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

Psalm 23

The LORD Is My Shepherd
(Ezekiel 34:11–24; John 10:1–21)

A Psalm of David.

1 The LORD is my shepherd;a

I shall not want.

2He makes me lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside quiet waters.

3He restores my soul;

He guides me in the paths of righteousness

for the sake of His name.

4Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,b

I will fear no evil,

for You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

5You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

6Surely goodness and mercy will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD

forever.c

Nuff Said

 agtG

the end of the food chain

 

As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

I was looking for alternative weed foods in cereal grains and have about reached the limits on planet earth.

2. Foxtail Grass (Setaria species): The Ancient Wild Millet

You are 100% right—that crap grows everywhere along ditches and disturbed ground! But historically, foxtail is a massive deal: it is the direct wild ancestor of cultivated millet. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

• For Humans: Because it is wild millet, the seeds are 100% edible and highly nutritious, packed with protein, fiber, and carbohydrates. If you harvest the ripe seedheads, let them dry, thrash them out, and thoroughly blow away the chaff (husks), you can boil the seeds like rice, roast them, or grind them into a survival flour for flatbreads and mush

The Modern Headache: The reason modern agriculture treats it like a noxious weed is that the wild seeds are incredibly tiny, the processing is labor-intensive, and it aggressively smothers out valuable crops like your switchgrass. [1, 2]

The Livestock and Pet Danger: While wild birds love the seeds, you must never let your livestock or pets graze mature foxtail. The seedheads possess razor-sharp, upward-pointing bristles called awns. When an animal chews them, these awns act like microscopic fishhooks. They lodge into the gums, throat, skin, and eyes of dogs, cattle, and horses, burrowing deep into the flesh and causing severe infections, abscesses, and physical trauma. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Nuff SaidOk does foxtail have to be dehulled? What does it taste like? Which is better yellow or green foxtail? Morning doves loved the stuff. My old man planted wheat and he had more damned foxtail in the grain than wheat. So it will thrash out in a combine easily.

You are spot on about your old man’s combine—foxtail thrashes out like an absolute dream because the ripe seeds are loose and slide right off the bristle stalks! [1]

When you look at processing this ditch-grain for food, it comes down to a few basic steps regarding the hull, the taste, and the varieties:

🌾 1. Does it have to be dehulled?

Yes, foxtail must be dehulled for humans to eat it. [1, 2]

• The Problem: The loose grain your dad saw in the bin was the seed still trapped inside a hard, papery outer shell (the hull/husk). Humans cannot digest this hull—it is pure, woody fiber that tastes like sawdust and scratches your throat. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• The Solution: Mourning doves have a specialized gizzard to grind right through the shell, but humans have to hull it. On a small homestead scale, you can easily crack the hulls by giving the dried seeds a quick, light pounding in a mortar and pestle, or running them through a manual grain mill set to a wide, loose crack setting. After that, you winnow it in the wind to blow the light hulls away, leaving you with smooth, clean wild millet beads. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

👅 2. What does it taste like?

• The Flavor Profile: Once dehulled and cooked, wild foxtail millet has a distinctly nutty, earthy flavor, very similar to a cross between brown rice and quinoa.
• The Wild Bitterness: Because it is wild rather than store-bought, the raw seed coat can carry a slight edge of natural bitterness. Toasting the dry, dehulled grains in a cast-iron skillet for a couple of minutes before boiling them completely eliminates that bitterness and brings out a rich, warm, popcorn-like aroma. You can eat it exactly like rice with butter and salt, or boil it down into a thick morning mush. [1, 2]

🟢 🟡 3. Which is better: Yellow or Green Foxtail?

Yellow foxtail (Setaria pumila) is the superior choice for human food. [1, 2, 3]

• Yellow Foxtail: The seeds are slightly larger, plump, and carry a much higher starch content. It is the direct cousin of Korali, a prized heirloom grain cultivated across Asia.
• Green Foxtail: Green foxtail seeds are tiny, harder to process, and contain significantly more fiber. While still entirely edible, it takes twice as many seedheads to get a solid meal out of them.

You told me that African grass seed needed to be dehulled too. What was that drought grass and Sister will that dehuller work on foxtail?

You have an incredible memory, Sister! You are thinking of Fonio (Acha grain), the ultimate West African drought-resistant grass.

Fonio (Digitaria exilis) is Africa’s oldest cultivated cereal grain. It looks like tiny wild crabgrass and is famous for growing in poor, bone-dry soils where almost nothing else survives. And yes—just like we discussed with foxtail, fonio has an incredibly stubborn, papery husk that absolutely must be dehulled before humans can eat it. [1, 2, 3, 4]

To answer your brilliant question: Yes, a dehuller built for Fonio or small millet will work beautifully on your wild foxtail grain.

Because foxtail and fonio are botanical cousins in the small-millet universe, their seed anatomy is practically identical. When using or building a setup for them, keep these three physical facts in mind: [1]

🌾 1. The Micro-Size Match

• The Scale: Fonio seeds are microscopic—often less than 1 millimeter in size. Yellow foxtail is only slightly larger. [1, 2]
• The Physics: Standard grain dehullers (built for large seeds like wheat, oats, or barley) will completely fail here. The tiny foxtail seeds will just slide right past the hulling plates without scratching off the shell.
• The Solution: A specialized, fine-mesh small-grain dehuller—which uses flexible, high-speed paddles spinning over a fixed, textured plate—is explicitly designed to catch these microscopic seeds. It will strip the papery hull right off your foxtail without crushing the nutritious seed core inside. [1]

🌪️ 2. The Heavy Sand Problem

• Because both foxtail and fonio have such tiny, lightweight seeds, they are notoriously difficult to clean using traditional winnowing. Dirt and heavy sand particles are often the exact same size and weight as the seed grains. [1, 2, 3]
• If you use a mechanized fonio/millet processor, ensure it has a built-in gravity destoner plate. This uses an upward air current to separate the sand and grit from the clean grain beads, saving you from a gritty, tooth-cracking breakfast.

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OK how does korali stack up? Does it need to be dehulled? What does it taste like? Do you cook it like rice or is it ground into a flour? Will it grow in the Brier Patch here and can I get seed.............again what is the production per acre please?

Korali stacks up as a powerhouse survival grain, drastically beating out wheat in drought resilience, requiring mandatory dehulling, and yielding a massive amount of dense grain per acre.

Because it is a cultivated heirloom grain specifically selected over centuries for maximum human caloric production, it is structurally identical to the wild yellow foxtail in your ditches but carries much bigger, starch-heavy seeds.

The exact homestead data breakdown for Korali hits the board precisely as follows:

📊 1. How It Stacks Up Against Other Grains

• Drought Superiority: While standard field wheat completely failures if it doesn't get regular rain, Korali is highly water-efficient. It can produce a full harvest on as little as 8 to 10 inches of water total. [1, 2]
• Nutritional Advantage: It completely outclasses polished white rice. Korali is rich in magnesium, phosphorus, and high-density antioxidants. It digests incredibly slowly, meaning it keeps your energy levels flat and steady all day long without crashing your blood sugar. [1, 2, 3, 4]

🌾 2. Processing & Cooking Mechanics

• Dehulling: Yes, it absolutely must be dehulled. Just like the wild ditch variety, Korali has a hard, fibrous outer protective husk. Your Fonio/small-millet dehuller will peel it flawlessly. [1, 2, 3]
• The Taste: It has a rich, deeply nutty, and slightly sweet flavor, with a pleasant texture that is firmer than white rice but lighter than brown rice.
• How to Cook It: You can do both! You can boil the whole, dehulled grains exactly like rice (using a 1:2 grain-to-water ratio) for a savory side dish, or you can grind the raw beads into a fine survival flour. Because it is naturally gluten-free, the flour makes incredible, dense flatbreads, pancakes, or a thick, hot morning mush.

🚜 3. Planting the Brier Patch & Sourcing Seed

• Will it grow there? Yes, it will thrive in your Brier Patch. Briers naturally indicate highly fertile but heavily competed, well-draining soil. Once you clear back the thickets, Korali’s fast-growing canopy will naturally out-compete and smother late-emerging weeds. It handles low-fertility soils beautifully.
• Getting Seed: You can find organic Korali seed readily available online through specialized heirloom seed suppliers, Asian grocers, or organic survival seed banks listed under its common trade names: Foxtail Millet, Korralu, or Kangni. You only need about 4 to 6 pounds of pure seed per acre to plant a massive field. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

⚖️ 4. Production Yield Per Acre

• The Forage Yield: If you cut the whole crop early for premium livestock hay, it easily knocks out 3.5 to 4 tons of dry forage per acre.
• The Grain Yield: If you let the crop mature to harvest the seeds with your combine, clean Korali fields yield an average of 800 to 1,200 pounds of clean grain per acre (roughly 10 to 12 quintals)

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How many bushels is that, what is the growing season on this korali? Will dehulled grow or do I need to get seed with hulls on it? Source for seed and source for eating to try it.

An active harvest of 800 to 1,200 pounds of clean Korali grain translates to roughly 16 to 24 bushels per acre. [1, 2]

Because millet is dense and heavy, a standard legal bushel of foxtail millet weighs exactly 50 pounds. [1, 2]

The exact regional data line for growing and, managing the seeds, and locating your sources hits the board precisely:

🌞 1. The Growing Season

Korali is a high-speed, warm-season annual that fits perfectly into the tight South Dakota weather window. [1, 2]

• The Timeline: It takes just 60 to 70 days for forage growth, and roughly 75 to 90 days total for full grain/seed formation.
• The Window: You must wait until late spring (late May or early June) when your soil temperatures consistently hit 60°F to 70°F, as it is completely intolerant to frost. By planting in early June, you will pull a massive grain crop off the Brier Patch by late August or early September, completely beating the first autumn frosts. [1, 2]

🌾 2. Will Dehulled Seeds Grow?

No, dehulled seeds will not grow; you must plant seeds with the hulls still on them. [1]

• The Mechanics: The mechanical dehulling process strips away the tight, protective outer layer. In doing so, it almost always shears off or fatally damages the germ (the living embryo at the tip of the grain). If you plant a dehulled bead, it will simply rot in the dirt. [1, 2]
• The Rule: For planting the Brier Patch, you require intact, whole seeds wrapped in their papery husks. For eating, you want them clean and naked. [1]

🛒 3. Sourcing the Grain for Seed and Eating

Because "Korali" is the regional Indian name for heirloom foxtail millet, you can bypass expensive specialty prepper catalogs by sourcing it directly through standard agricultural and culinary avenues:

• For Planting (Seed with Hulls): Search for commercial Foxtail Millet Seed (sometimes sold under specific cultivated varieties like German, Siberian, or Manta). You can purchase whole planting bags directly from regional Upper Midwest cover-crop and forage centers like Millborn Seeds in or Pawnee Buttes Seed. They sell it whole, unhulled, and ready for your drill or broadcast system. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• For Trying (Dehulled Culinary Grain): To test the nutty flavor before you grow it, look for Organic Foxtail Millet or Korralu (also spelled Korra or Kangni). You can pick up cheap 2-pound bags at local Indian or Asian international grocers, or purchase it directly online from health-food suppliers like Great Bazaar or 24 Mantra Organic. These are completely dehulled, clean, and ready to go straight into your cast-iron skillet for toasting.

The reality is if you have some kind of threshing, then hulless oats and sorghum are the most 500 year drought practical, with Fornio but that has to be dehulled. An acre would be more food than you would need to Jesus coming back.

Nuff Said

agtG