As you know from other talks, we try to be as self-sufficient as possible. And we like to try new things. So with this in mind, we decided to try to grow our own oats. We use a lot of oatmeal for cooking, treats, and animal feed, so it seemed like a good thing to try this spring. So here are The Trials and Follies of Making Our Own Oatmeal.

For those of you that do not know, groats are the oat seed before they are flattened into oatmeal. Yes, the very kind that you buy at the store. That odd little, flat roundish thing that you cook and eat. This is exactly the same thing. This is our final goal to make our own oatmeal.

It did not seem like a big thing. To make your own oatmeal you will need to:

1. grow oats

2. harvest the oats

3. beat the oats

4. collect the groats

5. clean the groats

6. soak the groats

7. flatten the groats into oatmeal

8. dry the oatmeal

9. store the oatmeal

10. cook and eat the oatmeal

1. Growing oats

The actual growing of the oats was an easy thing. We had a large tract of unused land so we put it into service. Oats, being a grain, are fairly easy to grow.

Popi used the tractor to plow the ground and smooth it out a bit.

Then we all went out and did “Old Fashioned Sowing of the Seeds” or oats in our case. That was fun. We just walked along and chunked oats around in odd patterns and uneven lines. Next time, if there is a next time, we will want to do straight, organized rows. But this was our first time.

Then we waited and thankfully we had rain and sun and the oats grew well.

They were fun to watch grow. The oats started out as little green shoots, then grew into talk straight stalks.

It seems oats do take a bit of time to mature so you just wait. When the oats are ready, they will be full and start to look dry. At this point, the oat stalks were brown and dry looking. And quite prickly.

Up until this point, things had gone smoothly. This is where The Trials and Follies of Making Our Own Oatmeal actually start.

2. Harvesting the oats

Here is where things started to get difficult. We did not really have the proper tool for harvest. We did it by hand with kitchen scissors and knives. This is not the most efficient way to harvest your oats, just so you know. It took us several days, not all at once, to get all of the oats cut.

We did find that if you cut from the bottom you will have a long stalk. In order to beat the oats, you have to go back and cut the long stalk off each and every oat. If you cut close to the bottom of the oat husk, then you can save a step and not have to do another trimming. Unfortunately, we did not know this, so some of us cut them short and others cut them long. Yes, we had to go back and do the second trimming to get this step done.

Upon researching Grammy found that they make a nice tool that looks like a dog feed scoop with teeth. This makes it easy to harvest as you just walk along with the scoop thing and it cuts the oats off the stalks and drops them into a bucket for you. We did not have one of these, IF we ever grow oats again, we will have several of these scoops.

3. Beating the oats

Now comes the separating. First you sort of toast the oats to dry them and get the little groats inside to let go of the outer husks. We had seen where other homesteaders had toasted their oats in the oven so we went with that. It seems to work very well. 200 degrees for about 45 minutes and we had dry, more prickly, oats. We had buckets of them.

4. Collect the groats

Now comes the crazy part. Once you have the dries husks, you have to get the little groats out of the husks. You want to keep the groats and discard the husks.

We kept the husks as they were pretty much straw once we were finished with them. They made good cover for the barn floor and bedding for the goats.

In order to get to the groats, we beat the husks with a rubber mallet. We had to be careful about the pan they were in. If you had a pan with short sides, the groats would jump out when you hit the bottom. If the sides were too high, you could not get a good swing.

Once you get the oats “beat” the groats should be loose and fall out of the husks. Well, that is not exactly as easy as it sounds. We had to go one oat husk at a time and manually scrap the groats out of the husks. Yes, that is as tedious as it sounds. All however many million husks and groats scraped out by hand.

We did try another way to beat the oats. We did some research to find that you can beat them in the clothes dryer. You can take a pillow case and put the oats into it. Add some rubber dryer balls and put the whole thing into the dryer on air only. This does the same as the beating with the rubber mallet.

We have to say, this does work. But we had a catastrophic failure of one of the pillowcases. The pillowcase tore in the dryer with the oats in it. There were oats, and groats all in the dryer, the dryer vent, the link trap, and the outlet hose. It took some time and a vacuum cleaner to get that all cleaned up.

After a couple of weeks of daily “groat picking”, not something to be done in one day, Popi talked to a cousin about using his corn grinding machine. His machine can be set to grind different grains depending on size. Why did we not think of this at the out start? Popi and Wes made quick work of the remaining buckets of oats. They did more buckets in two hours, than what we had all done in three weeks by hand.

5. Clean the groats

Then when you have them beat and out of the husks, you have to clean them. This really just means getting the leftover husks, pieces, and dust out of the groats.

Who wants dirty groats? So you toss the groats up into the air and catch them back into the pan. It is what they used to call separating the chaff from the wheat. Again, oats in our case but it is the same process.

If you have a nice little hand fan with a good motor, you are good. Popi did the tossing and blowing to get the groats clean and dust free.

So after all of the tedious picking, and the wonderful grinding machine, we ended up with several buckets of clean groats.

At this stage, you can keep the groats and store them for long-term storage in the freezer or in air-tight containers. Or you can make oatmeal out of them.

So let us continue on to the actual making of the oatmeal.

Now comes the soaking and flattening, then drying and storing.

6. Soak the oats

Basically, you soak the groats in water to soften them so that they can be mashed flat. Grammy found that a rice cooker works well for this part. Put the cleaned groats into the rice cooker and add water. Let it sit for four hours then rinse and refill with clean water. You can leave it overnight and then move to the next step but we let it sit in the fridge for several days before we got back to them.

Drain the water and you are ready for the next step.

7. Flatten the groats into oatmeal

Normally a person that does this a lot, will have a nice little machine to do the flattening. But of course, we do not have one. We have to do it manually. Grammy found a pasta maker at a second-hand store and thought this would do well, and it did.

The process is a bit tedious as you have to put a spoonful at a time into the top of the pasta maker and then crank the handle to run the groats through the rollers.

Note, if you have your pasta maker anchored to a stable surface, this is much easier. We did not, we just held it on the kitchen table. It did take two people to do this. Three hands to hold the pasta maker down and one hand to crank the handle.

As the soaked groats are run through the pasta maker, the rollers mash the groats flat or flattish.

As you can see these oats do not really look like store-bought oatmeal but they are the same thing.

Store-Bought

8. Dry the oatmeal

Once you have the groats flat, you dry them. That is pretty simple, either put them into a dehydrator or back into the oven. We have several of each so that is not a problem. With the volume of groats we had to work with, it did take some time but it was not hard to do just a bit time-consuming.

We used one of the dehydrators to lay the groats out and dry them. It was pretty quick considering. Overnight and we had our first homemade, handmade oatmeal.

Now you will note, that our oatmeal does not look like store-bought quick oats in either color or shape. This is because we handmade them. Also because we did not bleach them, like the commercial ones.

The bleaching takes most of the nutrients and flavor out of the oatmeal. Both things that we did not want and why we were making our own oatmeal in the first place.

9. Store the oatmeal

Then you put your oatmeal into an air-tight container or into zip bags. The oatmeal can be stored in containers for some time, just like the oatmeal you buy at the store. Or you can put the oatmeal into the freezer for long-term storage. We kept out some to use and put the rest up for longer-term storage.

10. Cook and eat the oatmeal

When you are ready to use your homemade oatmeal, just pull it out of storage and cook it like the store-bought oatmeal. But your homemade oatmeal is not already pre-cooked so it will take a bit longer to prepare than the precooked and re-dried oatmeal you buy from the store.

You will find that homemade oatmeal has a better flavor than store-bought. It is oatmeal but without the processing and all the other stuff, the commercial oatmeal goes through. Natural oatmeal has a much bolder flavor and a hardier texture.

The odd color may be a bit alarming at first but that is the natural color of oats not all bleached and processed.

Homemade oatmeal is safe and healthy for both people and animals, so you can share it with your pet and farm animals if things get tight.

We have successfully grown our own oats and made our own oatmeal. We have to say, yes, it can be done and yes, we did it. But we decided it is not only easier but more reasonable to just buy in bulk at the market. Oatmeal is cheap to buy and you can get it pretty much at any store, grocery, or market. There are several online places where you can buy oatmeal in large bulk containers. You can, of course, buy organic oatmeal in many bulk stores.

Yes, you can grow your own oats and make your own oatmeal but it may be better to save those skills for when the zombie apocalypse has actually come. Or you may have your own story of The Trials and Follies of Making Our Own Oatmeal.

But as we often say, it is a skill we now have and can use if or when we need it. No new skill is ever wasted. It is one step closer to a more self-sufficient life.

And we have now worked out the best ways to accomplish the needed steps and we know how not to do it. We learned things, some of what to do and some of what not to do. And we have a large supply of oatmeal to take us through this year for both people and animals.

We hope you have enjoyed The Trials and Follies of Making Our Own Oatmeal. Hopefully, you have learned something or at least had a good laugh at our follies.

Thank you for visiting and please come again for another edition of Out Standing in the Field.