Last Tuesday I became the Grim Reaper . . . of my barley. Actually, I wasn't very grim as my buddy, John "JB" Brack, came out to help. (JB is a fellow Austin ZEALOT and works at Austin Homebrew)

In the days leading up to the harvest, the green barley field slowly transformed into "amber waves of grain" and the heads on the barley went from standing straight up to falling over on their side. Here's a picture of the barley about a week from harvest:

And here's two from harvest day:

We harvested the barley using large knifes. We'd grab a handful of stems and cut the tops off, as close to the heads as possible to minimize the amount of straw we collected. Here's a picture of me with my "scythe":

Here's a picture of JB, holding a couple kitty litter containers full of barley. (For the record, kitty litter is just clay (bentonite) and no cat waste was ever in those containers.) 

The whole harvest took a few hours, although -- as you might expect -- we took a couple Gatorade breaks. (And OK, we had a beer or two.) The first 10 ft. X 10 ft. block of barley took about 25 minutes minutes to harvest. The remaining 15 ft. X 10 ft. block and 15 ft. X 12 ft. block took roughly proportional amounts of time.

The amount of barley this will yield is still a mystery. We collected a wheelbarrow and four kitty litter containers full of barley, which includes straw, a few leaves and the material in the barley head other than the kernels. Here's a couple pictures of the haul: 

I have already started threshing the grain and in the coming days, I will be winnowing and getting prepared to malt it. (Threshing is essentially breaking the individual kernels free from the head and winnowing is separating the straw and other plant parts from the kernels.)

 I'll keep my blog updated on this -- and also my hop and homebrew situation.