Winnowing with Wayne

Enjoy the following short video, filmed and produced my farm friend and follower, Andrea who is a Sonoma County native and Bay Area local of my own generation. This is just the first of a series of films she intends to create, documenting various operations and people around the farm. Enjoy her expert eye, this is what she does for a living.

On the topic of Winnowing with Wayne, I recently finished reading the book Fields of Plenty by Jonah Raskin. The book contains a small chapter with the same name and excerpt describing his own experience cleaning beans and visiting the farm. A wonderful Sonoma County-local farming read that I highly recommend to others.

Wayne did build the vertical winnowing device in the video below. A huge part of finding efficiencies in the details of farming is the modification of tools to suit the circumstance and location specific to the farm. This farm is large enough that is does rely on mechanical assistance to a large extent, otherwise it would never be able to provide for so many households and survive. In addition to the winnower Wayne and others around the farm have constructed farm specific planting equipment, a recently developed harvesting cart (more coming soon), the smoker that makes all those chipotles, and much more. This is all part of the fun of farming!

Winnowing fava beans in July from The Seedling Project on Vimeo.

A low-tech method of winnowing fava bean pods from fava beans, which is demonstrated by Wayne James of Tierra Vegetables. Tierra is located just outside of Santa Rosa and they are famous for their chili peppers and delicious pepper products.



This is an excerpt of a larger documentary about Tierra Vegetables—I've been following them for almost two years.