[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] buckwheat

[Helen Gillespie]

My Mom told me that in Wolhynia after trees were logged out, farmers would
sow buckwheat.  It was a short crop and would not only break up the soil
for future plantings and  the flowers are attractive to bees for honey,  it
would fertilize the soil as well as suppress weed seeds from germinating.

http://www.growveg.com/growblogpost.aspx?id=184
http://www.jeffersoninstitute.org/pubs/buckwheat.shtml

I assume they made use of the crop for grits for sausage and other porridge
(Kasha) or baked goods from the flour. Poor man's food - but hearty.  Even
fodder for the animals.  But then our ancestors practiced organic farming.

Helen


On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Lloyd Friedrick
<lloydfriedrick at telus.net>wrote:

> The recent thread of discussion on buckwheat that was grown and used in
> old Volhynia was of great interest to me.
>
> My father and uncles were raised on a farm near Rozyszcze and emigrated to
> farm in Saskatchewan in the early 1900.
>
> It puzzles me as that they regarded buckwheat as  a nuisance weed and
> discarded it as waste after they cleaned it from their wheat and barley.
>
> There was no mention of buckwheat being marketed or made into buckwheat
> pancakes.
>
> Perhaps it was a cultural notion that it was not worthy of growing here.
>
> Lloyd Friedrick in Victoria, British Columbia
>
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