Our old friend barley
It was a pleasant evening on Wednesday, April 27, when I planted three short rows of Purple Karma barley, an ancient Tibetan variety. Seemed like a good thing to do although I had no experience for what would happen next which added to the excitement. Am I the only one who gets excited about barley?
I read that barley does not need much moisture, so after a welcome to the neighborhood watering, I left the patch alone. Five days later, I officially became a barley farmer because the first sprouts emerged! I joined the 10,000-year old legacy of humans growing barley.
It was no surprise the sprouts looked like grass because barley is a cereal grain in the grass family. The original wild barley is Hordeum vulgare, considered to be the same as modern day Horteum spontaneum, still extant in a variety of environments. Barley is more tolerant of different climates and soils than other grain crops, and wild barley was consumed for centuries before folks like us began domesticating it.
Distinguished researchers with microscopes consider barley a mosaic crop which means it was domesticated in different locations independent of each other – in particular, the eastern Mediterranean into Africa, the deserts of Syria, the Fertile Crescent and eastward in Tibet.
Barley was a mainstay in our diets in the ancient world. Remember back in Sumer (those were the days), the correct method for planting barley was common knowledge. Also well-known, and often practiced, was how to make differently flavored barley ales which, mixed with herbs, was used medicinally. We clever Sumerians would wake up feeling less than a hundred percent and in need of a strong dose of barley medicine.
In northern Africa at the same time, barley was the only grain grown by the Oroma of Ethiopia and had been for centuries. They revered it as a holy plant. To this day, a barley porridge and a fermented barley beverage is served at weddings, and children eat raw or roasted barley as a snack. Some historians maintain dependence on barley was a principle factor in the nomadic Oromo settling down to a farming lifestyle.
And around the world, we grew our barley. At least for 5000 years, barley bread has been a staple for common folks in the British Isles. Also, barley cooked with beans or peas was standard fare among poor folks, which reminds me of me back in the day. Long ago in days of old when magic filled the air, I was doing my best to become a woke well-intentioned young hippie, and I regularly made a porridge of lentils and barley and other things as available.
Little did I know I was connecting my ancient Scottish forbears. North of Scotland in the North Sea are the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands where summers are short, and winters are long, cold and windy. Nevertheless, evidence shows locals grew two kinds of barley as far back as 3500 years ago, and a water-powered mill in the Orkneys still grinds barley into meal.
There is six-row barley which is high in protein and used sometimes as animal fodder. Two-row barley has more sugar and is commonly used to make malt. People who count things claim 30 percent of two-row barley grown in the world is used to make malt, and you know what grown-ups do with malt – 48 million tons of barley every year goes toward alcoholic beverages.
Barley processing gives us both hulled and pearl barley. Hulled barley is processed by removing only the outer husk. The inner germ and bran remain. It is more nutritious but takes longer to cook. Pearl barley has been cleaned to remove the outer husk and at least some of the bran layer. It takes less time to cook but is less nutritious.
If you are wondering which came first, pearl barley or Pearl Bailey, I can help. Ms. Bailey was born in 1918, and pearl barley was old news when we were barefoot kids in Sumer.