Natural wines and other ferments

I am still learning about the climatic conditions required for Shmooo. I planted extremely early in Spring in the hopes of getting a crop to go to seed, then harvest, and plant another crop in time for it also to go to seed. It didn't happen that way. The first crop would not go to seed, even after three or four months. So I planted more. Now, all crops are going to seed at the same time. The oldest are producing larger heavier seed stalks by far. Oddly, the rabbits want the leafy material far more than the seed stalks. Of course, they still have not really matured. That is to say, many of the flowers are still on the stalks. There is a slight bitterness to them that is certainly not present in mature harvested seed that has been well threshed. It may be a few more weeks before I know more about that.

Last year I did not harvest the seed. I just let it fall with the plants for a natural planting. That does not appear to work here. It may be that a few hard freezes pretty much kills the seed. We are perhaps only a week to a month from a good hard freeze here now, at which time I will have several days of unrelenting work, harvesting both seed and leafy material. Today, I harvested a lot of unripe seed stalks for further experimentation. Then I tore up half the plants I had clipped and threw them to the rabbits.

I know I can eat a half pound of the leafy material day after day without ill effects. (I should note here that I recently described an incident which was pretty alarming, involving dizziness and falling down and regurgitation). While I am still speculating what caused that, it certainly wasn't the Shmooo. I am not doing loading experiments with it now, and haven't been for some months. Lately, I have been eating only a few leaves to a few dozen on any given day. I have even gone a week or so without any.

Now, since that rather dramatic incident, I have been eating some of the unripe seed stalks, but very tentatively. I'm not sure exactly where I put that report. Maybe over on the fighting for the property thread. I'm not going to go look for it because my laptop is acting skittish and I don't want to lose what I have written. But it must be in the last half dozen things in my posts. I'm still evaluating what that was all about. My guess is that it has more to do with the stresses of the battle for my house and acreage, which has been going for thirteen months, and could easily go for another year. Such things do take their toll.