Rhymes with hair line …..
In Landrace 1 – bere the query arose as to whether there was a bere line from the neolithic (late stone age), a line of transmission of bere (barley) seed from the first settlers in these regions to the present day. Another question was when bere and barley became distinct – they are the same plant species, but just look a bit different, close up.
So since bere is our most famous and still-grown-in the-wild-but-only-just cereal landrace, the Living Field will explore the bere line as a fairly random walk through time, backwards and forwards that is, putting facts and photos on this web site as we find them.
At some point in the future, we might order them into a chronological list, starting with the earliest and ending with the most recent, but ‘random’ suits us for now.
As an introduction, here are some photographs of bere barley and a 2-row barley.
Links to articles
Latest: Bere- a delicious journey of discovery by Ruth Watson, 7 January 2025
Introduction to the Living Field’s work on bere and other ancient grains
- Ancient grains at the Living Field – 10 years on
- Bere barley at the Living Field
- Common grains | Seed sovereignty
- Peasemeal, beremeal, oatmeal
Current research network on bere barley
Bere barley participatory network based at the Hutton Inst (active in 2024)
Description of landraces
Bere and old barley in historical accounts
- Ready steady mundify your barley
- Bere in Lawsons’ Synopsis 1852 – for the Great Exhibition
- Thorburn’s Diagrams – yield and area of bere in the 1850s
- Great quantities of aquavitae – bere and whisky on Wight’s tour of 1784
- Bere, bear, bair, beir, bygg – names in Old Scots
- Great quantities of aquavitae II – more sites on Wight’s tour of Cromarty in the 1780s
- Bere and barley grown in extensive rig systems or lazy beds around the northern tip of the Lewis at On the edge.
Landrace food
Related
- Light on bushel – the meaning and measurement of ‘dry volume’
- Grain measures in Ancient Greece – the mensa ponderaria of Ancient Messene
- So Scotch Bonnet – dyes, fibres, grains, roots associated with Tam O’Shanter and the Burns Supper
Living Field garden
- Bere and barley on the Cereals page
- Photographs of Barley landraces and old varieties grown in 2015
Contact: geoff.squire@hutton.ac.uk or geoff.squire@outlook.com
{Last update: 29 August 2024]