I did it by hand. Very hard to do.

Farmers used to plant extra crop knowing that wildlife would help eat it. Plant 20% more than what you want to harvest. We also used a small battery operated shower radio to deter deer. We set it on a talk radio station and let it play continuously at least a month before harvest. It worked. The deer were too timid to come into the garden with people talking on the radio. If you can afford it and your garden isn’t too large, a motion sensor sprinkler mounted on pole will come on for every other bird and animal that tries to enter and scare them away. That worked perfectly for deer, squirrels, turkeys, groundhogs and raccoons.

It would be just fine to bake bread with it (if you like rye bread)

I have found that a good dog helps A LOT with these kinds of problems. If you have a dog that is happy to spend time in the garden with you and learns not to hurt the plants or pee on them, they love chasing away deer and squirrels. As for the smaller pests, I have found that beneficial nematodes are amazing.
Take the nematodes with a grain of salt though. I have used them in vegetable gardens but never with grain. I have been wanting to grow grains but hav not started yet.

Egbe I believe the article mentioned that in the south it is usually planted in late fall and overwintered.

Katie The article lists 3 places to purchase good grains. The businesses are listed in the paragraph after the initial list of grains types.

With an average seed size of 15,000 seeds per pound or 900,000 seeds per bushel, a pound of average-sized seed with 80% germination and emergence has a yield potential of approximately 1.5 bushels per acre.

Me too!!!