We haven’t had good luck with grains here so far, though we only seeded them fall of '21, last year, and this year. We have planted grains here almost exclusively by broadcast-and-let-it-be, which last season yielded one nice patch of sorghum from birdseed and a couple of barley plants. I threw barley everywhere - - you can do the math 
. My wife threw birdseed into one patch of grass. A lot of the barley I threw into bare patches of yard hoping/thinking I could both cover them and get some food. These must have made very easy pickings for critters.
Anyway, I’ve got a couple of pics of rye patches and what I hope will be a milpa with a maslin, and a picture of an empty patch to represent the several places I sowed rye that got grazed to death.
To the pics! 
Above is an elderberry that received a generous sprinkling of rye, vetch, and daikon (hereafter rye+) in November. It is in the unfenced front yard. I put down a little compost, broadcast the mix, then composted over it. It germinated well and saw some grazing pressure. The pressure eventually did it in.
The plan with these patches was to help out some young shrubs and trees. I know there are plenty of people who advocate keeping young trees well weeded. I was coming at this from Gabe Brown’s policy of never planting perennials without first planting cover crops. When I read this in Dirt to Soil I thought, “Shoot, I didn’t think to plant cover crops before we planted these things!” Not too late, I thought. If it appeared to be stressing the trees overmuch, I could always terminate the cover crop early.
This is a garlic patch in the raised beds. The grain is Brundage winter wheat from a mix I scattered before my wife planted the garlic. You can see some enterprising garlic has decided “alright y’all, let’s go!!!”
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There’s a lot more winter wheat in the raised beds. It’s all about this size.
This is the EFN grand prairie composite rye, late November or December planted. This is the whole packet (~90 seeds) in this little five foot stretch. I noticed critters digging up and eating some of the rye at the elderberry plantings, so because I have so little of “some of the best rye genetics in the world”, I both covered them in deeper compost on planting and, on multiple days typically separated by at least a week, poured urine to mark the border of the patch. They are also in the fenced backyard next to the raised beds, further from cover for rodents. The dogs, who are fond of grasses both edible and not, seem to leave these alone.
This is a December rye+ plantings bordering a fenced area which contains (sort of) our enormous Nanking and two unhappy rhododendrons. I believe there is some live daikon still here.
^^This is the most successful of the rye+ companion plantings for young trees and shrubs. The tree is a young pawpaw. I think you can see from the photo the rye has experienced intense grazing pressure. This is also not the first time this has happened to this planting. I ordered a packet of Siberian “cut and come again” rye from the EFN, but if any of this bunch makes seed we will have also made our own. “We” includes the critters of course
AFAIK the green blades with white stripes are precocious stars of Bethlehem. They started emerging in December this winter
This is what I hope in a few months time will be a thriving milpa, just planted on January 28th. Threw down seed and covered. There’s all kinds of stuff in there, both stuff that should or could germinate and grow in low temps like rye and barley, and stuff many would say I’m nuts for including, like sorghum and beans and peppers and squash. All I can say is it’s planted on a south facing slope (and also sort of a valley between the slope and the raised beds). Above the slope is a six foot privacy fence. I used primarily seed I have an abundance of, but also threw in some things that matter (like a little of the moschata grex).
This one gets regular marking around the border, and I run off critters I see in it. I often accompany this by putting down some sunflower seeds or birdseed in another part of the yard. I’m experimenting with not re-covering seed in compost when they are uncovered. Some of the uncovered seed has clearly been eaten as you can see from the hull remnants. On the other hand, the same seed mix in unmarked territory has been almost entirely devoured, while much of the seed in the marked milpa planting has been left alone so far.
To couch this planting in Fukuokan terms - - “How about not waiting until last frost? How about not sowing into the ground?” (Neither a question to put to him obviously.) “How about not making clay pellets?”
I do think the clay pellets are in the cards for us, I just need to make the investment to learn how.
Anyway, that’s a representative photographic sampling of our grains 
Do you normally plant in fall and they get covered in snow or do you plant in spring? You have great weather for the grains drying down in summer. Utah was the first place I encountered feral rye. I was considering planting flax but wasn’t sure if it is freeze tolerant.
