Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["elderberryjam" <elderberryjam@zippytech.com>]

> Where do you find wheat flour in such quanities and how do you store it?
> Cherie


Wheat is pretty easy to grow. You can buy seed at a farm store or co-op. 
Plant in October/November; harvest in July, zone 5 anyway. A farm co-op that 
buys grain from small farmers is a nice seed source. I bought a small sack 
one year, and grew it in my garden. We harvested it by hand, and I never did 
get it all thrashed and cleaned...very labor intensive. There was more than 
enough for a year's worth of bread from that one patch. That was before I 
was married to my current/second husband. He is a farmer and grows wheat 
every few years. He has a small combine that cleans it. He gave me about a 
100 lb sack of whole wheat the first year we were together. I put it in my 
deep freeze (I have 2). We have miller moth problems here, plus if you store 
whole wheat at room temperature, it goes rancid a lot quicker. So all my dry 
goods stay in the freezer (flour, nuts, pasta). The freezer is on.

I am a descendant of a mill family - g-grandfather was knicknamed "The 
Pancake Man" on WWVA, the country radio station in Wheeling, WV. Back in the 
old days, the mill was heated to a certain temperature to kill all the bugs 
in the grain (and bug eggs). It was dangerous and had to be done with care, 
lest it all explode. My mother was forever searching for ways to deter 
bugs - garlic, tins, airtight containers - but they always made it in. I had 
a really hard time as a child eating anything I had to sift the bugs out of, 
and it left a permanent scar on me. I just use the freezer for storage.

If you grow your own wheat, a small farmer with a small combine would most 
likely be willing to help you clean it. If that small farmer is anything 
like my husband, the combine might only get in working condition once every 
couple or three years, and you have to catch them when they're cleaing their 
own wheat - whenever that is - if you have any hopes of getting yours done 
at the same time. That sort of means everyone should grow wheat the same 
year; or at least the same year they are growing some sort of grain they 
have to combine (like oats).

My husband likes to grind his own wheat in an old hand-crank grinder (which 
he also uses for coffee), and makes bread from it. Last year I grew blue 
corn, and he made blue cornmeal for me. It was so good that I saved enough 
seed to grow 3 or 4 times as much this year. Save your seed, like Almonzo 
Wilder. Then you also know that you can eat it.

Gwen