Beer from the fields!

We recently sold some grain to Valley Malt, a home garage-style malting business that has started up in Hadley, MA. It's exciting to see people make a go of reviving this on a cottage industry scale locally.  They in turn are selling our malted wheat to Worm Town Brewery in Worcester, who are making it into beer, which then will be sold to a brew pub in Cambridge MA. I think this is the longest regional supply chain we have ever sent our grain down, an interesting venture into the world of a larger (but not too large) food-chain.

Eat our grain at Hungry Ghost Bakery!

For the past few months we have been selling wheat to Hungry Ghost Bakery in Northampton, home of the famous "Little Red Hen" project. They are a great community establishment and bake really delicious sourdough breads daily in their wood fired oven (pic above!).  They are now baking up a "locavore loaf" every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, as well as flat breads on Saturday and Monday,  often made with our wheat (ask!) Check out their website: http://www.hungryghostbread.com/

Heirloom wheat multiplication project

We hand planted a 1/4 acre of a heirloom variety of wheat called Banatka, as part of a SARE funded project headed by Eli Rogosa and the Heritage Wheat Conservancy. We are excited to take part in this important work of multiplying these old wheats, that in many cases exist only in very small amounts. Planting by hand was quite a way to plant a wheat field in contrast to the house-sized combines and planters in the mid west! For more information about the conservancy visit: www.growseed.org

Cover Crop Seeding

Ideas for processing your grain

There is a lot of information out there about using whole grains. Because we have had a lot of requests from people about how we process our grain, the following picutres are intended to give people a starting point for looking into different ways to use whole wheatberries and other grains.

Sprouted: You can sprout grain as you would other sprouts in a mason jar, by soaking the grains and then rinsing them a couple of times a day until they sprout. Sprouted grains can be used in salads, sprouted breads and pancakes, and more. Also, you can make wheatgrass!

    



Cooked as whole berries in a pot, crock pot or rice cooker : You can cook whole berries in much the same way you cook rice, the ratio of water to grain is a little higher - 2.5 to 1 instead of 2 to 1. Cooked berries can be used in salads, added to yoghurt, soups, caseroles etc.

Milled: Home mills are readily available and range from about $100 to 600+ above - a "Family Grain Mill" which comes with a flaker attachment, so you can make cerial.

Harvest!